Companies laundering their CEO's other failing companies is certainly a reason to sell.

I wouldn't really say SpaceX expanded its business. It was merged with a social network and AI firm to juice its IPO valuation. The SpaceX part of the business is interesting, but the value is generously only about 20% of the value of the company. Anyone who wants to invest in AI isn't going to want a near last place model company. And who wants to put money into Twitter?

The iPod was a peripheral to use alongside your MacBook, it was meant to drive Apple computer sales initially and it's not like it was Apple's first attempt at a portable device (Newton). Nokia was building telecom equipment (stemming from their telephone cable experience, the insulation being a product of their original rubber business) and military equipment along with a bunch of other consumer electronics before they got into mobile phones. Amazon released AWS because that was their infrastructure they had built for themselves to handle their massive e-commerce business.

Companies generally don't just jump into a totally new market unless they've already got some experience.

The SpaceX acquisitions of xAI and X have absolutely nothing to do with space. While I'm sure SpaceX software engineers benefit greatly from cheap access to Grok, it and X have no relevance to the core business of SpaceX. It's the same level as "huh?" if Boeing decided to buy up an AI company and social media platform. The only reason xAI and X are even part of SpaceX is because Musk fucked himself with being forced to buy Twitter and he decided to bundle them with an actually profitable company.

SpaceX had adult leadership for a long time. I suspect there was a tacit agreement with Musk about a bit of separation.

He broke through that professional firewall when he merged xAI with SpaceX and then pushed it to go public as he did. I also posit that Gwynne Shotwell is weirdly undervalued for what she's accomplished and what she's put up with, and I think that will show up some time in the future.

There was enough technical analysis to show that even Musk's cult feed can't overcome the significant financial hardships he laid on SpaceX. I personally think it was his jump the shark move. He can't really go up again after this. He no longer has any untainted assets for mega-exploits.

Nvidia was a company making PC gamer hardware, not high-performance computing.

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