this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2026
739 points (98.2% liked)

Technology

86485 readers
3260 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (10 children)

The August dump will be 4X the shares already in the wild.

So, from 1% of market cap to 2%?

Spread over shareholders who still hold north of 90% of the company?

Meanwhile, China is making great strides in VTVL and much cheaper, open source LLMs. The EU is eager to find home grown or at the least not-American tech solutions.

China (and India and Brazil, among others) are all making huge investments in aerospace. The EU is certainly making a lot of noise, but because everything is privatized to fuck, what you're left with is guess like Richard Branson paddin wallets while programs like the FCAS flounder.

Every headline makes SpaceX look less and less likely to make ANY profits

Starlink is still the modern word in satellite communication. That's worth a few hundred billion on it's face.

Will this advantage last? Idk. Probably not, but maybe.

At a minimum, if you want to be friendly with America, you'll need to buy from Musk.

[–] Folstar@lemmus.org 3 points 1 day ago (9 children)

Starlink, which is nowhere near worth that much even under a best case scenario (compare to other comm companies), can make money and SpaceX still not make any profits because of the the xAI money pit. Also, no, the advantage will not last. The last 30 years of satellite communications have been one seemingly promising idea after another that fizzled out or was made obsolete. No reason to think that trend will change now, especially not when the Starlink model is extremely resource intensive.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Starlink, which is nowhere near worth that much even under a best case scenario

The existing network plus whatever Elon Musk can launch in the next twenty years, assuming an absence of competition could be a trillion dollar company. When you've got a monopoly on military satellite technology in a market full of warring super states, that's a lot of economic leverage.

I'm deeply skeptical that he'll have that edge for long. But I can at least interesting someone who thinks it's worth a gamble.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago

The existing network will be gone within a few years. By design. If all goes well for SpaceX, it will have been replaced by a new network, which will also be gone within a few years.

Just pointing out that the existing network can't be relied upon without continued re-investment constantly. It's hard to build up a strong first mover advantage when the fruits of the effort burn up in the atmosphere routinely.

load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments (7 replies)