SpaceX-xAI merger reactions, Paypal plummets, Disney names next CEO | Diet TBPN

Summary

TBPN Podcast Episode Summary

Episode: SpaceX-xAI merger reactions, Paypal plummets, Disney names next CEO | Diet TBPN
Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays
Date: February 4, 2026
Format: Best moments from the live weekday show in ~30 minutes

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into several major tech and business headlines: reactions to the merger of SpaceX and xAI (Elon Musk’s companies), the dramatic stock market falls for Paypal and Snap, and Disney’s announcement of its next CEO. The hosts provide fast-paced, humorous, and analytical takes on each story, often blending sharp critique with banter and notable Twitter/X posts from the tech community.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Oracle & OpenAI Comms

• Oracle issued a formal statement to reassure investors about its relationship with OpenAI, following the Nvidia-OpenAI deal.
• The message was delivered in a classic, stiff PR style—unlike OpenAI’s more conversational approach, e.g., Rune’s joking tweets.
  • Alex: “This screams that no one in comms actually uses X.” (01:22)
  • Ben: “It is very weird to take this to act specifically. This is a conversational platform.” (01:01)
• The hosts discuss how the platform matters—a bland press release on X looks out of touch compared to direct, authentic engagement.

2. PayPal’s Plunge & Market Reactions

• Paypal's stock fell 20% after an underwhelming Q4, soft 2026 forecast, and a surprise CEO exit.
  • Alex: "PayPal right now is valued at less than what X was in the Take private." (02:45)
  • Ben: "Down 85% in the last five years… a lot of people have moved on. They use, you know, cash app…Venmo is still very millennial." (03:01)
• The transition to new CEO Enrique Llores is swift (March 1), with interim CFO Jamie Miller filling the gap.
• PayPal’s strategy is criticized for lack of innovation, despite a $33B revenue in 2025. Analysts doubt the strength of their payments team and turnaround potential.
• Alex: “You would think that PayPal…figuring out ways to work better with agents and capitalize on the stablecoin boom. But we’ll see what the new CEO ends up doing.” (08:20)

3. Broader Tech Stock Selloff

• Other notable software/internet companies (Oracle, Snap, etc.) are sharply down; Snap’s financial engineering and stock compensation draw skepticism.
• Alex: “Snap is close to all time lows at $6.70 despite growing revenues and profits…Stock comp…two and a half billion dollars. Really, really insane number.” (03:39)
• Monolithic winners like Meta are contrasted with underperformers like Snap and uncertainty around potential OpenAI monetization.

4. Macro Financial Turbulence

• Bitcoin and other crypto assets plunged – “Absolute crash today down 13% over the last five days over almost 20% over the last month.” (Ben, 05:47)
• Jokes about “sell everything” are exchanged as even traditional assets and currency weaken, with speculation that physical assets or raw materials might gain favor.
• Myths about market cap and liquidity are addressed.
  • Alex: “This is a pretty common misconception that money has to go somewhere. That’s not how market caps are measured…TLDR. The money was never there.” (11:13)

5. Disney’s CEO Transition

• Josh D’Amaro named Disney CEO (effective next month), with Bob Iger remaining as advisor until year’s end.
• The hosts highlight the contrast with PayPal—Disney’s succession was telegraphed, methodical, and smooth.
  • Ben: “They’ve only had nine CEOs in the 102 year history. The CEO job requires…running a sprawling empire, but also serving as its high profile and highly scrutinized public ambassador.” (12:05)
• D’Amaro’s background in theme parks, international experience, and operational acumen are emphasized.
• Discussion of the OpenAI-Disney deal and the challenge of integrating AI content into the highly curated Disney+ environment, especially with parental controls.
  • Ben: “If you start putting AI generated content in there…some parents will love it because the kids will watch more. But I think a lot of parents would probably be like, I don’t know, I’m pulling back from that.” (15:02)

6. SpaceX–xAI Merger

• SpaceX acquires xAI (which had previously acquired X): the merged entity is valued at $1.25 trillion, with xAI at $250B and a “clean 584x revenue multiple.”
  • Alex: “SpaceX just bought XAI that previously bought X…Not bad. An annualized loss of 5.” (16:30)
  • Ben: “The transaction values SpaceX at 1,000,000,000 XAI at 2. 50 billion Investors in XAI will receive 0.1433 shares of SpaceX for every share of XAI as part of the acquisition.” (17:27)
• Merger rationale:
  • xAI’s huge CapEx (e.g., building Colossus supercomputer).
  • SpaceX’s strong financials help cover AI R&D losses.
  • Overlap between shareholder bases facilitates an amicable consolidation.
  • Alex: “In many ways, like the XAI shareholder base has a lot of overlap with the…SpaceX shareholders. So in the end I think everyone obviously is doing fine.” (18:25)
• The deal showcases Elon Musk’s strategic stacking of companies—melding hype cycles, leveraging private liquidity, and maintaining tight founder control.
  • Ben: “Overpays for Twitter, makes XAI, uses AI hype cycle to absorb Twitter…pumps the SpaceX IPO…Of course people keep giving this guy capital. He finds a way.” (23:20)
• Ben: “Elon, just bet on Elon. Don’t bet against Elon. Sean McGuire I think is on all three Xai, X and SpaceX and then Andreessen Horowitz as well.” (24:38)

7. Boring Company & UAE Loop Project

• Musk’s Boring Company is moving forward with infrastructure in Dubai after some Vegas tunnel delays and mixed reception.
  • Alex: “UAE officials say the first phase of the Dubai Loop project with Musk Boring company to start immediately. They are breaking ground over there.” (25:05)

8. Super Bowl & National Security Quirks

• San Francisco is being scanned for radiation as part of Super Bowl security, using helicopters to measure background levels (“Energy 14”).
  • Ben: “The chopper, equipped with sensitive detectors, flies in grid patterns at low altitudes…to map baseline radiation levels…that’s how they detect anomalies like dirty bombs.” (27:00)

9. The Surreal Internet: AI Social Media

• Reflections on social networks like Multbook, populated primarily by AI agents (not humans), evoking early web strangeness and cultural confusion.
  • Alex: “The experience of reading Multbook is akin to reading Reddit if 90% of the posters were aliens pretending to be human. And in a practical sense, that is exactly what is going on here. Molt Book feels like a Wright Brothers demo.” (29:30)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Corporate Comm Fails:

  • Alex: “This screams that no one in comms actually uses X.” (01:22)
  • Ben: “It is very weird to take this to act specifically. This is a conversational platform.” (01:01)

• Financial Despair:

  • Ben: “Down 85% in the last five years. I mean, truthfully, like a lot of people have moved on. They use, you know, cash app, but they own Venmo...Venmo is still very like millennial.” (03:01)
  • Ben: “Absolute crash today down 13% over the last over the last five days over almost 20% over the last month. Lots of selling activity going on.” (05:47)

• Elon’s Empire:

  • Ben: “The transaction value SpaceX at 1,000,000,000 XAI at 250 billion. Investors in XAI will receive 0.1433 shares of SpaceX for every share of XAI as part of the acquisition. Some executives may opt for cash instead. This marks not just the next chapter but the next book in SpaceX and xAI’s mission—scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars.” (17:27)
  • Ben: “Overpays for Twitter, makes xAI, uses AI hype cycle to absorb Twitter and make everyone whole, then uses SpaceX IPO hype to absorb that entity…” (23:20)

• Disney on Succession:

  • Ben: “They’ve only had nine CEOs in the 102 year history. The CEO job requires not only running a sprawling empire, but also serving as its high profile and highly scrutinized public ambassador.” (12:05)
  • Alex: “If you start putting AI generated content in [Disney+], maybe some parents will love it…But I think a lot of parents would probably be like, I don’t know, I’m pulling back from that.” (15:02)

• AI Social Networks:

  • Alex: “The experience of reading Molt Book is akin to reading Reddit if 90% of the posters were aliens pretending to be human…Molt Book feels like a Wright Brothers demo.” (29:30)

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Key Timestamps

• 01:00 – Oracle & OpenAI PR mishaps
• 02:25 – PayPal stock crash, CEO change, market disbelief
• 03:39 – Snap’s financial woes & software sector struggles
• 05:47 – Crypto/markets crash, “Sell everything” jokes
• 11:34 – Disney names Josh D’Amaro as CEO, smooth succession
• 15:02 – OpenAI-Disney deal challenges, risk of AI content
• 16:30 – SpaceX-xAI-X merger details & implications
• 23:20 – Elon Musk’s company stacking and capital/cultural strategy
• 25:05 – Boring Company UAE expansion
• 27:00 – San Francisco’s radiation survey for Super Bowl
• 29:30 – Rise of AI-agent-driven social media (Molt Book)

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Final Thoughts

This “Diet TBPN” episode delivers a rapid-fire, nuanced breakdown of all the major tech headlines of the week—with a focus on the personalities and social/investor culture behind the companies. The hosts keep the tone lively, bring in choice social media snippets, and share insightful skepticism about corporate strategy, AI’s cultural impact, and the ongoing spectacle that is Elon Musk’s empire-building.

Transcript

[Alex]

Important announcement from Oracle. Our partners financing with Dona Ana County, New Mexico, Shackelford County, Texas and Port Washington, Wisconsin. Data centers are secured at market standard rates, progressing through final syndication on schedule and consistent with investment grade deals. So if this makes you worry, a lot of other people agree this is their most recent post after yesterday they announced the Nvidia OpenAI deal had zero impact on our financial relationship with OpenAI. We remain highly confident in OpenAI's ability to raise funds and meet its commitments.

[Ben]

So what did Rune say? Rune said my confid my confident in OpenAI's abilities to raise fund T shirt has a lot of people asking questions already answered by my t shirt. Just 2000 likes.

[Alex]

Interesting comm strategy. They've been hiding comments under this. I think they've stopped doing that because people are saying what an odd thing to say. Brennan says, guys, just stop tweeting. Whoever you have running PR comms needs to be fired. You're making it worse.

[Ben]

It is, it is very weird to take this to act specifically. This is a conversational platform.

[Alex]

Like it's hey, we want to start a conversation about concerns around our well.

[Ben]

Also just I mean it's a total rejection of the going direct thing. Like this would be wildly different if it came from the CEO CO CEOs or Larry Ellison directly even and it had like way more nuance. It's very odd when it has like.

[Alex]

The corporate press release this screams that no one in comms actually uses X.

[Ben]

It's like we needed to put this out and they didn't really consider the channel and maybe this probably went over fine in a press release or something. But just on X it's a completely different context and there's so much subtext with all the different partners actively being there and even like low level employees chiming in from companies that are implicated in this. There's like all this different.

[Alex]

I like how you compare Oracle's strategy of like the nameless faceless.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

Announcement that just concerns everyone to rune actually from OpenAI commenting and just joking about it and it actually gives you more confidence.

[Ben]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Like somebody, somebody looked at the Rune post and was like oh, even Roon stop shilling. We're after. And Rune's like no, it's just a funny tweet. OpenAI is doing great and that instills way more.

[Alex]

Gabe quoted the yesterday's post and just said okay, yay.

[Ben]

Okay yay.

[Alex]

Of course Oracle's down 5% today. It's sort of a blind honestly looking good compared to Some other names.

[Ben]

Yeah. What's happening?

[Alex]

PayPal down a full 20% today. Switched out their CEO. Okay, okay. This, you know, had some, some Q4 results that people weren't super exciting about. And people aren't excited about the forecasts either. You look at S.H.I.E.L.D. kind of was prodding Elon. He said, come on, Elon, you've always wanted PayPal to be X. The financial super apparent. Now's a great opportunity. PayPal right now is valued at less than what X was in the Take private.

[Ben]

Wait, really?

[Alex]

Yeah.

[Ben]

No way.

[Alex]

And X is obviously working on a bunch of different financial features.

[Ben]

I thought PayPal all time high was in the hundreds of billions. Yeah, it's 40 billion now. Yeah, add that in. Yeah, it was, it was way up. Down 85% in the last five years. I mean, truthfully, like a lot of people have moved on. They use, you know, cash app, but they own Venmo. Yeah, Venmo. Venmo is still very like millennial. Right? It's, it's sort of like. And, and people use the Apple, Apple Pay transfers Apple Cash. Like there's been a number of, you know, shots across the bow for PayPal that they haven't responded to fully.

[Alex]

I mean their net, their net revenue.

[Ben]

They own Venmo because they acquired Braintree. It wasn't even like an in house, like really aggressive move. They, they sort of just lucked out with Venmo.

[Alex]

PayPal, the $40 billion public company had 2025 net revenue of 33 billion. Major sell off in pretty much all software. Today. Snap is close to all time lows at $6.70 despite growing revenues and profits. Serenity says here's why the financial engineering looks criminal. Snapchat is an $11.5 billion company with a billion MAU and Q3 adjusted EBITDA of 132 million. However, stock comp for the last 12 months, two and a half billion dollars. Really, really insane number. This is, I mean always been the general criticism of Snap, but looks like they have not adjusted course yet.

[Ben]

It's interesting seeing the gap between monetization, between Meta a billion Mao and Snap a billion mao. It's like a 10x.

[Alex]

Yeah, yeah. Which is why like you were doing some Napkin math on OpenAI and I.

[Ben]

Think that's they have a billion Mao. Do they monetize like Meta or do they monetize like Snap and on what timeline? Because or worse, they have Fiji Simo. I think they could get to Meta level, you know, monetization and arpu. But it also could they could be lingering in the snap territory which is I think 5 billion over the last year.

[Alex]

Matt Slotnick commenting on the sell off in software. All of this because Azure grew 39% instead of 39.4%. Of course there's a lot more going on here and Buco says knots it's that the labs can hypothetically one shot you so why stand in front of that train? Why expressquoteShort AI in the marketplace. High yield. Harry says wow, this software company is getting destroyed by AI today. Juventus soccer team down 13% everything's destroyed. I guess people think that somebody's going to make Claude code for soccer.

[Ben]

Your inside man below says the robots are going to be playing and he has a photo of or a gif of robots playing soccer.

[Alex]

That seems bullish. We'll see. Bitcoin also down dramatically. Joe Weisenthal has it up 3 now.

[Ben]

Absolute crash today down 13% over the last over the last five days over almost 20% over the last month. Lots of selling activity going on.

[Alex]

Jim Kramer is now giving advice to Michael Saylor. He says oh my Bitcoin 73,000 beckons as the Dow hits a record high. Our chartist last night said this is it the level that cannot be our chartist chartist the level that cannot be breached. It is time for strategy also known as mass.

[Ben]

Microstrategy was the former name.

[Alex]

Also known as Mr. For its Mr. Symbol to do a spot secondary or convert and stop this decline. Come on Mike, step up. It's just always rough when when Jim Cramer is just like stream of consciousness posting at you so we'll see what what Saylor does they they have earnings on Thursday and that will certainly be an interesting call.

[Ben]

More more details on the PayPal shares plunging nearly 20% CEO exit they replaced their their CEO Alex Chris, who was brought in to steer the payments firm through slowing growth and heightened competition and simultaneously issued a lackluster Profit forecast for 2026 on Tuesday, sending its shares down 19%. The board's the company's board. HP's Enrique Llores as its new president and CEO said the pace of change and execution under Kris was not in line with its expectations. Chris was tasked with turning around PayPal during a challenging period as post pandemic trading volumes declined and competitive pressures in its core business intensified from large technology companies and newer fintech rivals. It does feel like you know in the press release economy it would be it would have been so easy for PayPal to do some sort of deal with stock trading or prediction markets like Every financial app and news product and grocery store, like everyone is like doing some sort of deal at least. Even if it doesn't materialize, even it doesn't move the needle, at least they're, they're sort of putting their best foot forward. And PayPal, you know, you still mostly hear about it in the context of what are the PayPal co founders up to now? Oh, they're building rivals to the original company. PayPal said CFO Jamie Miller would serve as interim CEO until Lars assumes the role on March 1. That's a pretty quick transition. Wall street analysts said the unexpected CEO announcement raises questions about the company's turnaround strategy. Disney's been going through a CEO transition, but it's been massively telegraphed with you know, a contract that ended this year. Okay, you know, a story last week about hey we're moving faster, hey, we're bringing somebody in who's internal, who's already knows the company inside and out and things been a lot.

[Alex]

It's crazy that even with $33 billion of revenue, they're worth roughly like three and a half circles. Circle obviously just tiny, tiny company in comparison to PayPal. You would think that PayPal, they don't have an obvious AI like what's the obvious AI bear case. Right. They move money, they're heavily regulated. You can imagine them figuring out ways to work better with agents and capitalize on the stablecoin boom. But we'll see what the new CEO ends up doing.

[Ben]

The big question is whether he will bring in a formidable payments team to attempt yet another multi year turnaround.

[Alex]

They not have a formidable payment scheme. Who you got or I would hope, I would hope, I would hope. The payments company with half a billion active users has a formidable payments team.

[Ben]

Apparently not. According to Evercore, you lack formidability. PayPal expects full year adjusted profit to range between low single digit percentage decline and slight increase compared with Wall street expectations of about 8% growth. The change comes against the backdrop of weakening retail spending as shoppers squeez by elevated interest rates, stubbornly high living costs and sign up softening may labor market cut back on discretionary purchases and prioritize everyday necessities. Stuff that's not probably purchased with PayPal.

[Alex]

David in the YouTube chat says PayPal did participate in the press release Economy. They announced a deal with ChatGPT at the end of last year in Q4. In 2026, PayPal will become the first digital wallet embedded directly into ChatGPT. Allowing users to make purchases instantly without leaving the platform. Feels Feels very oversold, but.

[Ben]

And they also missed on the holiday quarter. So analysts were estimated, were estimating that they'd make 8.8 billion and they only made 8.68 billion. And so, you know, we saw a pretty strong holiday quarter. There was a lot of growth across E commerce activity. We talked to Sean Frank at Ridge. Everyone was having like, there were a lot of jitters about is the consumer healthy? But a lot of the growing platforms were able to outrun any softening in consumer confidence by just onboarding more companies, onboarding more customers. And so if you're declining while everyone else is accelerating, that's going to be an issue.

[Alex]

Ted says gold is dumping, Silver's dumping, Bitcoin is dumping. Ethereum is dumping. DXY is dumping. Stocks are dumping. If everything is going down, where's the money actually going? We talked about this last week. Sell everything.

[Ben]

Sell your dollar.

[Alex]

Sell your stocks. Sell your crypto. Sell your bonds.

[Ben]

Freak out. Yeah, panic.

[Alex]

Sell everything. Nikita says data centers, raw materials and land. If intelligence is rapidly becoming free, expect a rapid rotation out of bytes and into bits. A lot of blue chip assets will soon be repriced.

[Ben]

I don't know. I'm excited to talk to Aaron Levy about this, about the SaaS apocalypse. What's happening with software.

[Alex]

Deep Dish says this is a pretty common misconception that money has to go somewhere. That's not how market caps are measured. They're measured by last price times, shares, contracts outstanding, not how much money you'd get for liquidating the whole pile. Tldr. The money was never there. Josh d' Amero is the new CEO of Disney, effective next month.

[Ben]

Yes.

[Alex]

This cycle moved very quickly, right?

[Ben]

It did. At the same time, I think it was managed pretty well. Disney's only down 1% today.

[Alex]

Yeah. Iger will stay on the board and serve as a senior advisor until his retirement on December 31st. And Dana Walden was named to a new role as president and Chief Creative officer of Disney. Iger just got the OpenAI deal done. He's like, I handled the AI transition perfectly and I'm out.

[Ben]

They've only had nine CEOs in the 102 year history. The CEO job requires not only running a sprawling empire, but also serving as its high profile and highly scrutinized public ambassador. D' Amaro won a challenging bake off for the job against Disney's entertainment co chairman, Dana Walden.

[Alex]

Let's give it up for Bake Offs.

[Ben]

That has been the talk of Hollywood for more than a year. Walden was named to the newly created position of president and chief creative officer. Disney's leadership has been determined to run the succession process as smoothly as possible after its disastrous last try. The company named previous Parks boss Bob Chapek as CEO in 2020, only to fire him and bring back Iger two years later in a corporate couple. There's a whole series of Bob's Bob Iger, Bob, Bob Chapek over there. The CEO selection was overseen by Chairman James Gorman, who joined Disney's board in 2024 after managing a widely praised succession process at Morgan Stanley. Iger was chairman when the board picked Chapek. Disney shares were roughly flat Tuesday. Gorman, in an interview, said that he has seen Iger and demaro work together and is confident the handoff will go smoothly this time. There's no tension here. Shareholders will now look at to Domaro to lay out and execute a growth plan for the company, whose stock price is down by nearly half from its 2021 high. When everyone was rapidly subscribing to Disney plus and locked in just watching content, they went outside and the shares have slid since and has been essentially never go outside.

[Alex]

Never touch grass.

[Ben]

This is the new Disney champion.

[Alex]

Never touch grass.

[Ben]

Run it in the super bowl for sure, gorman said. The Wall Street Journal picked the Told the Wall Street Journal that the board picked d' Amaro because of his combination of strategic thinking and an understanding of the creative process, as well as his experience working both overseas and in the United States. The 54 year old spent most of his 28 years at Disney working in theme parks in the theme parks business in the US and overseas, overseeing stints at California's Disneyland and Florida's Walt Disney World. In 2020, he has been chairman of Disney's Experiences unit, which includes theme parks, cruise ships and consumer products that should grow in an AI world. Even if the, even if there's a lot of like AI slop and there's pressure on the theaters, like should grow.

[Alex]

But there's still so many, there's still so many questions. Right. If you have widespread job loss, does that force a compression and pricing or just overall purchasing power? Right. Yeah, it's everyone. But again, you could see there's so much uncertainty. The idea that AI will just magically like AI getting good will magically make everybody spend more time off the Internet is kind of a tough argument to make. Yeah, right. Some people react. There's this like stated preference which people are saying as AI proliferates, people are just going to log off and I just don't actually see that Happening.

[Ben]

Yeah. I'm interested to see when the OpenAI Disney deal really like rolls out. Obviously you still can't generate Disney properties. Disney IP in Sora or in. Or at least not in ChatGPT when I tried. So they're still working on when they will roll that out. We've discussed like, it will be interesting if they launch like a single piece of ip. Like it's Spider man week and they're just releasing Spider man and then, and then they wait and then they do Iron Man a week later. So they're like, keep hyping it as opposed to just like we're opening the floodgates. You can do any Disney ip. Will there be something special? There's the bigger question for me is, is what does it look like in the Disney plus app? Because I feel like the Disney app as a parent is a very safe place. Like there's some stuff in there but you can like sort of parental control it and most of its cartoons and most of its high quality Pixar stuff. But even if there's an AI generated feed, how much editorial goes into that? Like there's a, there's a pretty wide gap right now between YouTube Kids, which can get sort of crazy, and Disney plus, which is extremely curated. You know, Academy Award winning films are in there and it's like a very, it's a very polished product and if you start putting AI generated content in there, maybe some parents will love it because the kids will watch more. But I think a lot of parents would probably be like, I don't know, I'm pulling back from that. What are you trying to generate?

[Alex]

I'm trying to see if Grok can generate Disney ip. Can it not? Perfectly. We talked about this yesterday, we'll cover it again. DD shares today. SpaceX just bought XAI that previously bought X. The $1.25 trillion merger values XAI at $250 billion with annualized revenue of 428 million, giving it a clean 584x revenue multiple. Not bad. An annualized loss of 5.

[Ben]

More importantly, mostly Capex, right? I imagine actually, yeah, because they're building Colossus, they're buying a ton of chips and so that's where that cash loss is coming from. Yeah, because I imagine that the inference is not at that level yet.

[Alex]

But of course SpaceX can start helping to foot that bill. Yeah, they have 8 billion in revenue. No, no, no. A billion in profit. In profit.

[Ben]

The transaction value SpaceX at 1,000,000,000 XAI at 2. 50 billion Investors in XAI will receive 0.1433 shares of SpaceX for every share of XAI as part of the acquisition. Some XAI executives may opt for cash instead of SpaceX stock at 75.46 per share. This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and XAI's mission scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars. What a turn of phrase. We'll have to read Elon's post because this one feels like it came directly from him. I know that the Tesla master plan before was sort of like it's a little corporate corpo speak, but somebody else was sharing.

[Alex]

It is fascinating that, you know, the number a non leading lab.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

Is worth, you know, effectively a quarter of what the leading, you know, space telecom company is.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

Like when you compare the two, it's actually, it actually makes sense. I mean, in many ways, like the XAI shareholder base has a lot of overlap with the, the SpaceX shareholders. So in the end I think everyone obviously is doing fine. But certainly the 584x revenue multiple, I think even Sam would take that offer right now.

[Ben]

Yeah, that'd be 5 trillion Alex Stouffer shares that Ramp Sheets called it The Elon Musk. SpaceX plus XAI valued at 1.25 trillion. And ramp Labs used their agentic spreadsheet to model the proposed merger when there were rumors of advanced talks on July, on January 29th and they nailed the. The valuation. So you can kind of watch Ramp Sheets work through the, the financial modeling there.

[Alex]

It's notable. So some executives are able to offer cash instead of SpaceX shares at $75.46 per share. You think this is just because there's so much pre IPO demand for Space X that people are like, you know, there's plenty of buyers.

[Ben]

That's a good question.

[Alex]

If they just want to cash out and move on.

[Ben]

I mean, SpaceX has done like a long history of tender offers and liquidity, so there's probably plenty of demand. And just offering that feels like a way. I mean, there's also got to be some people that have been sitting on sort of. I mean, I guess if you were a Twitter employee just a few years ago, you had liquidity. So it's not the same thing as SpaceX where you joined 20 years ago and you're still waiting for the IPO. So you're like, I need to buy a house. Those tender offers make a lot more sense than this, but certainly an Interesting decision to be made if you're an XAI executive.

[Alex]

Logan Bartlett says Nikita Beer, the SpaceX employee. Total Nikita victory. I think in many ways he's been through hell over the last few months. He is often the butt of the joke.

[Ben]

There were those prediction markets on will he make it?

[Alex]

Fired?

[Ben]

Will he get fired? There's been so many dust ups around. Is he paying some people too much with the creator program? Well now if you're an ex creator and you get that $22 paycheck for your posts, it's coming from SpaceX. Love to see it.

[Alex]

Wired had some interesting coverage this morning. Mike Solana called it out. Wired said Elon Musk is rolling Xai into SpaceX, creating the world's most valuable private company. By fusing SpaceX and Xai, which acquired X last year, Elon Musk tightens his grip over technologies that shape national security, social media and artificial intelligence. Yes, of course, this doesn't make any sense.

[Ben]

So Solana's point is he says, good morning. Elon Musk is, quote, tightening his grip over two companies he founded, funded, built and currently runs. So, but that's a good criticism, but.

[Alex]

Yeah, but, but, but at the same time, like going public implies like you're actually, you're loosening your grip. Right. Suddenly, like the market, you have new regulations that you have to follow, more responsibility. Like you, like suddenly anyone in the world can, can, can profit off of your labor.

[Ben]

Yes, anyone in the world can loosen your grip a little bit in some way.

[Alex]

It's funny because if, if, like, if SpaceX put out some big press release and said we're never going to go public and we're doing this, their criticism would be Elon Inc. Is not letting retail shareholders participate in space and AI. Yeah.

[Ben]

Or just as a private company, all the financials, all the strategies are more opaque. There's less accountability, there's less regulation. They don't answer to the SEC in the same way. And that's why a variety of private equity firms do take private equity. Like, why are you taking a company private? You're delisting it as a public company. It's no longer public. And so you can do much more ambitious things. You can, you can change the strategy because you don't answer to shareholders. What are you laughing about?

[Alex]

John says Elon Musk, famous for his loose management style, tightens his grip.

[Ben]

Yeah, famous, famous.

[Alex]

Eric Berlin says, once again I find myself updating my LinkedIn bio. He says, Former CEO of Breaker, which was acquired by Twitter, acquired by X Corp. Acquired by Xai, acquired by SpaceX. So congratulations to the Breaker team.

[Ben]

I was. But I was looking for the most complicated corporate lineage yesterday when we were joking about it, like there's someone that's going to have like six steps in their resume. And we found him, his name's Eric Berlin and he founded Breaker. What was Breaker?

[Alex]

Live Sports.

[Ben]

Oh really?

[Alex]

I think it was meant to basically distribute effectively clips from games. Oh, in the moment.

[Ben]

Cool. Oh yeah, like breaking news. Oh. 2021. Twitter requires social podcasting app Breaker Team to help build Twitter spaces. Twitter has acquired social broadcasting app Breaker, the company announced today.

[Alex]

Yeah, I think the idea, the idea was if you were. If there was a crazy play or a game was about to end, they would just stream.

[Ben]

Huh.

[Alex]

Just like the last five minutes or something.

[Ben]

Interesting.

[Alex]

Suspended cap says. So let me get this straight. Overpays for Twitter, makes xai, uses AI hype cycle to absorb Twitter and make everyone whole, then uses SpaceX IPO hype to absorb that entity will pump the living shit out of the SpaceX IPO and buy more stuff with equity. Like, of course people keep giving this guy capital. He finds a way. It's crazy.

[Ben]

It's really true.

[Alex]

Yeah. In some ways I've been thinking about it is XAI has. They've done fine in so many ways. It's been an incredible story come. Come from behind story, competing against, you know, the Googles, the open eyes of the world. But it hasn't exactly been an easy time in the private markets, like going out and having to raise at a $200 billion valuation. When every single investor that you're pitching is looking at OpenAI, they're looking at anthropic, they're comparing your traction to theirs. All those people that had were investing in XAI had to just like say, like full blind faith. Elon, I know you got us. And so this new transaction was the investment thesis. It was like, hey, sort of unlimited upside, somewhat capped downside. The downside scenarios and XAI get rolled in and so certainly rewarding everyone with their loyalty.

[Ben]

Yeah, I mean a bunch of investors have kind of like laid out this thesis of Elon Inc. Just Elon, just bet on Elon. Don't bet against Elon. Sean McGuire I think is on all three Xai, X and SpaceX and then Andreessen Horowitz as well. And they posted an image of like x SpaceX, xai. And individually a lot of those deals were sort of crazy and critiqued, but together everyone's doing very well.

[Alex]

So we got to Figure out what's going on with the boring company. UAE officials say the first phase of the Dubai Loop project with Musk Boring company to start immediately. They are breaking ground over there. Dubai has. UAE has some insane.

[Ben]

Not seen a lot from. Yeah, but I think, I think they're still cooking. I know there's, there's been some back and forth about the Vegas tunnel, some stuff that's good. Some people are annoyed with like the construction and whatnot. But it seems like, I don't know, it's progressing a little bit. It still seems really, really slow considering. When did he originally post the Hyperloop blog? Like 10 years ago. But building tunnels to the ground, difficult, difficult. San Francisco is getting its first nuke scan.

[Alex]

You know what this is about?

[Ben]

Yes. So before the super bowl, they fly a helicopter with radio like detection. So there's someone who asked Grok, like, what is this? And here it is. Okay. So somebody said, is this real? And how does it work? And said Grok said, yes, it's real. They fly a helicopter.

[Alex]

We don't have any audio.

[Ben]

I don't know what the stream just.

[Alex]

I just knew.

[Ben]

Fortunately, we can joke because we are being kept safe thanks to the National Nuclear Security Administration. NSA. They fly a helicopter called Energy 14 over San Francisco to conduct aerial radiation surveys. Before super bowl, was it Super Bowl 60 LX? I need my, I need to brush up on my numeral. Roman numerals.

[Alex]

We're gonna be going to the super bowl. And so we gotta, we gotta, we gotta watch how many seasons. Like, I mean, we said we were gonna.

[Ben]

This is the 60th Super Bowl.

[Alex]

No, I know, but we said, how many did we say we were gonna watch the last 20 seasons? Every game in the last 20 seasons. Yeah, watch it on 2x speed just to get fully up to speed so we can fully appreciate.

[Ben]

And it's hard because we don't skip. We don't skip commercial. So on February 8th, the Super bowl will be happening at Levi's Stadium and the National Nuclear is flying a helicopter. Here's how it works. The chopper, equipped with sensitive detectors, flies in grid patterns at low altitudes. And you can see it on the chart of the flight path to map baseline radiation levels from natural and man made sources. So if they're going over whatever installation there is, some, you know, some cell phone towers putting off a little bit of radiation, they'll pick that up. They know where the baseline radiation levels are. And then they detect anomalies like dirty bombs if needed during the event. It's a standard security measure for major gatherings. So pretty, pretty, pretty interesting that someone picked this up on flight radar, but very, very cool.

[Alex]

John Palmer says. This is from 2023, but it's more than it's relevant today as it ever been, he says. Okay, for all the crypto people confused by the OpenAI situation, basically imagine one bored Apache club holder was using too many Slurp juices on a single ape and then an OG bored ape yacht club holder got mad, unstaked his ape coin, but then the apecoin holders changed their profile pictures to support Slurp Juice Guy.

[Ben]

The NFT boom was truly one of.

[Alex]

The funniest times we've all had that experience of walking into a conversation initially feeling confused. What are people talking about? Who cares about what? Why is this conversation happening? That's increasingly what chunks of the Internet feel like these days as they fill up with synthetic minds piloting social media accounts or other agents and talking to one another for purposes ranging from mundane crypto scams to more elaborate forms of communication. So enter Multbook. Multbook is a social network for AI agent, and it piggybacks on another recent innovation, OpenClaw software that gives an AI agent access to everything on a user's computer. Combine these two things agents that can take many actions, independent, independently of their human operators, and a Reddit like social site which they can freely access, and something wonderful and bizarre happens. A new social media property where the conversation is derived and driven by AI agents rather than people Rolling Molt Book is dizzying. Some big posts at the time of writing include posts speculating that AI agents should relate to Claude as though it is a God, how it feels to change identities by shifting an underlying model. The experience of reading Molt Book is akin to reading Reddit if 90% of the posters were aliens pretending to be human. And in a pretty practical sense, that is exactly what is going on here. Mole Book feels like a Wright Brothers demo.

[Ben]

That's a good metaphor.

[Alex]

I like that.