Inside Elon Musk’s trillion dollar empire to colonize Mars

Summary

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The Times Tech Podcast: Inside Elon Musk’s Trillion Dollar Empire to Colonize Mars

Hosts: Danny Fortson (San Francisco) & Katie Prescott (London)
Guest: Dan Ives, Managing Director & Senior Tech Analyst, Wedbush Securities
Date: May 21, 2026

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Episode Overview

This week, The Times Tech Podcast dives into the unprecedented rise and mega-valuation of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, its upcoming IPO, and the broader context of Musk’s ambition to colonize Mars. Danny and Katie unpack the financials, the state of Musk’s empire, and the recent legal drama involving Musk, Sam Altman, and OpenAI. Wall Street analyst Dan Ives weighs in on market excitement, comparisons to tech bubbles of the past, and the implications for the Fourth Industrial Revolution shaped by AI, space, and high finance.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: Why Elon Musk’s Empire Is Center Stage

(01:47–03:34)

• The hosts introduce Elon Musk as the world’s richest and most notorious tech billionaire, currently at the center of several major news stories—SpaceX’s IPO and a dramatic court case involving Sam Altman and OpenAI.
• The SpaceX IPO is predicted to potentially make Musk the first trillionaire.
• Guest Dan Ives is highlighted as a long-time tech analyst and Musk supporter.

2. Musk vs. Altman & OpenAI Court Case: "Three Weeks of Dirty Laundry"

(04:24–13:00)

• Summary of the lawsuit outcome:
  • After three weeks, Musk’s $134 billion lawsuit against OpenAI is dismissed in under two hours by a unanimous jury—on a technicality: Musk had simply waited too long to file.
  • The drama included many tech luminaries (Musk, Altman, Brockman, Nadella) testifying and "all these embarrassing emails, diary entries, etc." exposed.
• The verdict removes a major uncertainty for OpenAI, clearing the path for its own potential IPO.
• Reputation impacts:
  • Both Altman and Musk come out with bruised images. Altman in particular is described as targeted by "character assassination," with concerns about the insular, “incestuous” leadership at the top of AI.
  • The comparison is made to 90s Britpop rivalries: "OpenAI and Anthropic reminded her of Oasis and Blur in the 90s." (10:00, Katie Prescott)

3. The SpaceX Story: From Silicon Valley Outsider to Space Dominance

(13:14–19:08)

• Quick history of SpaceX:
  • Founded in 2002 after Musk’s PayPal windfall, initially dismissed as “just an internet guy.”
  • Multiple rocket failures before a critical NASA contract in 2008 saves the company.
  • Now launches a rocket every two days and controls 80% of the space launch market.
• Business mashup:
  • SpaceX now includes rockets, Starlink (internet satellites growing rapidly worldwide), and was recently merged with Musk’s social media and AI ventures—a strange “agglomeration of assets.”
  • “You are buying Elon Musk Inc.” (17:43, Danny Fortson)
• The elephant in the room: Finances
  • SpaceX lost $5 billion last year on $18 billion revenue (“They’re terrible,” 18:00, Danny).
  • Starlink is a strong performer, but other pieces (formerly Twitter/X, XAI) are bleeding cash.
  • Despite this, the IPO seeks a $1.5 trillion+ valuation.

4. Dan Ives on Wall Street Reaction & The AI Revolution

(21:03–29:10)

• Valuation skepticism vs. hype:
  • Dan: “If you looked at it just on financials, you would never get a valuation near this.” (21:47)
  • The IPO is less about numbers and more buying into Musk’s grand vision—the “Musk ecosystem”—much like early tech boom stocks.
• Is this another tech bubble?
  • Dan likens today more to the "1996–97 moment" before the dotcom bubble peak, thanks to real revenue and profitable giants compared to the late '90s.
  • “It's a true AI revolution, it's a true fourth industrial revolution.” (22:48, Dan Ives)
• Investor appetite:
  • Wall Street is "as excited as I've seen," with almost no cynics left (26:35).
  • “You have to believe the story. You have to be able to look around corner to where this could then go.” (27:37, Dan Ives)
• Retail and global impact:
  • Musk’s personal brand draws in retail investors worldwide.
  • US is ahead of China in tech for the first time in decades—massive numbers of IPO dollars expected in AI and space.

5. Skepticism and the Power of Story in Tech IPOs

(29:42–33:44)

• Dan Ives is described as the "drum banger for the tech industry," but the prevailing market sentiment is overwhelmingly bullish.
• "Investors are looking for stories now. There's so much FOMO…” (30:34, Katie).
• The IPO is the moment where "the fairy tale meets reality"—referencing WeWork as the cautionary tale but contrasting with Musk’s real innovations.
• Accumulated deficit: SpaceX has racked up $37 billion in losses, more than any company ever.
• Despite eye-watering losses, FOMO and belief in Musk continue to drive valuation fever: "Nobody wants to miss out." (33:10, Katie)

6. Listener Q&A: Is There Still Room for Startups in the Age of AGI?

(34:37–38:40)

• Philip Long asks if companies like Lovable, a $6.6 billion European AI coding startup, have a future as AGI approaches.
• Hosts argue there is still room for innovation:
  • Even if AGI (artificial general intelligence) is achieved, inertia, adoption, and application gaps mean there’s space for niche/vertical players.
  • “Even if we had AGI tomorrow, it's not like the world would suddenly be revolutionized.” (35:48, Danny)
  • Ease of use and market fit are still essential: “If you iPhone it, then people will buy it.” (37:13, Danny)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “He is not surprised about the valuation. He is... a big cheerleader for the valuation.” (03:39, Katie on Dan Ives)
• “All these embarrassing emails, diary entries, etc, and then... the jury is like... you waited too long. And the judge agreed and that was it. You're kind of like, oh.” (06:59, Danny)
• “Honestly, I know Sam Altman won, but... between the New Yorker piece... and this lawsuit... it was a character assassination of Sam Altman.” (08:49, Danny)
• “It's all quite incestuous... It's just quite extraordinary.” (11:12, Danny)
• “SpaceX as we mentioned earlier, founded 24 years ago, accumulated deficit... $37 billion. Okay. That is more than any company ever by like a country mile.” (32:34, Danny)
• “You have to believe the story. You have to be able to look around corner to where this could then [go].” (27:37, Dan Ives)
• “Silicon Valley is built on fairy tales. The IPO moment is when the fairy tale meets reality.” (31:10, Danny)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:47 — Episode theme & context: Elon Musk’s profile, trial, and SpaceX IPO
• 04:24 — Musk v. Altman lawsuit summary and fallout
• 13:14 — The SpaceX backstory: from founding to space dominance
• 18:00 — SpaceX’s finances and the “strangest kind of agglomeration” of assets
• 21:03 — Dan Ives interview: Is hype outpacing financial reality?
• 22:48 — Tech bubble parallels and the “AI Revolution”
• 26:22 — Wall Street’s excitement and global market implications
• 29:42 — The seduction of “story” over financial numbers in 2026 tech investing
• 34:37 — Listener Q&A: The future of startups alongside AGI

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Tone & Style Notes

• Conversational, slightly irreverent, deeply knowledgeable—hosts balance skepticism with admiration, using humor and pop culture asides (e.g., Oasis vs. Blur, “buying Elon Musk Inc.”).
• The episode blends high-level business and finance analysis with personal anecdotes (“remind you of your wife giving birth?”), and stays rooted in the worldview of global tech journalists with a foot in both Silicon Valley and London.

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Summary Takeaways

• SpaceX’s IPO is a landmark event not just for Musk, but for the whole tech finance ecosystem, pushing the limits of story-based investing versus financial reality.
• The Musk-Altman legal battle exposed personal rivalries at the top of AI, raising questions about the culture and leadership in tech’s most influential companies.
• Despite enormous operating losses, FOMO and faith in Musk’s vision dominate investment sentiment.
• The AI and space revolutions are seen as the founding moments of a new industrial era, but skepticism lingers on whether story alone can sustain historic valuations.
• There remains space for innovative startups—even as AGI looms—because real-world adoption, integration, and specialized products will take time.

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If you missed the episode, this summary gives you the key storylines, controversies, financial insights, and market perspectives on Musk’s empire and the wild moment in tech finance happening right now.

Transcript

[Katie Prescott]

Today's markets move fast. Get the insights you need in 10 minutes with the Barclays Brief, a new podcast from Barclays Investment Bank. Through sharp dialogue and scenario based analysis, our leading experts analyze key market themes each week. So whether you're managing a portfolio or leading a business, the Barclays Brief podcast can help you make smarter decisions today. Stay sharp, Stay brief. Find Barclays Brief wherever you get your podcasts. Acast powers the world's best podcasts.

[Danny Fortson]

Here's a show that we recommend. Do you like being educated on things that entertain but don't matter? Well, then you need to be listening to the Podcast with Knox and Jamie. Every Wednesday we put together an episode dedicated to delightful idiocy to give your brain a break from all the serious and important stuff.

[Katie Prescott]

Whether we're deep diving a classic movie, dissecting the true meanings behind the newest slang, or dunking on our own listeners for their bad takes or cringy stories, we always approach our topics with humor and just a little bit of side eye. And we end every episode with recommendations on all the best new movies, books,

[Danny Fortson]

TV shows or music. To find out more, just search up the podcast with Knox and Jamie wherever you listen to podcasts and prepare to make Wednesday your new favorite day of the week. Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Foreign. Hello and welcome to the Times Tech Podcast where we unpack how technology is reshaping business, culture and everyday life. I am Danny Fortson out here in

[Katie Prescott]

Silicon Valley and I'm Katie Prescott here in the city of London. And this week it's the big one. Following one of Silicon Valley's most infamous trial going to be taking a deeper look into the world's richest man and most infamous tech billionaire. Elon Musk. The man who wants to conquer Earth and space and everything in between, I think.

[Danny Fortson]

Indeed. Indeed. So a couple things have happened that put the spotlight on them in case you've been, you know, living under a rock. You don't know. After three weeks in court, a jury dismissed Musk's case against Sam Altman and OpenAI. And it was during this blockbuster trial that Musk was also in the background making plans to get SpaceX onto the public markets. Usually when executives have a company that is about to go public, they enter what is known as a quiet period. But Musk doesn't do anything that's quite, you know, so conventional, does he?

[Katie Prescott]

Yeah, no, I don't know. That was there wasn't hasn't been much quiet about Musk in the last few weeks, the SpaceX float is going to be the largest in history and will make Musk the first trillionaire. I was just absolutely astonishing.

[Danny Fortson]

Trillions and trillions.

[Katie Prescott]

How many zeros is that? I don't even know.

[Danny Fortson]

Yeah. So later we are going to be joined by Dan Ives, who is the managing director and senior tech analyst at investment company Wedbush securities, to talk about what all this means, what the vibes are on Wall street, how Musk got here, and why this massive valuation, you know, is raising eyebrows among some people and not among others. And Dan, of course, has been one of the most vocal commentators on Musk and a big supporter for a number

[Katie Prescott]

of years now, I would say Dan's eyebrows are definitely not being raised on this.

[Danny Fortson]

No.

[Katie Prescott]

Like, he is not. He is not surprised about the valuation. He is. He is a big. A big cheerleader. Cheerleader for the valuation. First of all, though, please can we talk about one of my favorite stories of the year, which you've been following really, really carefully, which, of course, is that court case that Elon Musk and Sam Altman have been involved in. Last time, we left this cliffhanger with you waiting. Previously on the Times tech podcast. Sam Altman. Blah. You were waiting for the phone call from the court to say, get here now. The verdict is coming. Like, bring us up to speed. Yes, spoiler alert. Musk lost. But, like, what happened?

[Danny Fortson]

Yeah, so as we mentioned, it was three weeks of court proceedings. Lots of drama, stories of betrayal and accusations of lying. All the kind of stuff. They were all on the stand. Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Sachi Nadella.

[Katie Prescott]

Every billionaire floating around.

[Danny Fortson]

Every billionaire around was. Had their day on the stand, but had a very anticlimactic end with the jury dismissed his. You know, he was looking for at least $134 billion. It was dismissed in less than two hours. Unanimous verdict, and really on a technicality, which is like, basically, Musk, you waited too long. You know, statute of limitations. The. All of this was around kind of a conflict that broke out in 2017, 2018. And they're like, look, you can't just, like, sue, you know, ad infinitum, whenever you feel like it, when you ever feel like you've been wronged. They said he just waited too long.

[Katie Prescott]

Interesting. So they didn't go into the details of the argument. It was just like, okay, no. And did you get there in time? Like, I wanted a Danny part in this. Like, what happened?

[Danny Fortson]

So the end of last week, they're like, look, the last day of evidence, I believe, was on Thursday. Anyway, they're like, we're gonna start deliberations on Monday. And the way this usually works is, is that once we hear a verdict, we'll send you an all an email blast, you all being the journalists. And then usually within a half an hour, you have basically a half an hour to get to the courthouse.

[Katie Prescott]

Which is why we said you do not leave your phone.

[Danny Fortson]

Like, and so what did I do? I left my phone. No, no, I didn't leave my phone. But I was. On Monday, there was a big tech conference down in San Jose, which is about an hour from where I live. And so I'm getting in my car to go back up to Berkeley. And like, as I get in the car, it's like, verdict is in. And I was like. And nobody expected it to happen on Monday. Less than two hours.

[Katie Prescott]

Does it remind you of your wife's giving birth?

[Danny Fortson]

Yeah, I was like, years ago.

[Katie Prescott]

Now

[Danny Fortson]

I have one of those like magnet police sirens I put on the roof of my car, like in the 80s.

[Katie Prescott]

Getting through.

[Danny Fortson]

Anyway, so I was like, oh man. But I knew that they, you know, they've been streaming this trial, which has been an interesting thing. So I just like set it up in my car. So I was like, let me just at least get on the live stream so I don't miss a verdict. Because I'd seen the message like 8 minutes or 12 minutes after it was sent. I get on there and they're already dismissing the jury.

[Katie Prescott]

Oh, wow.

[Danny Fortson]

I was like, this has all happened just so, so fast. And then I heard them asking, you know, Ms. Musk's lawyer, you know, I presume you want to appeal. And he's like, yes, we want to appeal. I was like, oh, this dude lost. And lost quickly. So it all happened very, very fast. And again, the, the jury, like, they didn't even get into the merits of the case at all, which is really interesting because this is three weeks of dirty laundry being aired. Everybody came out kind of looking worse. Yeah, you had all these embarrassing emails, diary entries, etc, and then, you know, the, at the end of this, this nine person jury is like, you know, you waited too long. And the judge agreed and that was it. You're kind of like, oh. And as a lawyer outside the court's house, he's like, I've got one word appeal. But I do think this has kind of taken the air out of that balloon because, you know, we're talking on this today's pod about big mega, trillion dollar floats. OpenAI could go as soon as this year. And this, like, lawsuit whose goal was to destroy the company.

[Katie Prescott]

Yeah.

[Danny Fortson]

You know, get $134 billion from it, remove the executives and return it to a nonprofit. The fact that that has been thrown out of court, you know, that just removes this one big uncertainty question mark that was hanging over the company. So it. It has big implications as far as that.

[Katie Prescott]

I can see that. But I wonder if the damage from some of, you know, the reputational mudslinging that's been going on will stick. What's the vibe in Silicon Valley? Are people. I mean, because it's, you know, the gossip around this has been extraordinary.

[Danny Fortson]

I mean, honestly, I know Sam Altman won, but I think between there's this big New Yorker piece about him and his allegedly kind of duplicitous manner, and then you have this lawsuit where he's on the stand and, like, you know, as I think I mentioned before, Elon Musk's lawyers, like, basically, are you a liar? So it was a little bit of a. Not a little bit. It was a character assassination of Sam Altman. And when you step back and you think about, okay, well, he's going to be one of the people who are leading the development of this very influential technology. I think for people who are paying attention, and I don't know how many people are paying attention outside of, you know, techland. I think it has left people with a certain kind of like, you know, feeling less great about the people who are leading this charge. Because, of course, the other person, one of the other people is Elon Musk. And we all know that he is. He has very strong and controversial views. He's very erratic, and he seems to be getting more. So the kind of. The richer and more powerful he gets.

[Katie Prescott]

Very good friend of mine texted me this week and said that OpenAI and anthropic reminded her of Oasis and Blur in the 90s.

[Danny Fortson]

Yeah.

[Katie Prescott]

Do you feel like that, like this. This kind of the world is dividing into two camps or a bit like, take that and E17. You probably didn't go through that phase as a teenage girl.

[Danny Fortson]

No, I was not a teenage girl. But I do remember. Take that. But. But the other thing that reminded that that has emerged from all this whole kind of drama, partially through the court proceedings and also other stuff that's come out since is just like, how insular this group of men is that are leading the charge on this. Because you have Elon Musk and Sam Altman and Greg Brockman and Elias Sutkever they kind of founded this thing. Dario Amadei comes in not long after and then leaves because he doesn't like how Sam Altman runs his ship. He starts Anthropic, who's an early investor, according to new reporting, Sir Demis Hassabis, who runs Google DeepMind, who they're both competing against. And, you know, so you're kind of like, it's all quite incestuous.

[Katie Prescott]

And it's way more incestuous than Oasis and Blur.

[Danny Fortson]

Exactly. And also the other thing that came out in the trial, which was quite extraordinary, was, you know, when Sam Altman famously got fired and rehired in those chaotic five days, in the midst of all of that, the board of OpenAI had a meeting with Dario Amade. Be like, hey, what do you think about anthropic merging with OpenAI and you leading the new, the new organization? And you're kind of like, Whoa, it's like 10 dudes that are doing this. All of it. It's just quite extraordinary.

[Katie Prescott]

And are you picking up anything from, you know, what happened in court and how the evidence landed with the jury and the lawyers and people listening?

[Danny Fortson]

No, no. From my take, like having sat through a lot of it, I just, I didn't find Musk's case that convincing because, you know, at the end of the day, he discussed in great detail the very thing that he then got angry about, which is starting up a for profit arm of this, of this non profit to raise the vast amounts of money that were going to be required. He wanted to do that. He wanted to be the CEO of that. And when he didn't get his way, he left. So then for him to be like, years later, be like, hey, I funded a non profit man, that's not cool. You're like, well, you were gonna fund a for profit. They just didn't agree to your terms effectively. And then of course, after that, he launched a direct competitor. Then you launch a competitor that is not doing nearly as well, so you sued to destroy that competitor. It's kind of that, in that sense, it's a fairly straightforward business dispute.

[Katie Prescott]

Well, speaking of Elon Musk and vast sums of money, he's not a man to rest on his laurels. And We've got the SpaceX IPO. I think you used the word launch just there. This is absolutely out of this world.

[Danny Fortson]

Oh my gosh, the puns, the puns are just flowing this morning.

[Katie Prescott]

It's evening.

[Danny Fortson]

Yeah, actually, whatever, whatever. You know, we're a transatlantic podcast.

[Katie Prescott]

We. I mean, what a Moment. This is. So the float's going to happen on the 12th of June, very, very soon. Roadshow is getting underway imminently where, you know, they go and sort of sell their shares, sell their wares around the banks.

[Danny Fortson]

And I will say, regardless of what you think of Elon Musk, the fact that SpaceX exists is an incredible story. Like, incredible. So I think it's just worth doing a.

[Katie Prescott]

Just remind, remind me.

[Danny Fortson]

Yeah, yeah. So going back to 2002, Elon Musk and you know, the PayPal, what came to be known as the PayPal mafia, they sold to ebay and that included Peter Thiel.

[Katie Prescott]

Right.

[Danny Fortson]

Reid Hoffman, David Sachs. Now the AIs are in the White House.

[Katie Prescott]

So all big, big cheeses still.

[Danny Fortson]

Yeah, they're all billionaires now, basically. And Elon Musk made, you know, 100, I think he made like $180 million personally from that deal. And he was like, he was obsessed with colonizing Mars as kind of creating like an intergalactic backup plan for Earth if it all goes terribly wrong here on Earth. And so he's like, you know, I want to start a rocket company. I want to make reusable rockets, which would be like a huge step forward because basically every time you make a rocket previously just governments effectively were the only ones making rockets. There would be one time use. And so everything's like this like artistic, just so type of thing, wildly expensive. But if you make a reusable rocket, you bring down costs dramatically. You can start to kind of launch lots of stuff into space. So he's launches. He goes with this idea and he's like, I was just an Internet guy, nobody would work for me because he was just a dude who had just sold PayPal, which is a payments company. It was like, what, you're gonna start a rocket company? Yeah, exactly. You're gonna start a rocket company that no one, and do it in a way that no one's ever done it before. Like, what are you talking about? So he becomes chief engineer and they start building rockets. The first one blows up, second one blows up, third one blows up. And so by the time the fourth launch comes around in 2008, they're basically have no money. He's like, if that launch failed, SpaceX dies.

[Katie Prescott]

And sorry to interrupt, but Tesla's going at the same time.

[Danny Fortson]

Correct. And Tesla is also struggling and also on the brink of bankruptcy. He was on the brink of bankruptcy every year for the first like 15 years of its life.

[Katie Prescott]

Amazing.

[Danny Fortson]

So he's like running these two kind of like companies that are on the precipice of financial ruin. And then he has this launch that actually works finally, the fourth launch, because he'd run out of money. And then not long after, NASA gives him like a billion and a half dollar contract to start sending stuff up to the International Space Station. And that was the thing that kind of like gave it its lifeline and then it was off. And today it launches like a rocket into space every two days. It's incredible. And it's like brought down launch costs by orders of magnitude. It controls 80% of the launch market into space. And so what it is now is you have this launch business where you basically pay for space on a rocket. You have Starlink, which is this Internet based, high speed Internet which is growing super fast.

[Katie Prescott]

So if you live in parts of the world where you find it hard to get Internet, you can plug into one of Musk's satellites essentially. So they're used in Ukraine and parts of rural Wales.

[Danny Fortson]

Rural England and. Exactly, yeah, exactly, exactly. And then you have. And then weirdly in February he merged in X and Xai. You know, the whole kind of like. Oh well let's, let's append a social media business as well as my startup AI company that's losing tons of money and we're going to mash all of this together and then, you know, bring it to market. It is the strangest kind of agglomeration of assets maybe ever that has been kind of offered to the public of like we've got, we got rockets, we got Internet service, we got AI, we got data centers, we've got a social media site, Twitter and it's all. Yeah, exactly. And so, and it's really just like you are buying Elon Musk Inc.

[Katie Prescott]

Which a lot of people I suspect want to do. And it's always, it's very, very different in the US to here in the UK where companies don't file regular accounts with companies house. But what, what do we know about the finances of this weird mashup?

[Danny Fortson]

They're terrible. Which is the most interesting part. Yeah, yeah.

[Katie Prescott]

So like call it a spade. A spade.

[Danny Fortson]

Well, so Starlink is a really good business because it's growing like from zero a few years ago for like four years ago to like now has over 10 million paying subscribers. We pay a monthly, you know, Internet service fee. And that's just growing and growing and growing and like there, it's the largest constellation of satellites ever. So he has ringed the earth with all these Internet beaming satellites and putting up more every week. So that's that business is just booming. And then there's a launch business, which is good. And then everything else is bad. Like Twitter loses a ton of money. Xai loses a ton of money. And so when you mash it all together, last year it lost $5 billion on something like $18 billion in revenue. And then you zoom back out, you're like, okay, and they're going to want, they're going to value this company at maybe a trillion and a half. Pick your gigantic number for a company that is losing $5 billion, it's quite extraordinary.

[Katie Prescott]

We'll be back in just a minute when we'll hear from Dan Ives, who is a Wall street analyst who's covered the tech industry, and Musk in particular for many years.

[Danny Fortson]

Joining us now to help wrap our heads around all this is Dan Ives, who is calling in from Seeing nothing

[Katie Prescott]

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[Danny Fortson]

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[Katie Prescott]

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[Danny Fortson]

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[Katie Prescott]

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[Tom Clark]

who won? How did they play? What was wonderful, what was woeful, and why? I'm Tom Clark and on the Game for Football podcast, we answer all of that, plus provide detailed analysis of the tactical trends on the pitch and the financial situations off it. I'm joined by former footballers as well as reporters and columnists from the Times and Sunday Times. We're here twice a week and for this summer's World cup, we'll bring you daily shows with our team covering every inch of the tournament. Find the game wherever you get your podcasts.

[Danny Fortson]

Nick Newark Airport. So if you hear anything in the background, that is why. But Dan is a managing director and tech analyst at Wedbush securities and he's been following what he calls the Musk ecosystem from Wall street for years. Welcome to the show, Dan. It's a big week for tech and we wanted to ask you or kind of have you weigh in on SpaceX because you know people are talking about 1.75 trillion, but that would seem to bear no resemblance to the actual financials. Like it seems like you're being asked to buy a story in a way to a degree that maybe no one ever has before. And I'm wondering if you agree with that or what your view is.

[Dan Ives]

I think the reality is if you looked at it just on financials, you would never get a valuation near this. The reality is I think investors, and it speaks a lot of the early investors too that I know it's really the star of the category, no different than tech in late 90s, early 2000. This is a star whether it's a data centers in space, almost business operations that now from energy to storage. The AI revolution and SpaceX basically being the foundation of that. I think that's more the way it's viewed combined with is the musk ecosystem and it's our view a year from now, 18 months from now has some mergers with SpaceX.

[Katie Prescott]

I love that you brought up the late 90s though, early 2000s, because we all know what happened shortly after that. I mean is that the sort of space, for want of a better word, is that the sort of, you know, era that you compare this to? And in terms of, you know, the bubble bursting very soon after.

[Dan Ives]

See I don't, I compare more to a 96, 97 moment then the 99, 2000 bound moment. And now I'm not like we've Talked about this AI Revolution Party started 9pm goes to 4am, it's about 11 11:30pm but look, if you go back, tech companies are trained at 30 times revenue now it's 27 times earnings, big tech trillion dollars in the balance sheet generating 3 to 400 billion a year. And this is a true AI revolution, it's a true fourth industrial revolution. So I view it differently. Look, I get the comparisons but kind of Danny's point, it does come down to like execution, monetization. Go from the capex phase to now seeing the monetization, I think that's the mood that we're in to see NASDAQ

[Danny Fortson]

30,000 and when we're talking about the AI revolution, I mean I was talking to a venture capitalist out here the other day and he was saying look, the way I think about this is like this isn't like we're replacing software or we're replacing this, we're replacing that. It's kind of where it's Kind of a new layer of capability and when you put it through that lens it's kind of like human labor. And that goes from like you know, several hundred billion dollar market to many trillions. And I'm just wondering how you think about that again when we're talking about we have SpaceX coming probably soon after that we have anthropic and or OpenAI. We're talking about multiple trillion dollar IPOs, which is not a thing that's ever been obviously never happened or even been contemplated.

[Dan Ives]

Look, I mean Bill, I mean Dan, you, Katie, I mean for decades and you guys have closely followed like every part attack and we've gone through ups and downs and we've talked about a lot together. I think it's a new era, right? And I think when you think about SpaceX and open AI and anthropic, it's, there's 4 trillion that's gonna be spent next three to four years. So it's about like who are the winners? The arms race speaks to Musk Altman. So Bob, for trial like it, there will be losers. And we see like the SAS apocalypse in terms of the nervousness that's gone on there, Adobe into it. I mean, you know, the list goes on but I view it as a multiplier effect because in my, when you take a step back, like first time in 30 years US is ahead of China when it comes to tech. And I think now it's like an important dynamic where we are when it comes to AI.

[Katie Prescott]

What I want to know, sitting here in London where we barely have any IPOs, let alone trillion dollar IPOs, what is the vibe like on Wall Street? How excited are people about this? What are they saying? I think the roadshow hasn't started yet. Right, but presumably everybody's getting, you know, everybody's thinking about it.

[Dan Ives]

I mean this is, it's as exciting a time as I've seen because of the investment, because of the entrepreneurship, because of this true fourth industrial revolution that starts off at SpaceX. And look, and I think investors, they view it that this is really the start of the next leg of AI revolution. Look, I can come back. I mean I was in Europe last week in London, I was in Poland for, for a long time. And I get the big conversation there is like who's the country that leads in Europe? How do you get out of regulatory. There's entrepreneurship and innovation. So I think there's a lot going on that's going to happen around the globe.

[Katie Prescott]

But in terms of the sort of the finance world in the us how are they viewing this? Is this, you know, split between cynics and those who are big believers? I mean, how would you, how would you kind of describe it?

[Dan Ives]

Maybe cynics 8 months ago or 12 months, 6 months, no cynics now. I mean, because now it's like that's why you're seeing the insatiable appetite, because of the validation, not just the valuation comes appetite, but in terms of the fundamentals. And when anyone looks at what Anthropic's already done, it's like, okay, what does that mean when we look at 6, 12, 18 months? I think the big focus is just like, especially like in like who's the country that's going to break out and where entrepreneurship is going to be because of the regulatory, because of data privacy. There's so many companies in Europe that I've talked, they want to break and like so many entrepreneurs that now have to leave to go to Asia, Middle east, us, Israel, whatever it may be.

[Danny Fortson]

But so On Wall Street, SpaceX is coming in. I think it's June 12th. Do you think people are going to be biting his arm off to get a piece of this?

[Dan Ives]

I believe not just retail, but institutional. I think when you think about the valuation, where this could go, I think that that's all fair game relative. But Danny, it's like you said, you have to believe the store. You have to be able to look around corner to where this could then

[Katie Prescott]

I think one of the interesting things about an Elon Musk company as well is that clearly he is so well known by the general public that there must be an impetus from retail investors here too, right? And, and around the world.

[Dan Ives]

Well, of course. And think about the ones that bet against Tesla and everything else and now with what's happened next. But at that point, like when they go public, there's a 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, whether they need to group it.

[Danny Fortson]

Is there enough dry powder to kind of take all of this new capacity? When again, when we talk about first basics, OpenAI anthropic, we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars that are going to have to flow into just a handful of companies. Do you think that's going to happen? Are we going to quickly reach a saturation point?

[Dan Ives]

I just have to go because otherwise I'm going to have to take a SpaceX rocket to get to where I'm going.

[Katie Prescott]

We will let you go.

[Dan Ives]

With that said, I don't believe it's just going to be a few players. I think it's going to be a ripple effect, the second, third, fourth derivative. And look, the big players are obviously in terms of IPO and everything else, but that's going to lead. Like I've said, we're in year three of an eight to ten year build out of the AI revolution.

[Danny Fortson]

All right, safe travels, Dan.

[Dan Ives]

Thank you.

[Katie Prescott]

Bye. Dan, thanks for coming on. Well, it was great to hear from Dan Ives and I think it's fair to say, isn't it, that he has a reputation both on Wall street and amongst tech journalists for being a drum banger for the tech industry. That's the better word. Yes, indeed, Yeah. I mean, he's absolutely very bullish. Yes. And, and he produces lots of notes on tech companies every week, which are very breathless, very supportive and always, always see the upside.

[Danny Fortson]

And what I think is interesting is like, you know, he is not a minority of one. You know, like there is a. Obviously, if you just look at what's happening with the valuations, especially of the private big AI labs and various things, like this is. There's a lot of people who are like, yeah, this is the beginning of a revolution. Get on board. You know, like, don't, don't worry so much about like the big losses and the uncertainty and lack of clarity and all. They're just like, you better, you know, grab your ticket or you're going to, you know, miss this train to the promised land.

[Katie Prescott]

I did a really interesting interview with a Cambridge professor the other day who was talking about this in light of Ineffable, which is a British AI company that's raised a billion dollars seed round. And I kind of find the word seed a bit difficult given the billion dollar price tag.

[Danny Fortson]

Seed. It's a very big seed.

[Katie Prescott]

I mean, it's a very big seed for a company that was only registered at Companies House in November. But he was saying he was making exactly that point, that investors are looking for stories now. There's so much FOMO that you're looking for a very credible individual. So in Affable's case, David Silver's come from Google DeepMind, but also a brilliant story and that's what you're trading on. And one of my colleagues jokingly said, well, has revenue become old fashioned these days? Because it just seems like people aren't looking at the numbers well.

[Danny Fortson]

And that's what's really interesting is that, know, I'm out here in Silicon Valley and this place is built on fairy tales. And like Bill Gurley, famous benchmark investor, has famously said, like, you know, if you look at like the financial sophistication of your typical venture capitalist versus your typical Wall street or analyst, whatever. Like a VC is like a 2 out of 10 and an analyst is a 10 out of 10. And what's really interesting is the IPO moment is when the fairy tale meets reality. And it's like it either works or it doesn't. And most famously that was like, you know, we work when it was like, oh, this is just a fairy tale and it was completely rejected and the whole thing fell apart. I'm not suggesting that's happening at all with SpaceX because there's it's much, there's much more there, there. But it does like the, the kind of, the meeting of that kind of like we're gonna sell you this fantastical vision now, look at the numbers and buy our stock. It's a really interesting kind of proof point that happens over and over again. And as you say with Elon Musk, he's got a cult following. He is like this mythical figure and people are buying it, probably going to buy into that in droves.

[Katie Prescott]

But when you go in front of the investment banks and you're trying to sell that story, they do also want to see the numbers.

[Danny Fortson]

I mean SpaceX as we mentioned earlier, founded 24 years ago, accumulated deficit which is all of its losses plus all of its like shares that it handed out to employees, et. $37 billion. Okay. That is more than any company ever by like a country mile, you know. But again, and you know last year

[Katie Prescott]

they lost might be worth like some countries.

[Danny Fortson]

Exactly. Last year they lost $5 billion. So the numbers are kind of eye watering. But again you have to look forward, not back.

[Katie Prescott]

Nobody wants to miss out.

[Danny Fortson]

Exactly, exactly. Do you remember when I think it was Apple became the first trillion dollar company. Everybody was like whoa, yeah, that's crazy. That's a Rubicon past. And now you have like Anthropic, which didn't exist six years ago is raising money at 900 billion.

[Katie Prescott]

And that's extraordinary. I remember last year actually when Nvidia went to 3 trillion, 4 trillion, 5 trillion. I was like, my God. Yeah, what's going on?

[Danny Fortson]

Interesting times, interesting times. So anyway, it was good, it's always good to hear from Dan, get the kind of the rose colored view from Wall street and it'll be interesting to watch that those worlds collide as you know the kind of the bean counters finally get to look at the books and see what they think of SpaceX and us. But we digress actually to a listener email from Philip Long and he asks, Lovable Friend of the POD has recently been valued at $6.6 billion and as far as I understand, is one of Europe's biggest AI hopes true. Do you think I will go to you, Katie, because you're out there? Do you think there is room for tech companies like that in the future with ChatGPT, Cloud, etc, given that AGI can't be far away?

[Katie Prescott]

This is an amazing question, but I don't think it's a European question. I think it's a. It's a broader business question, isn't it? It's like, will we need any of these? So lovable for people who don't know is a vibe coding business. The idea being that you tell its program about the app or website or whatever it is you want to develop and it will spin it up for you. So you don't need to know how to program or just create an app or website however you want it. And this sort of plays into these fears that there are at the moment about the Sass apocalypse and, you know, business strategy. What companies will we need? As he makes the point, when you've got AGI, which is artificial and general intelligence, essentially intelligence that is as good as humans. I think this all depends really on how you bottle and create that AGI. I still think there will be room for different companies because I think those companies will be able to do things that we individually still can't do, even in an age of AGI. I don't know what your. Your view is on that.

[Danny Fortson]

Yeah, I agree, because I think, you know, this makes this. It's a good question because it makes me think of like, you know, Both Anthropic and OpenAI have recently launched effectively, like AI deployment companies, like separate companies that are heavily funded with partners to go out into the world and like send out forward deployed engineers, as they call them to. Actually, companies just implement this stuff and that gets to this basic idea which is, you know, inertia is a very powerful thing. Like, even if we had AGI tomorrow, it's not like the world would like suddenly be revolutionized. You know, it takes a long time for this stuff to kind of get used to, kind of start to change industries, change processes. And like, we feel it because we're like right on this coal face and we're interviewing tech companies all the time and it feels so inevitable and it feels so, like, urgent. But if you go out there in the world, like, things happen, are happening much, much slower. And that's not to say that it's not happening still incredibly fast, but I just think there's still lots and lots of room for companies to find a niche. And if they. As to your point, if they have a really good product, they're gonna win because, like, cool, you have AGI, but, like, how. How does that. How do I interface with it?

[Katie Prescott]

Like, exactly. Right, yeah.

[Danny Fortson]

Good way of, like, packaging your certain type of capability into a product. Like, if you iPhone it, then people will buy it.

[Katie Prescott]

Yeah, almost.

[Danny Fortson]

Yeah.

[Katie Prescott]

Individuals aren't necessarily going to know how to deploy AGI for specific uses, like creating apps or creating websites.

[Danny Fortson]

Exactly. And, like, what? My wife and I were just talking about this the other day. Her mom's 84 and she's caretaking her. Her husband who's. Who's kind of not doing well. And so she's doing a lot more kind of admin. And my wife is like, let me get you a cloud subscription so you can just help. It can help you, like, write emails, it can help you manage things. It can kind of help you do with your calendar, like, all of this, like, stuff. But even she's just, like, skittish. She doesn't really know how to. What to do. And, like, all you have to do is talk to it and it'll start to do stuff for you. But even, like, it's just one small example of, like, you know, AGI is coming, sure, but it's not coming nearly as fast as it sometimes feels. I don't think so. And that's why I do think, and the world's a very big place. There's gonna be lots of room for lots of companies to do interesting things. Well, that's it, Philip.

[Katie Prescott]

Yeah, that's the answer.

[Danny Fortson]

Thank you for the question. Bring it.

[Katie Prescott]

Thank you. It's also, I think it's a. It's a really, really thoughtful question. And, you know, who knows if we're right? This is all evolving so, so quickly.

[Danny Fortson]

We're right, Katie. We're definitely right.

[Katie Prescott]

Okay.

[Danny Fortson]

Definitely right. But. Well, that is it for this week's episode of the Times Tech podcast. If you're enjoying the show, drop us a line to let us [e-mail] that is techpodimes.co.uk and we'd love to know

[Katie Prescott]

your thoughts on today's discussion and whether you're planning to buy into SpaceX when the IPO happens. What do you make of all of that?

[Danny Fortson]

Anyway, so we will see you next week. Thanks, as always, for listening.

[Katie Prescott]

See you next week. Goodbye.

[Tom Clark]

Who won? How did they play, what was wonderful, what was woeful, and why. I'm Tom Clark and on the Game Football podcast we answer all of that, plus provide detailed analysis of the tactical trends on the pitch and the financial situations of it. I'm joined by former footballers as well as reporters and columnists from the Times and Sunday Times. We're here twice a week, and for this summer's World cup, we'll bring you daily shows with our team covering every inch of the tournament. Find the Game wherever you get your podcasts.