zlacker

Well surely this acquisition is above board. Nothing funny going on here, just good old business as usual.

>>baggac+(OP)
Well, at least this time both companies are fully private.

>>cybera+H
For the next four months, at least.

>>baggac+(OP)
> Well surely this acquisition is above board.

What makes you think it isn’t?

>>baggac+(OP)
It's widely reported that Musk is a majority shareholder of xAI and the controlling shareholder of SpaceX (close to 80% of voting shares). Not surprising that he would be looking to consolidate ownership under one entity especially if he perceives significant synergies (i.e., data centres in space).

>>andsoi+v1
lol

>>andsoi+v1
It's just "Elon zomg lulz" trolling for updoots. This place pretends to know better.

>>google+r2
Data centers in space are a hilariously bad idea. Where would the heat go? This idea is like the opposite of liquid cooling.

>>google+r2
I have never understood how Data centers in space ever make economic sense, the payload, latency and many other issues make it difficult at least for the immediate needs

>>baggac+(OP)
What's funny? Do you think the investors are against this? The investor's aren't idiots. I imagine the typical investor in Elon Musk's companies would approve of this sort of thing. So what's the problem? Besides, its a private company with Musk as majority shareholder in both. That's the beauty of private companies, you can just do things.

I wish more companies were private and ambitious. I'm tired of companies like Apple making marginal spec bumps to their phones and milking the same products for decades

>>andsoi+v1
There's an epic conflict of interest here with Musk owning most of both companies. And they're in entirely separate fields, there is no plausible synergy here to be gained.

>>bko+n3
> What's funny? Do you think the investors are against this? The investor's aren't idiots.

Any proof of that?

>>alex_y+93
Some guy on hacker news argued they could just use radiators.

>>andsoi+v1
Musk is notorious for shuffling assets across his companies to make some financials look better. For example, shuffling Twitter servers (and then all of Twitter) under xAI.

>>fabian+t3
he is literally going to launch datacenters into space to train ai so they are a little related

edit: these replies aren't going to age well

>>alex_y+93
Indeed. But it's also a hilariously Musky idea! Some moderate technical competence paired with sociopathy and an ego orders of magnitude too big, and voila, you get Cybertrucks, Hyperloops, Neuralinks, Teslabots, datacenters in space, and all the other garbage the man spews.

I cannot wait for him to one day be hit in the face by reality.

>>alex_y+93
I didn't say it was a good idea, just that if Musk perceives it's a good idea then it makes sense why he would want to combine the two businesses.

>>alex_y+93
Aside from Elon Musk, there are a few other people with a lot of capital aiming to do the same thing. That means, either they are all wrong (possible) or this problem has been solved somehow and the solution itself is not public.

Google and Amazon are doing the same thing. Maybe it is a moonshot (pun intended), but Musk is hardly alone in the push.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/bezos-and-musk-race-to-bring-data-c...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/01/technology/space-data-cen...

>>bko+n3
> The investor's aren't idiots

citation needed.

>>andsoi+v1
Musk's involvement for one.

>>bko+n3
The investors want to cash out, Musk needs lots of money to plow into his latest toy that so far only excels in ridiculing him and sexual harassment/CSAM, so they make a deal to take in xAI and go public. Win win.

>>alex_y+93
Not to mention the huge issues of cosmic rays. Sure, if the lifespan of the satellite is expected to be low, then maybe tolerable. But even then, how would this be financially viable?

>>alex_y+93
Shocked to see SpaceX buy the datacenter in space meme. Where does the power come from? Where does the heat go? Why add (high) launch costs to your buildout capex? Why add radiation as another risk factor to your already-unreliable GPUs? Am I missing something fundamental here...?

>>Hikiko+E3
Radiators might be a reasonably effective way to reject heat if you can run your AI machines at 1000 K or thereabouts.

>>fabian+t3
Yeah but who can be hurt by this, these are both private companies? So whose interest is his "conflicting" with? I'm sure the shareholders will raise it with him and/or bring a lawsuit if they aren't happy (they probably are happy).

>>AceJoh+J3
Need any solar shingles?

>>newyan+i3
You mean unlike Hyperloops, Cybertrucks, Teslabots, Neuralinks, and all the other insane stuff that moron cooks up?

>>spulla+34
No, he's not. And if he does, he's as big of an idiot as his detractors say that he is.

>>nhinck+C3
More than 70% of voting shares supported the package, very close to the level of support in the original 2018 vote. This excludes Musks share.

And consider that this is retroactive, meaning it's backpay. They're literally voting to give the guy $50b for work performed. He has a lot of confidence from his investors. And if there were issues, there would be lawsuits. Ironically the only lawsuits that get brought up, like the one about the pay package, are basically trolls, from a guy that had 9 shares.

Besides the parent is the one making a claim that something not above board is going on so burden of proof is on him.

Finally, it's a private company where Musk is the majority shareholder. He's moving money from one pocket into another, and any moves will be reflected in his attempt to raise money with the IPO coming this year.

Why do people online pretend not to understand?

>>andsoi+v1
Musk has a history of having one of his more successful companies buying one of his less successful companies. xAI bought X, and Tesla bought SolarCity

>>spulla+34
No he is not. It makes no sense from a physics standpoint or an economic standpoint. And even if they were, it wouldn’t require whatever this acquisition is.

>>fabian+t3
Oh man, I sure hope he disclosed that

>>spulla+34
Yeah, I'm not buying that. I don't see how that could be any cheaper than regular datacenters. It might just be technically feasible, but launching stuff into space will always be more expensive than not launching stuff into space. And all those pesky technical issues like cooling might be solvable, but I doubt they're that cheap to solve.

>>spulla+34
He says he is going to launch data centers in space. We should all know better than to take him at his word on that by now.

>>spulla+34
You're right, but in this sense:

literally (adverb)

informal : in effect : virtually

Used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible.

Ex: I literally died of embarrassment.

>>fabian+t3
How can you have a conflict of interest if they're entirely separate fields? They have different interests, so where's the conflict?

You don't need synergies to justify a merger. They're often used as justification as in paying well above market price. But it has nothing to do with actual justification. You can just have a holding company of businesses

>>bko+n3
Apple just launched their own silicon chips just a few years ago. They're very ambitious but still calculated.

>>AceJoh+J3
Apparently SpaceX is the ultimate vehicle for buying Elon's shit that no one else wants. They're also buying thousands of Cybertrucks.

https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/spacex-buying-unfath...

>>google+b4
I think it's far more likely that he wants to combine his businesses to roll his really expensive, debt-ridden companies into one entity with the company that actually reliably makes money.

>>bko+a5
Nothing in your argument is proof that the investors aren't idiots.

>>bko+U5
The conflict of interests here is the conflict between musks interests and the other shareholders interests

>>newyan+i3
Latency isn't an issue with Starlink - the data centers are in low earth orbit, not in GEO

>>alex_y+93
Only a person who is high as a kite can think thats a good idea.

>>bko+n3
> > I'm tired of companies like Apple making marginal spec bumps to their phones and milking the same products for decades

At least what Apple does is real not make believe like everything Musk claims , disappear boring Apple or even boring Microsoft, Oracle, IBM etc.

And the world would come to a screeching halt, disappear all of Musk companies and people would barely notice.

You seem to be eager to be sold dreams , that's exactly what vaporware salesmen like Musk hope to find on their path

>>readth+Z4
my partner got shingles a couple years ago, it was a very painful experience!

(to be crystal clear, I am making a joke equating the failed SolarCity/Tesla solar shingles to the (generally considered very painful) Herpes Zoster manifestation also called "shingles")

>>fabian+D6
I can't imagine the world view you would have to hold to think that people who manage to command tens of billions of dollars to invest are idiots, just tripped over the money and just go off vibes.

>>andsoi+v1
And hey, look at that, pure coincidence, Tesla just gave xAI $2B! Now it's back in Musk's private pockets! How handy!

>>pantal+Z9
given the max bandwidth of a starlink sat is in the 100Gb on a good day range why would you want to limit a DC to less bandwidth than a single cheap fibre?

Also in LEO you're going to have reentry become more of an issue (starlink burning up in the atmosphere isn't some free garbage removal it will have a measurable impact on the chemical make up (assuming it even burns up and doesn't just squash more farm buildings), Power supply more of an issue and still have huge problems with heat and radiation.

>>gordon+L4
Money! Also power source is just solar - not too difficult. I don't think radiation would be too much of an issue either since they're in low earth orbit. Heat is probably the biggest problem. Or manufacturing & launch costs. Pretty silly idea anyway.

>>newyan+i3
DCs in space have a lot of problems, but latency isn't really one of them. At least for inference*, I don't care if a chat response comes with a 0.2 second ping time (Earth-GEO-Earth at the speed of light), and I definitely don't care if a vibe coding session has a 2.5 second ping time (Earth-Moon-Earth).

I wonder what the largest viable ping time would be, for vibe coding? If it exceeds 40 minutes (my pre-Christmas experimentation would have been fine with that but it was just experiments), these things could be on Mars on the opposite side of the sun and still be useful.

* I have no idea what training needs, neither fundamentally nor currently in practice

>>bko+wD
All the bubbles over history ought to be enough to give anyone that worldview.