FutureX

[TiborBlomhall]

"Despite my disagreements with some of @ElonMusk’s political posturing, I still regard him as a truly remarkable entrepreneur. Someone capable of shaping the future perhaps more than any one else on the planet. But right now I believe he’s in danger of juggling too many balls in too many different companies. It’s confusing to everyone and creates the impression - if not the reality - of serious conflicts of interest. I’d therefore like to double down on the suggestion I once made to him in an interview (April 2022): to fold all his companies into a single entity!

I propose the title FutureX: a company whose mission is simply to build a future worth getting excited about. The thing is, there is already extraordinary overlap between his companies. The biggest single overlap today is AI. It’s crucial to the future of Tesla, of X, and obviously of http://x.AI. I think it will likely also turn out crucial for SpaceX, Neuralink (whose long-term mission is to be the interface between humans and AI), and even the Boring Company. But there’s so much more.

Consider:
- Elon wants to build a city on Mars. Will there really be a million people willing to risk their lives doing that? How about the bulk of the first rocket-ships to Mars are mostly full of Optimus robots instead? And who will build the underground accommodations on Mars? The Boring Company is prime for this.
- And speaking of which, what if Tesla struggles to get regulators to approve its crucial robotaxi fleet? Well how about instead offering cities an underground network of roads where unquestionably robotaxis could operate safely? That would be the mother of all partnerships with Boring.
- Starlink is transforming mobile communications. How about offering terminals exclusively on Tesla vehicles for killer competitive advantage? Reliable wifi on every trip.

But overwhelmingly the main reason to do this is that it will allow the creation of a world-leading AI powerhouse whose output is used by all the companies. Should X also be included? It has certainly tarnished Elon’s brand for many progressives. But the whole goal here is to get past the conflicting demands on Elon’s time and focus. X is clearly going to be part of his life for the foreseeable future. So include it. It is a powerful source of real-world AI data. And a powerful marketing mechanism for everything else. There are simple ways he could reduce the political angst against him, but creating a genuinely independent team to rule on controversial X-related matters, though I grant you, that part is unlikely. Besides, if X really does become “the everything app” there are plenty of other synergies it will find with the rest of the Musk empire.

When I asked Elon about this idea two years ago, he agreed that there were synergies across the board, but said running an even larger public company would be too time-consuming because of the ridiculous number of lawsuits, and other legal shenanigans that get thrown at you. That may have been true then. But with AI now in the mix, I see this as a way of significantly reducing legal scrutiny, because the conflicts of interest go away. It would also be a way of addressing his fear about not owning enough of Tesla to entrust it with his AI efforts. This entity could be a new-co with two classes of shares in the same way that others like Mark Zuckerberg have done. Elon could guarantee effective control forever while granting shareholders in all his companies participation in the economic value being created. The new-co would simply acquire each of the other companies. This structure would also overcome the main reason Elon has hesitated to take SpaceX public — that its mission might sometimes conflict with profit-making. FutureX would, by charter, agree that one of its purposes is to make life multi-planetary.

Some will protest this as bad governance, but I suspect the shareholders of all the companies would enthusiastically agree so long as the proposed share allocations seemed to value each piece fairly, and so long as the new-co had a more robust board than exists on any of his current companies. On current numbers Tesla shareholders would own the majority of the economic upside, with SpaceX a strong second and the others quite a bit smaller.

Does this make sense to anyone? It would mean that instead of having to tap Tesla for $5 billion of investment in http://x.AI, the whole entity would enthusiastically invest whatever it took to achieve world-class AI. It would mean that Tesla shareholders could now participate in the exciting upward trajectory of Elon’s other companies. It would mean shareholders in his private companies would get liquidity. It would mean that a lot of the potential lawsuits I see coming as Elon tries to do his delicate AI dance would go away. It might even mean a greater chance of building a future worth getting excited about.

What do you all think?"

[spacecoin]

Bara fanboys kommer med denna typ av förslag

Några kommentarer:
1) Det blir inte mindre att leda för att det är en koncern.
2) Man kan inte slå ihop publika bolag eller bolag med spritt ägande bara för att en investerare är gemensam. I praktiken är det bara Tesla som kan köpa ut de andra bolagen, och de har inte råd med att köpa SpaceX som är det enda bolag som är värt meningsfulla pengar, eller ens Twitter. Varför skulle SpaceX vilja bli uppköpt av ett bilföretag?
3) Det finns nästan inga synergier.
4) Bolagen är i helt olika faser och branscher.