is a reporter who writes about tech, money, and human behavior. She joined The Verge in 2014 as science editor. Previously, she was a reporter at Bloomberg.
To be honest, I thought Elon Musk would confidentially file for SpaceX’s IPO on the 20th of this month, rather than the 1st. But maybe that just means he’s moved on to other numbers, and we should all mark our calendars for June 7th as an IPO date just in case.
Based on the April 1st filing, and the general length of an SEC review before the S-1 document becomes public, the earliest I am expecting a SpaceX IPO is June. (At least, assuming there is still anyone left at the SEC who wants to do their job instead of just glance at the first page of the filing, say, “Seems fine!” and then go out for a smoke break.) Of course, this process could take longer — for instance, WeWork filed for an IPO in April 2019, and its S-1 was released in August for us all to laugh at.
We all deserve a break from this guy, but we aren’t going to get one
Elon Musk is going to be busy! Frankly, after the DOGE bullshit last year, we all deserve a break from this guy, but we aren’t going to get one. There are assorted Tesla announcements to expect, a trial where Musk will grandstand about Sam Altman and OpenAI, and then, of course, the S-1. Will those events occur in that order? I sure fucking hope so or else I may collapse from exhaustion.
As you might expect, there are some problems with the Cybercab program. First of all, people keep leaving Tesla. Mark Lupkey, who was the manufacturing guy for the Cybercab at Giga Texas, has departed — the third senior Cybercab leader to ankle the joint, after Victor Nechita, who was the program manager, and Thomas Dmytryk, who built the ridehailing backbone. The talent drain from Tesla over the last two years has been substantial.
That’s just the personnel. The robotaxi service itself is not doing so hot either! While I have been promised by various dorks that autonomous driving will be safer than human driving, this robotaxi program doesn’t seem to be. Electrek has been keeping an eye on the crashes, and it turns out that as of February, humans are four times safer than Tesla’s autonomous vehicles. Compared to Waymo, which looks like it may actually be safer than people, this is atrocious.
The next-gen Roadster may be revealed later this month, or never
We also may or may not hear from Optimus, Tesla’s crack at the now-buzzy “physical AI,” formerly known as robots. We were supposed to hear about Optimus in the first quarter of this year, but can you believe it, that got delayed. I suppose it has improved over “guy in a robot costume,” but I’m not convinced it’s ready for primetime, not least because I am old enough to remember when Musk wanted an “alien dreadnought” manufacturing Teslas, which wound up as an expensive failure that fucked up the schedule for the Model 3. (Many Model 3s were built instead in a tent in the Tesla Fremont factory parking lot.) I get that Silicon Valley hates human workers but the fact is that we are largely cheaper than our competition.
Finally, there’s the next-gen Roadster, which was supposed to be demoed on April 1st — but it also got mysteriously delayed. It may be revealed later this month, or never. It was originally supposed to start production in 2020. Sure, production delays are kind of the norm for Tesla, but six years is egregious.
Anyway, I suppose we now have to discuss Musk v. Altman, which is scheduled for a jury trial beginning on April 27th. Musk, you may recall, cofounded research nonprofit OpenAI alongside Sam Altman and others in the halcyon days of the 2010s, when he was running around telling us we were living in a simulation and doing cameos on The Big Bang Theory. Altman and Musk were even friends at the time, if contemporaneous Wired reporting is to be believed. Both of them had been yelling about the danger of Skynet before they decided they would save us all from Skynet by simply building it themselves.
Musk is notably vicious, and OpenAI’s lawyers are notably nasty
The problem with a company founded by two power-hungry monsters is that there can be only one king. By 2017, even Musk had agreed OpenAI needed a for-profit arm to raise the money the organization needed. Musk left in a huff because he wasn’t going to be the CEO, and he cut off the cash that he’d promised the nonprofit-slash-startup. This left OpenAI in the lurch — ultimately leading to its deal with Microsoft.
Musk says OpenAI has betrayed its vision or whatever by going for-profit. OpenAI thinks Musk is trying to eliminate competition for xAI, the rival company he founded after flouncing off. xAI was later bought by SpaceX and will now be going public soon, so one amusing thing about this trial’s timing is that anything it reveals about xAI may affect the IPO following on its heels.
In the meantime, SpaceX will continue launching rockets. Bringing down the cost of space apparently hasn’t made people want to go more often, as SpaceX’s biggest customer appears to be SpaceX, and the Starlink internet service is what’s actually keeping the company afloat. Perhaps we will see some movement on the various investigations and lawsuits around xAI’s bespoke child sexual abuse material generator, Grok. Maybe Musk will say goofy stuff about putting AI data centers in space, I don’t know.
What I do know is that we are about to enter another heavy season of Elon Elonning, but this time there’s less goodwill for him than ever. I don’t think the SpaceX IPO will totally flop, but weirder things have happened! I for one am looking forward to the S-1. In the meantime, I will simply remind you that the gray market drug of choice for most productivity nutjobs isn’t ketamine. Do with that information what you will.