Makes you wonder about whether Google&#x27;s deal to lease SpaceX&#x27;s compute is about Google doing what&#x27;s best for Google, or about shoring up SpaceX&#x27;s very bad bottom line.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;06&#x2F;05&#x2F;google-to-pay-spacex-920-million-a-month-for-xai-compute-capacity.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;06&#x2F;05&#x2F;google-to-pay-spacex-920-mil...</a>

Not just that, but private investors were sold shares that all had the same voting rights. Since just before the IPO SpaceX now has dual class shares, Elon and a few insiders have class-B shares with 10x the voting power, while everybody else (including private investors) have class-A shares with 1x the voting power

I don&#x27;t think companies expanding their business should be the only reason to sell. Apple was a desktop and laptop computer company when they released the iPod. Nokia was a company making rubber products when they started making cellular equipment in the 1970s. Amazon was a ecomm company when they released AWS. Etc.Sure, I&#x27;m cherrypicking the success stories but I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s the only signal people should use.

It also seems to me to be a very odd conflict of interest given that they must see themselves as primary competitors in the AI space.Seems similar to me as when Eric Schmidt resigned from the Apple board many years back because their products started to overlap, especially mobile.

I think those long-term holders who 10x their investment are quite happy with that investment so far.

SpaceX is WAY more about space than Twitter.Twitter by itself is lucky to be worth $15B anymore.The space portion of SpaceX is easily worth 10x that.xAI is theoretically the hype machine that makes up the remainder of the value.

Yes I&#x27;m sure they are just desperate to get out of their 100x investment.A huge mistake, I&#x27;m sure the relevant parties have been punished appropriately.

Well X is at the end of the name, so first is about Space, then about X, right?&#x2F;s

SpaceX, like Tesla, has always been about Elon Musk.Investors are buying Musk, like they were buying Warren Buffett with Berkshire Hathaway. Long-term shareholders are not buying space; they are buying Musk. This has been clear to everyone since the beginning; it has been well communicated (look at SpaceX governance rules in Texas), and there is nothing mystical about it.It&#x27;s very likely Musk will roll everything up into a single Musk conglomerate.

Remember this was also when SpaceX was actually about space, instead of mostly AI and Twitter. Long-term shareholders that were sold on the space, have to be thinking about how to get out once their lockups expire.

What a find in the archives!&quot;It&#x27;s quite amazing how this values SpaceX at 10bn, less than 50% of WhatsApp.&quot;Somebody was wise a decade ago.

Original HN thread, 11-years ago (220 comments):<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8914956">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8914956</a>

In fact it was often mentioned as a recommended way to try to invest in SpaceX via proxy, before IPO. I don&#x27;t think that advice had much merit, but it was there nevertheless.

This investment has never been secret.Google (now under parent company Alphabet) invested roughly $900 million as the majority of a ~$1 billion funding round alongside Fidelity Investments. This gave Google an initial equity stake of about 7–7.5% in SpaceX at a valuation of roughly $10–12 billion.

Google also has around a 14% stake in Anthropic (as at 2025 [1]) and they participated in the &quot;G&quot; funding round [2]. Amazon has a significant stake in them too.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2025&#x2F;03&#x2F;11&#x2F;technology&#x2F;google-investment-anthropic.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2025&#x2F;03&#x2F;11&#x2F;technology&#x2F;google-investm...</a> , <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.md&#x2F;f0BxC" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.md&#x2F;f0BxC</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.anthropic.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;anthropic-raises-30-billion-series-g-funding-380-billion-post-money-valuation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.anthropic.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;anthropic-raises-30-billion-s...</a>

Google X was building Loon at least a decade ago to solve internet connectivity with laser-networked high-altitude balloons. They clearly benefit structurally from expanding access to the internet to the unconnected population.So on that front, while I didn’t guess this, it does sound like a good investment.Furthermore, while I am skeptical about the “DC in space” thing in the short term, and Musk’s timelines are, generously, something like P99.9 outcomes, it seems plausible that in 10 years it might make sense. And at that point Google will want to put their TPUs in orbit, too.

Presumably Starlink for routing throughout space. Google does under-sea cables and domestic internet access too.

It&#x27;s telecom infrastructure to increase the number of people who have internet in order to increase the number of people using Google. They might have been considering having satellite internet in Android phones.

<pre><code> &gt; Data centers in space?
</code></pre>
the investment happened 10 years ago

They had a big early investment back when Google was doing more crazy out of scope things.

Low cost payloads to space can unlock lots.

starlink cellular connection for android in future

Google Cloud, low latency cross-continental links, etc.

One would presume connectivity and services in space as industry and services spread there. Asteroid mining, on orbit manufacturing, space colonies&#x2F;tourism, data centers in space, centers for working outside traditional government jurisdiction.

The companies you listed have great synergy with Google&#x27;s core business. What&#x27;s Google&#x27;s play with SpaceX? Data centers in space?

Google&#x27;s return of invested capital has averaged 32% since IPO.This may be a narrative violation on HN, but the quality of Google&#x27;s management is exceptional.

How is Alphabet the modern Berkshire Hathaway?

Alphabet is the modern day berkshire hathaway.Alphabet’s investment holdings (eg, spacex, anthropic..) are worth in the same order of magnitude of BRK’s (~$300B)The track record of google’s M&amp;A is pretty good.Except for search and cloud, many of Google’s important products were from M&amp;A - Maps, Docs, android, doubleclick, youtube , deep mind, etc.

Pichai will talk about data centers in space again, like he did before the IPO. Then he&#x27;ll sell SPCX.

I&#x27;m sure at an $80 valuation they will tell everyone how it&#x27;s time to buy as it slides down further

Actually, that&#x27;s the service provided by GS, etc. They have those buyers on the other side of their Rolodex.

Isn&#x27;t that literally what institutional trading desks are for? One of the reason to use one is that they can execute a large order without impacting the market price

tell me how you dont know anything about dark markets and dark pools. I loveeeee how you average people dont know how they operate at top

This is a micro&#x2F;macro mistake. You obviously can&#x27;t dump a 6% stake at strike price on Robinhood.&quot;The Market&quot;, at this scale, means &quot;You find the buyer(s) yourself and work up the deal with a hundred lawyers and PR staff and hope the contract negotiation stays secret&quot;.

There would be some laws in place. And it would also stress the relationship with Elon.

Retail doesn&#x27;t really move stocks like Google too much, and institutions might understand Google and it&#x27;s finances better than Google...i.e. there are no accounting tricks or mysterious losses that can shake institutional analysts much (besides illegally hidden stuff). They will perfectly understand why Google is taking a &quot;loss&quot; on the sale.

(1) there&#x27;s a lock out, they can&#x27;t legally 
(2) Moving that kind of volume at market price is extremely difficult 
(3) This disclosure was required by law as part of their earnings. They would rather have said nothing and quietly offloaded it.One consequence of booking the revenue is that they&#x27;re going to have to report a loss when they sell it.It&#x27;s possible there&#x27;s some tax shenanigans at play (idk): report the profit, mark it against their massive AI capex, sell later when they can book a loss. (I&#x27;m not sure if it works that way, it wouldn&#x27;t for an individual, but maybe they can find a way to trigger a stepped up basis.)

Your comment is difficult to parse. Is Alphabet greedy for spending $900M on SpaceX equity many years ago before the business was built and there was a risk it would not be built?Or is Alphabet greedy for holding onto the equity instead of selling it for cash? Or is throwaw12 greedy for wanting to sell something after a 100x return?

Feeling sated and not constant greed is no way to build billionaires, nope.

if you are big company like google, another 100 billion is not gonna make you feel better since cold cash is liability at that scale100 billion is nothing if that money can put you in better spot at technology landscape

100x return, I would sell immediately after this kind of gain, maybe that&#x27;s why I am not a Google

6% is more than all of the issued IPO shares. They were 5%, right?

It seems obvious that the deal Google signed to rent compute from xAI just before the IPO was specifically to goose the IPO, giving xAI nice looking growth. They could have paid a lot more for that deal and still made it all back on the IPO. I don&#x27;t believe for a second Google needs the compute. They&#x27;ve got their own AI inference hardware, the biggest data centers in the world, and they don&#x27;t make any of the most popular AI products. They&#x27;re not desperate for compute.

One of the best corporate investments in recent history. &gt;100x returns in 10 years

Which corruption exactly? NASDAQ giving them fast entry so the biggest IPO in history is done on NASDAQ and not on NYSE who was also competing for it? Both are fighting for OpenAI and Anthropic listings as well which likely influenced their choice to get in early with SpaceX

I don&#x27;t think anyone is arguing SpaceX is actually valuable, just overvalued and the repeated recipient of obvious corruption.

$500bn marketcap is still valuableIts how it declines to that point at another 70% loss from $1.5 trillion that people are worried about

5. A gazillion amount of telemetry data and social media data to sell on the data broker market. That alone is enough to attract another billion dollar of potential investment consistently, especially for training data and intelligence...you know, selling to the Mossad or CIA.In a world of money, every bit you can earn, you have to earn, while I know it is immoral to sell the data for spying purposes, morality alone don&#x27;t mean shit now, that I never see any capitalists and corpo dogs have any kind of morality anyway, except when massive backslash, congress hearings and boycotts, which is, ahem, Meta&#x2F;Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. But given the unique position Musk used to have in Trump&#x27;s government and his right leaning position he is safe to do so. At least for now, he is immune to holding congress hearing for a scandal I suppose.And not to mention that Grok is literally trained over X&#x2F;Twitter, and keep in mind Bluesky is federated and strangely, no one seems to be scraping it over ActivityPub. I believe Thread is also built on the same foundation but it&#x27;s sure that Meta made good measures for antiscraping, I expected as a data oriented company.Alas, keep in mind SpaceX merged with xAI and nonetheless don&#x27;t forget their data side

Yeah, I have put my money where my mouth is, but I think it is. Extraordinarily so, and I think the Musk hate has clouded people’s judgement.For what it’s worth, I get it. I have found Musk insufferable for the last decade since he attached himself to the right and got into drugs, however I think SpaceX is undervalued right now.1. They are literally the only company on earth with a reliable partially reusable launch system. There are a few people trying, but everyone else is way behind.2. When they eventually (hopefully) get Starship right, we will see a price drop in the cost of transportation to orbit we have never seen. When I did the numbers a few years ago, the price for space mining to be comparable to terrestrial mining was around $20-60&#x2F;kg to orbit. They’d effectively be the ONLY way to access that. That’s one of a gazillion things that becomes possible with cheap access to space. UPS becomes a competitor at those prices… it’s game changing.3. They are basically dominating the satellite internet world. Nothing compares. Starlink is amazing, especially here in Alaska, I suspect they will eventually have a phone, which will be revolutionary.4. A gazillion government contracts, Star shield, and arguably point to point QRF shuttle (after starship). The defense implications alone mean that they are going to be around indefinitely.I don’t know, but I think people are sleeping on this.

Maybe hacker news is wrong and SpaceX is actually valuable.

Given how much ai spending Google need to do, and that the are selling equity for the first time in a long time to do it, no doubt spacex shares are going to be dumped out they moment they can.

It&#x27;s not like they can sell the SPCX stock. It&#x27;s still locked up.

Didn’t they just raise $85B “for AI”?

Can’t wait for SpaceX to go even lower.

If true then they paid under $800 Million for their 6%, now valued at $94 Billion.

They’ll be fine? Dang I wanna be “fine”!

They got in at a ~12B valuation. They&#x27;ll be fine

Why? They will still have their same stake no matter what happens with the stock price.

Hopefully they made this investment pre-IPO at some vastly lower valuation because otherwise… …this is a not going to end well for them.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;kQtHB" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;kQtHB</a>

You don&#x27;t think there are any millionaires on the world&#x27;s preeminent VC forum?

Lol what? You think most people on HN who live in america are not millionaires?

Much better business instinct that the average poster on HN

Everybody here an expert, but no trillionaires, billionaires, and I’m guessing millionaires

Why is this not seen as a circular deal? But other oracle debt is said to be circular

Excluding all the capex from AI this last quarter has been one of their best.

There is quite a bit of information out there as to how Google is achieving short term growth in their core search business. And boy, it is ugly. It does not signal long term continued growth.

Not sure why you&#x27;d short Google. Their business was doing great pre-AI, and will likely do great regardless of what happens to AI. The rumors of their demise when AI hit the scene were clearly greatly exaggerated.

Now Microsoft, them I&#x27;d short. In a way I have by starting my own company to undermine their various competitive advantages comprehensively

Microsoft is in a better position (as their b2b ecosystem can realistically be made LLM-agnostic), but Google will be fine.

from your list, I think only Google has moat and something I would short least.Google has hardware, software ecosystem, mobile ecosystem, controls browser, has access to 2B+ users, has talent to come up with ideas - perfect spot for AI

Have you seen Microsoft’s price over the last year. If AI doesn’t pan out they’re going to be the next IBM.

Agreed, and in my opinion he&#x27;s 100% right. But I&#x27;m still invested in both.The market hasn&#x27;t been working on fundamentals for a long time. I have a fair amount of value stocks and a bunch of cash lying around, so I&#x27;ll be ok.I really feel for anybody trying to invest to grow right now; there&#x27;s no obvious safer play.

Maybe you’re right but, man, there’s easier money to be made than betting against those two companies.

&gt; Gemini’s integration is, I think, absolutely awesome - it’s completely changing the way I interact with the concept of googling and finding answers,Oh, me too. The way it writes things that look like they address my question, and then links references that totally don&#x27;t makes me dread Googling in a way I hadn&#x27;t yet. For probably five years, I&#x27;ve been doing DDG first and Google when I DDG doesn&#x27;t work well and usually Google doesn&#x27;t either, so I already have dread for Google, but this makes it worse.

Nailed it. I didn&#x27;t state this explicitly, but:&gt; So your short could work, but it’s not going to work for google’s involvement in an AI-bubble, it’s predicated on the entire market tankingIs indeed a required assumption. Major return is not going to happen with this, Not losing a big chunk of my money is the goal!&gt; SpaceX I actually bought at the IPO price because I think the company will be around in 30 years time, so as fraudulent and mispriced as it is, having a small holding over that kind of horizon I believe will be profitable. And I want to be that kind of old-timer who can chuckle at buying it at the IPO and holding through the crash and still holding when they are on Mars and beyond and SPCX is worth multiples of what it is today.I think that&#x27;s a fine play as well. The short is more of an &quot;This IPO price doesn&#x27;t make sense; sell within a year after it settle&quot;

Google makes money hand over fist and they don’t have enough things to spend it on. AI is a natural fit for them to burn all their profits into. Gemini’s integration is, I think, absolutely awesome - it’s completely changing the way I interact with the concept of googling and finding answers, and is free of sign ups or purposeful interactions with the likes of ChatGPT or Claude where you know you’re AI-ing. So your short could work, but it’s not going to work for google’s involvement in an AI-bubble, it’s predicated on the entire market tanking, which should have been occurring for the past two years already if fundamentals and capex translating into profit were what the market cared about. But it seems like the market isn’t caring right now so you could be holding that short for quite a while before it turns into a major return.SpaceX I actually bought at the IPO price because I think the company will be around in 30 years time, so as fraudulent and mispriced as it is, having a small holding over that kind of horizon I believe will be profitable. And I want to be that kind of old-timer who can chuckle at buying it at the IPO and holding through the crash and still holding when they are on Mars and beyond and SPCX is worth multiples of what it is today.

That’s a pretty weird take considering they’re down 21% in the last 2 months. How, exactly, is this early?

Short Google? Early is wrong you know?

Sage advice!. In shorts like these, there&#x27;s no outcome that &quot;wins big&quot; unfortunately, unless you do it with large amounts of money. (Unlike a long position on an individual stock that 10xs, or options which are much riskier). But... it will ideally make the landing softer after the Fall.

That’s brave, and I don’t mean that shittily, but more cautiously. Like, I’m thinking of the Simpsons shirt-tugging meme when I read this.I’ve always been hesitant to short stocks because of the old adage “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent” and the market has a REAL vested interest in seeing these companies not explode.Good luck on this one, genuinely, because you may need it.(That said, if you DO win big on this one, I think we’re all fucked, so maybe I shouldn’t be wishing you TOO much luck. =) )

SpaceX near $100&#x2F;share is a great long position now, IMO.

Most sane comment.Even in the last Elon Musk interview by The Economist, he admited that it&#x27;s likely China will win at the end.The gap is so close now. Opinions matter not, the Chinese will have their own GPUs, RAM and everything they need.Giants like google and spacex are the few that can handle it because their business is not only about shipping the best models.

Google is not a good short. They are actually one of the companies that will likely come out on top when the AI-bubble has popped.Anthropic and OpenAI though will likely be dead, killed by cheap open weight LLMs and local LLMs.

I am short both Google and SpaceX RN; SpaceX&#x27;s IPO smells foul. Google is an AI-bubble short; Anthropic and OpenAI haven&#x27;t IPOed yet.

Accounting goes back thousands of years. It was not made as a tool to show off. Lesson is more that tools can be abused for other purposes than intended.

They don&#x27;t have to be willing because hiding the losses would be a crime. And it still doesn&#x27;t matter b&#x2F;c anyone with a calculator can tell you exactly what the value of their position is on any given day. The $94 billion is 2.4% of Google&#x27;s market cap, so even if SpaceX goes to zero it will be barely noticeable from the background noise of the stock price movement.

They didn&#x27;t invest 94B$But yes the stock could go down much further and I hope they are willing to show the losses if they can show this as gains today.Imagine the next call being about how their 95$B went to sub 30B$..Will that be a negative line item. I don&#x27;t see the point in disclosing this stake as earnings.But I do get that accounting was made as a tool for companies to show off.

It will be difficult since they acquired it for less than a billion 10 years ago.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;2015&#x2F;jan&#x2F;20&#x2F;spacex-funding-google-fidelity" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;2015&#x2F;jan&#x2F;20&#x2F;spacex-fundi...</a>

&quot;The company’s marketable equity securities include $80 billion in shares subject to short-term restrictions and $14.1 billion subject to long-term restrictions&quot;Actually more like $14.1 and whatever value the other $80 is worth when they sell. Which is probably going to be worth well North of whatever is lost on the $14.1 B long-term... All part of the scam to inflate the value of the AI bubble

Google Discloses $94.1B in SpaceX Stock, Marking 6% Stake