Musk Already Has Your Tax Dollars

Now he wants your 401k

Editorial rights purchased from iStock. Image by Seamni.

SpaceX is planning to go public on Friday, June 12th. Although not an AI company, SpaceX purchased xAI, giving it an AI component. However, SpaceX is basing much of its earnings projections on its plan to build space-based data centers — a lofty goal given that we currently can’t sustain life in space outside a space capsule, rocket, or spacesuit.

Still, the space stuff tends to generate a lot of romanticism. The problem is that there is nothing in the document SpaceX filed with the SEC (Securities & Exchange Commission) that leads me to believe they can deliver on that promise.

The hype is real; the potential is based on imagination, and since SpaceX will soon be included in every NASDAQ index fund (more on that below), you should be aware of the reality Musk isn’t advertising.

For starters, SpaceX has not done anything NASA didn’t do first. This is worth remembering.

The only profitable component of Musk’s company is satellite services via the Starlink system. This is a big deal, for sure. But it’s not the focus of the upcoming IPO (Initial Public Offering ) because it’s not that sexy. The company is using its success in delivering satellite communications on Earth to convince us that it is capable of creating “connectivity infrastructure in space” that will “help everyone on Earth have access to education, healthcare, entertainment, and communications . . .”

(What irony that the man making these promises was recently instrumental in trying to gut many of the government programs that currently support education and healthcare here on Earth.)

SpaceX is riding on the allure of conquering new frontiers, but that is, to use Trump’s expression, no more than “a concept of a plan.”

In reality, SpaceX's space component is simply a NASA copycat with delusions of grandeur. And if you look closely at the document filed with the SEC, this becomes clear.

The IPO filing reads more like a PR campaign than an assessment of the company's value. Musk is attempting to attract investment by relying heavily on promises with no supporting evidence.

Let’s start with SpaceX's stated mission

It is as ambitious as it is vague.

OUR MISSION — To build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.

This statement is followed by a bunch of photos of rockets, stars, and planets, as well as people watching rockets take off. It cites the number of crewmembers who have flown on its rockets and the percentage of missions flown with reused boosters. It’s more reminiscent of a space travel tourist brochure than an IPO filing.

Another statistic listed is the percentage of “global mass to orbit.” I’m not sure what that means, but I do know that none of this speaks to the company’s ability to “make life interplanetary,” “understand the true nature of the universe,” or “extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”

Rather than providing data generated by SpaceX to support assertions about the technology SpaceX will deliver and the revenue it is expected to generate, the company is relying on estimates derived from the management team’s interpretation of publicly available documents.

In other words, they are asking investors to bank on the value they have imagined based on their understanding of various industry publications.

Here’s a direct quote from the Industry and Market Data section of the disclaimer featured in the table of contents.

Some market data and statistical information contained in this prospectus are also based on management’s estimates and calculations, which are derived from our review and interpretation of publicly available industry publications, our internal research and our knowledge of the markets in which we currently, and will in the future, operate. . . The estimates of future market opportunity and forecasts of market growth, and our ability to capture such markets, included in this prospectus may prove to be inaccurate.

To be fair, every company raising money has to protect its management from liability, and that always includes disclaimers. But this is not that. They aren’t just saying they might be wrong; they are saying they have no data to support their assertions. None. It’s all smoke and mirrors.

The first 15 pages of the filing are pictures with slogans. The table of contents includes half a page of citations, which is nothing more than a list of industry publications SpaceX is basing its imaginative assumptions on. That is followed by seven pages of definitions for terms used in the filing.

In their glossary of terms, they define “watt,” a word that has been common parlance since Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. This suggests the goal is simply to overwhelm us with terminology so we’ll stop reading.

If you have ever heard the saying, “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull$hit.” Well, here we are.

Moving on to the PROSPECTUS SUMMARY, we find an expanded Mission Statement, which includes “to harness the Sun to power a truth-seeking artificial intelligence that advances scientific discovery, and ultimately to build a base on the Moon and cities on other planets.”

This is not an IPO filing

The SpaceX S-1 is the basis of a science-fiction novel. There is nothing in SpaceX’s history that provides any evidence for assuming any of this is ever going to happen. Yes, they do send people into space. So did NASA. That’s not what they are promising.

SpaceX is riding on the allure of conquering new frontiers, but that is, to use Trump’s expression, no more than “a concept of a plan.”

They claim in their Overview that they have “the potential to improve both space exploration and life on Earth.” The word “potential” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Perhaps SpaceX can improve space exploration, but as far as improving life on Earth, Musk’s company is currently doing the opposite of what it promises.

SpaceX is endangering workers and the environment

According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, SpaceX repeatedly violated the Clean Water Act. Residents of Musk’s Brownsville, Texas, facility have also been concerned about the safety of wildlife in the refuge that surrounds the Starbase facility.

Builtin.com has reported that in both June and November of 2025, SpaceX rockets exploded at the facility. While SpaceX has referred to both incidents as “anomalies,” that doesn’t change the fact that debris from such explosions could endanger residents.

OSHA has also cited SpaceX seven times for “failing to adequately inspect the hydraulic crane after repairs.”

And, according to a 2023 report, “Reuters documented at least 600 previously unreported workplace injuries at Musk’s rocket company: crushed limbs, amputations, electrocutions, head and eye wounds, and one death.”

So much for Musk’s goal of improving life on Earth.

The xAI component

In the AI portion of the document, Musk highlights his company as being the first to activate a gigawatt-scale AI training cluster and a gigawatt-scale megapack battery installation. Nowhere is there data to support the value of any of this.

Instead, we are treated to a euphemistic description of xAI’s prized chatbot, Grok.

Our infrastructure supports training and inference for Grok, which has emerged as one of the world’s most advanced frontier models. Grok is designed as a truth-seeking AI model, built on our founder Elon Musk’s mission to enable humanity to understand the universe.

The management team at SpaceX expects us to believe that the AI model best known for calling itself ‘MechaHitler’ is a “truth-seeking model” based on Musk’s desire to “enable humanity to understand the universe.”

I think we all know better, don’t we?

Legal troubles

We should also keep in mind the legal battles Musk and his companies are currently engaged in. There are dozens of them, and they run the gamut, including wrongful death claims related to Tesla’s Autopilot program, drug use (by Musk) that is allegedly threatening Tesla’s business, false advertising, and a variety of workplace violations.

Musk is even being sued for failing to pay vendors.

Now let’s look at the investment part of this con job.

The numbers don’t add up

The numbers behind this upcoming IPO appear to be based on the idea that some of us are so gullible we will buy SpaceX stock at the price the SEC filing has assigned to it, which is $135/share, even though that is a historically high number and is completely untethered from any demonstrated value.

At a price of $135/share, SpaceX’s market cap would be $1.75T. This means it is being valued at close to 100x its 2025 sales. (That’s not 100%, it’s 100 times.)

SpaceX is also poised to benefit from recent changes in the rules governing how soon it will be included in NASDAQ index funds. This means that if you own a NASDAQ index fund, this will affect you, whether you like it or not.

Historically, it has taken between three and eight months for new public companies to be automatically added to index funds that use algorithmic strategies to decide what to invest in. This is important because once the NASDAQ includes SpaceX in its list, your 401 (k) will automatically buy it if you have a NASDAQ index fund in your portfolio.

(NOTE: The S&P did not join the NASDAQ in changing its waiting period, so SpaceX will not be automatically included in the S&P blue-chip 500 for at least a year after its IPO.)

However, if you hold NASDAQ index funds, you will likely be purchasing SpaceX at an artificially inflated price because the post-IPO hype Musk is counting on will still be pumping up the share price just 15 days after it goes public, which, according to the new rules, is the short window of time before SpaceX becomes part of the NASDAQ index funds.

Musk is also offering up to 30% of stock to retail investors. The typical retail offering is closer to 5–10%. One commentator put it this way, “If institutional investors wanted his stock, he wouldn’t be offering 30% to retail investors.”

In other words, this is a sign, and it’s not a good one. If the most sophisticated investors (institutional investors) are not willing to pay what Musk is asking for his shares, there is probably a reason.

Musk is presenting this as a beneficent move on his part. He is positioning this as an invitation to the general public to benefit from his largesse. In my opinion, this is a calculated move to make unsophisticated investors believe they have a great opportunity to make money from SpaceX, when in reality, it is more like a great opportunity for Musk to fleece the general public.

Unsophisticated investors tend to buy when stocks are high, mistakenly assuming that stock price reflects value. It doesn’t; stock price reflects the perception of value.

Once early investors start dumping SpaceX at the highest possible price, the stock will drop precipitously. And the index fund holders, many of whom never made a choice to buy SpaceX in the first place, as well as the retail investors who bought Musk’s hype, will lose.

In other words, this IPO is being positioned by Musk as a boon to the average investor when it’s really a mechanism designed to transfer as much wealth as possible from the average investor to the wealthy elite — those who had the advantage of investing some of their money before the SpaceX IPO — an advantage most of us do not have.

The bottom line

All this is to say that SpaceX is a pie-in-the-sky enterprise. Its valuation is based on fantasy, its stock price is wildly inflated, and if anybody with any power at the SEC had any guts, this IPO would not be allowed to move forward.

This is what we mean by wealth transfer. But it’s not moving in the direction that will help anybody but the wealthy elite who are desperate to take their money out of SpaceX and leave you holding the bag.

The system is designed to benefit its designers. And there is no better example of that than this. If you really want to buy SpaceX, wait a year to see what the stock is worth then. After the early investors have taken their money out, the price should more closely reflect reality. There may still be some hype, but it won’t be close to what it will be during the first weeks and months after the IPO.

By the way, the same game will be played when Anthropic and OpenAI hit the market later this year.