Elon Musk is steamrolling Wall Street to become a trillionaire | Decoder

Our guest today is Ryan Mac, a technology reporter at The New York Times and co-author of the excellent book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, which came out in 2024. We wanted to have Ryan on the show because we’re on the cusp of the SpaceX IPO, which promises to be one of the most consequential public offerings in history for a variety of reasons.

Its biggest-ever size, of course, at nearly $2 trillion dollars. But also because all kinds of rules that keep our markets fair are being bent, if not outright broken, along the way. And, also because buried somewhere inside SpaceX is X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, which Musk purchased in 2022. #elonmusk #spacex #xai #ai #tech

0:00 Cold open
0:43 Introduction
2:14 Interview begins
2:42 SpaceX IPO overview
4:10 X (Twitter) is stagnating
5:37 Musk's net worth & path to trillionaire
9:42 Tesla reputational damage vs. SpaceX/Starlink
12:27 Why users haven't left X
16:52 Corporate governance — Elon's 85% voting control
21:14 Index funds — everyone ends up owning SpaceX
22:29 Nasdaq-100 rules relaxed for SpaceX
28:41 SpaceX fundamentals — Starlink is the only profit center
31:47 $28 trillion TAM & AI ambitions
36:58 xAI/Grok — "the RC Cola" of AI
39:13 Closing — accountability & along for the ride
42:41 Outro

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