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Tag: Elon Musk

  • Elon Musk plans to build homes around Austin with rents lower than the market rate, exclusively for employees to rent

    The Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, seems to be interested in building around 110 homes near Austin, Texas, and is preparing to offer below-market rents for employees to lease.

    According to the report, the planned housing site will be located near The Boring Company and SpaceX’s base in Bastrop County, not far from Tesla’s Super Factory in Texas. The location will be known as Snailbrook and will even have a mayor and other town planning structures.

    Prior to this, there were reports that Elon Musk had been buying land around Austin, with the purchased area exceeding 3,500 hectares, and had even begun discussing town planning, but there were no further follow-up reports.

    Compared to the average monthly rent for homes in Bastrop County of around $2,200, Elon Musk’s plan to build 110 homes with rents of around $800 for 2-3 bedroom homes is quite attractive, and some employees of The Boring Company have been able to apply for leases since last year.

    However, leasing these homes would naturally be tied to employees’ employment status, and even further, it may allow employees’ children to attend local Montessori schools. If an employee leaves their job, they must move out of the rental house within 30 days. Nevertheless, the significantly lower rental fees compared to local rent prices are expected to convince more employees to work for Tesla in the long term.

    On the other hand, purchasing land to build a town may also bring more impacts to the local area, such as issues related to wastewater discharge as more outsiders move in, which could cause protests from local residents.

  • Elon Musk quietly becomes Twitter’s largest individual shareholder

    In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has recently spent $2.89 billion to buy Twitter shares, holding about 9.2% of the shares, becoming Twitter’s largest individual shareholder. Compared with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey‘s 2.25% stake, Elon Musk currently has a greater say in Twitter’s service development plans.

    Elon Musk Dogecoin
    “Elon Musk Dreaming of a Brighter Future” by jurvetson is licensed under CC BY 2.0

    Before this, some netizens asked Elon Musk if he intends to build his own social platform, and from this acquisition of shares to become the largest individual shareholder of Twitter, it seems that it will make it easier for Elon Musk to control his right to speak on Twitter in the future. At the same time, Elon Musk has more than 80 million followers, becoming one of the users with full influence on Twitter.

    However, the acquisition of Twitter shares may also show that Elon Musk does not plan to build a personal social platform like former US President Trump.

    After becoming the largest individual shareholder, whether it will push Twitter to carry out major reforms, or return Twitter to privatization, it does not seem to be a possible development situation at present, but at least it should make Elon Musk speak more freely on the Twitter platform.

  • The report says SpaceX’s valuation has reached $100 billion

    SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that the market value of the space launch service provider under his name has reached $100 billion. The amount was confirmed based on last month’s assessment report, marking that SpaceX’s valuation has risen sharply in just a few months after completing the latest round of financing and raising more than $1 billion in funds.

    Elon Musk Dogecoin
    “Elon Musk Dreaming of a Brighter Future” by jurvetson is licensed under CC BY 2.0

    Recently, Elon Musk responded to a tweet on his Twitter account that criticized his company for accepting government subsidies three years ago. According to a 2015 report by the Los Angeles Times, Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity Corp. (a supplier of solar products that have been acquired by Tesla) received a total of $4.9 billion in US government subsidies. Some netizens borrowed the content of this report to criticize Elon Musk for over-promoting his company’s technical strength in order to increase the stock price. Elon Musk said in a tweet that $4.9 billion is less than 0.4% of the total market value of more than $1.2 trillion in his company.

    In its report for the fourth quarter of 2020, Baron Funds, an investment fund, stated that it purchased $26 million in preferred shares of SpaceX. At that time, SpaceX was valued at approximately $44 billion. After 15 months, its value has more than doubled its original value. In addition, Baron Funds also invested in SpaceX through other means, with a total amount of approximately $185 million.

    In a new round of financing in February this year, SpaceX raised $1.2 billion in funds. The relevant documents submitted to the government supervision department at that time showed that Elon Musk owns about 43.61% of SpaceX. If calculated at $100 billion, the current market value is about $43.6 billion.

  • Starlink has sold 100,000 sets of terminals

    SpaceX’s satellite network business Starlink should be known to everyone. The goal of this business is to use satellites to bring the Internet to people in remote areas of the world, and the speed of the Internet is relatively acceptable. Basically, it is used in daily life or even playing games without any major problems. Elon Musk, the creator of SpaceX, announced on Twitter that Starlink’s terminal has reached the milestone of 100,000 sales.
    In order to make Starlink this business, SpaceX has launched more than 1,700 satellites into space since November 2019, and most terminal users can enjoy this service at a price of $99 per month. Of course, in addition to using the service, users also need to spend $499 to buy a set of terminals from SpaceX to receive Starlink satellite messages and access the Internet, including a dish-shaped receiver, router, power supply, and a tripod for installation.

    Since the service targets are people in remote areas, Elon Musk has repeatedly stated that Starlink’s business will not conflict with existing telecommunications operators. Even in addition to the United States, SpaceX has reached agreements with individual countries to allow Starlink business to develop in these places.

    In less than two years, 100,000 sets of terminals were sold. This development speed is quite reasonable for a business with such a huge investment. However, Elon Musk’s ambitions will not stop there. SpaceX eventually plans to launch about 30,000 satellites and strive to reduce the price of Internet terminals, thereby bringing the service to millions of consumers.

    To launch so many satellites into the sky, of course, SpaceX has to modify the existing rockets or adopt a new generation of rockets to send as many as possible to the sky as quickly as possible. In the application for the next-generation Starlink system submitted to the US FCC, SpaceX also listed several options. One is to use the next-generation Starship heavy-duty launch vehicle, and the other option is to modify the existing Falcon 9 rocket.

  • Elon Musk hopes that the number of Starlink users will reach 500,000 in the next year

    SpaceX founder Elon Musk said at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) that its Starlink satellite network business is expected to reach 500,000 users in the next 12 months. At present, Starlink’s main goal is to expand the network coverage to most areas of the earth by August.
    Since 2018, SpaceX has launched more than 1,700 low-orbit satellites for the Starlink program, and the number of users of the entire Starlink program has exceeded a strategic number of 69,420 people. Elon Musk said that it is estimated that in the next 12 months, Starlink users can reach 500,000.
    Elon Musk Dogecoin
    “Elon Musk Dreaming of a Brighter Future” by jurvetson is licensed under CC BY 2.0
    To achieve this goal in the coming year, and to achieve global internet coverage — minus Arctic regions — in the next two months is not a small challenge for Starlink, the most important thing is money. Elon Musk said that the current Starlink terminal with an asking price of $499 per user actually costs more than $1,000. Earlier, this set of equipment cost even $3,000. Therefore, SpaceX is selling the device at a loss. He hopes that the cost of Starlink terminals can be reduced to within a few hundred dollars in the next one or two years.
    Musk said the Starlink team has signed deals with two “major country” telecom operators, but he didn’t name them. He considers Starlink to be “complementary” to existing 5G providers rather than directly competing with them. “You can think of Starlink as filling in the gaps between 5G and fiber and really getting to the parts of the world that are the hardest to reach,” he said.
    When asked how much money he plans to invest in Starlink, Elon Musk said it depends on how you define investment:
    Before we go to positive cash flow, it’ll be at least $5 billion, and maybe as much as $10 [billion]. So it’s quite a lot. We’ll have to keep investing a great deal after that point to remain relevant among competitors. The total Starlink investment will round out to $20–30 billion.
    SpaceX expects that Starlink plans to generate $30 billion in revenue, and may split Starlink from SpaceX to issue an IPO in the future.

  • Elon Musk tweeted that he will work with the Dogecoin team to reduce mining energy consumption

    Yesterday, Elon Musk announced that Tesla would suspend accepting Bitcoin as a payment method because the Bitcoin mining process consumes too much fossil energy.

    There are data showing that more than 70% of the current Bitcoin network’s computing power uses fossil energy, more specifically, coal-fired power plants are used as fuel.

    At present, many countries or regions around the world are working on carbon neutrality, but the thermal power used in the field of cryptocurrency mining such as Bitcoin is emitting a large number of greenhouse gases.

    This is also true of Tesla’s suspension of accepting Bitcoin payments and expressed the expectation that the industry can switch to sustainable clean energy and may resume Bitcoin payments in the future.

    Affected by this bad news, the price of Bitcoin has plunged sharply. However, it is worth noting that Elon Musk tweeted to vote for Dogecoin payment earlier.

    “Elon Musk Dreaming of a Brighter Future” by jurvetson is licensed under CC BY 2.0

    Earlier this morning, Elon Musk once again tweeted that he would work with the Dogecoin team to reduce mining energy consumption. Dogecoin immediately rose sharply after the news was released.

    Dogecoin, which was born as a joke, has long since left the original project team, and its founder has already emptied all Dogecoin and is no longer responsible for the maintenance of Dogecoin.

    However, Elon Musk is very optimistic about Dogecoin and has repeatedly tweeted it as a Dogecoin platform. This is exactly what happened since the beginning of the year and the continuous surge of Dogecoin has attracted people’s attention.

    This time, Elon Musk said that he wants to cooperate with the Dogecoin team. In fact, there is some meaning, that is, in the future, Tesla may introduce Dogecoin as a payment method for car purchases.