Investor's Corner
The Elon Musk moonshot approach – missed deadlines are a good thing
Tesla skeptics never tire of pointing out the company’s history of missing target dates for vehicle deliveries and other milestones. They do have a point. The most egregious example is of course Model X, which Tesla began delivering many months after the originally announced date. The latest offender is Model 3 – the company did technically deliver it on time, but so far production numbers are running far short of predictions, and the majority of buyers who signed up for the promised $35,000 EV are likely to be waiting until well into 2018. The development of Autopilot 2 also seems to be behind schedule – it looks like the promised driverless run from New York to LA will be pushed into next year.
However, the naysayers are dead wrong when they say Elon Musk hasn’t fulfilled his promises. Except for a few things, most of which nobody really wanted (battery swapping, a rollercoaster to get around the Tesla campus), the Iron Man has delivered in a big way. He promised a compelling electric sedan, an SUV with towing capability and eye-catching Falcon Wing doors, a reusable rocket that can land on a barge at sea (!), and other achievements straight out of the science fiction books, and all of these are now reality. Nevada Gigafactory? Open and producing batteries. Solar roof tiles? Rolling off the line in Buffalo. World’s largest battery array? Check (and this one was on time).
Considering Tesla’s stock market performance and the company’s legions of adoring fans, it’s clear that most people value accomplishment over punctuality. As Trent Eady, writing on Seeking Alpha, put it, “If Musk promises you the moon in six months and delivers it in three years, keep things in perspective: you’ve got the moon.”
What if Musk and company’s habit of missing self-announced deadlines is not a bug but a feature? Tesla Motors Club member Patrick C argues in a recent blog post that the “dream big and deliver late” strategy is actually the key to Tesla’s (and SpaceX’s) success.
Above: Check out the historic landing of a Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral with Elon Musk and the SpaceX team (Youtube: National Geographic)
Those of us who’ve been watching this show for a while have learned not to trust Musk’s predicted timelines. So why do his words still carry so much weight? Because we believe in what he’s doing, and we can see how hard he personally is working towards these goals, moving his “desk” to wherever the latest bottleneck is, and camping on the roof of the Gigafactory. “If Musk [were] viewed as just a wild dreamer, he would not have the following that he does,” writes Patrick C. “Musk is trying to do something that is important, something that’s never been done before, and that many people would like to see succeed. When this is the case, many are likely to give you some slack on the schedule, as long as you are working hard and showing progress.”
The most consistent carping about missed timelines comes from stock market analysts, because they focus on meeting quarterly forecasts. This obsession with short-term results is a major failing of today’s corporate world – as Patrick points out, it leads executives to think small, concentrating on things that can be done in three months. But Musk does not think small. He thinks in terms of “moonshots,” or “big hairy audacious goals,” which aren’t guaranteed to succeed, and can’t be done on a firm quarterly schedule. “To accomplish something of magnitude, you have to be willing to fail and you have to be willing to disappoint the Street,” says Patrick.
But if Musk and those around him know all this, why make over-optimistic predictions? Why not just say, “Here’s what we mean to accomplish, and it’ll be done when it’s done?”
Popular economist Danny Kahneman offered an answer in a recent episode of Freakonomics Radio: “If you realistically present to people what can be achieved to solve a problem, they will find that uninteresting. You have to overpromise in order to get anything done. When you look at big successes, the people that carried out those big successes were unrealistically optimistic. This may be necessary to get the initial resources and it may be necessary to get the enthusiasm that is needed to achieve anything at all, because there is so much inertia that realistic promises are at a major disadvantage.”
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Above: Patience… the Model 3’s are coming — a look at Tesla prepping for Model 3 Christmas deliveries (Reddit: tesla99)
Another pertinent quote comes from Mikhail Bakunin: “By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible.”
As Patrick puts it, “If you want to move people off the status quo, you have to present them with something exciting. A promise of something 10 years from now will be discounted to the point of insignificance and ignored by most.”
A case in point: the timid promises made by major automakers, who announce plans to launch new lines of electric vehicles by 2025, or by politicians, who pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by such-and-such an amount by 2050. These goals may be better than nothing, but they don’t excite anybody, because we all know that the people who set them will be on the golf course (or maybe we’ll all be underwater) by the time set for their completion.
In contrast, when Musk makes a promise, we know he stands behind it. The timeline may be shaky, but the goal is never in doubt. And the goals are important ones, innovations that can improve all of our lives and lead to a more sustainable society. In a world where politicians constantly harp on things we can’t afford, and problems that we can’t hope to solve, while the corporate world focuses on trivia like how to design a better razor or a quicker way to share videos of our cats, Musk is one of very few leaders who inspire people with a hopeful vision of the future. Humans can still accomplish great things, but only if we’re patient, and are willing to accept some failures and missed deadlines along the way.
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Note: Article originally published on evannex.com, by Charles Morris
Tesla and SpaceX shares fell on Wednesday after Democrats swept both chambers of Congress. The decline stood out as broader market securities recovered and turned positive, while both of Musk’s publicly traded companies lagged.
CEO Elon Musk already joked about the unsuccessful campaigning for the Republicans, but now the new party will make pretty drastic changes to how it handles Tesla and SpaceX, and those companies will adjust their outlook.
Let’s take a deeper look.
Tesla ($TSLA)
Tesla shares traded lower during the regular session after Democrats secured both the House and Senate. The stock was down 2.32 percent at around 1:45 p.m. on the East Coast, trading at around $389.30.
The pressure is tied to more than the raw scale of Musk’s political spending, estimated at $450–474 million this cycle with roughly $224 million directed at Texas. In that state, Tesla now faces a Democratic governor and a Democratic senator after Gina Hinojosa unseated Greg Abbott and James Talarico defeated Ken Paxton.
The Austin Gigafactory, Robotaxi pilot programs in multiple Texas cities, and any related AI compute expansion sit under a new state executive who campaigned against certain corporate subsidies and floated a moratorium on new data-center construction.
Federally, Democratic control of key committees opens the door to deeper examination of Tesla’s autonomous-driving safety record, federal energy-storage and manufacturing incentives, and the national-security implications of any combination with SpaceX.
Investors are also weighing whether the company’s historically close alignment with the prior Republican leadership will invite slower permitting, additional hearings, or tighter rules on Full Self-Driving deployment.
For Tesla, the political shift adds near-term friction around state permitting and federal regulatory approvals for autonomy and energy storage. A potential merger with SpaceX may face slower review even if it proceeds.
Core growth drivers such as vehicle deliveries, energy deployments, and robotaxi rollout remain intact, yet the stock now carries a higher political-risk premium that could weigh on valuation until the company demonstrates workable relationships with the new Texas leadership and congressional majorities.
SpaceX ($SPCX)
SpaceX shares also declined in live trading on November 4 following the Democratic midterm sweep. The stock traded at $134.97, down 4.49 percent. The drop occurred even as broader indexes stabilized, highlighting a company-specific reaction to the election outcome.
Musk’s large contributions, concentrated in Texas races that both companies lost, place SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility and headquarters under a new Democratic governor.
At the federal level, Democratic control of Congress enables greater scrutiny of NASA, the Department of Defense, and other contracts that support a meaningful share of revenue, along with reviews of Starlink national-security uses and any Tesla merger. Analysts have noted that empowered committees can hold hearings and request documents on these relationships.
For SpaceX, the results raise the risk of delayed contract awards, higher compliance costs, and tighter constraints on AI and satellite infrastructure expansion, particularly in Texas where a data-center moratorium has been discussed.
A merger with Tesla could encounter political friction that slows integration of launch, connectivity, and autonomy capabilities.
While Starlink growth and launch cadence continue as primary drivers, the company faces a more contested path for federal funding and state-level operations, requiring management to rebuild ties with the new congressional majorities and Texas leadership to limit the overhang.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk calls Earth’s data centers “peanuts” next to what SpaceX is planning in orbit
Elon Musk says SpaceX capex efficiency is underestimated as orbital data centers loom by 2028.
Elon Musk is pushing back on one of the biggest worries hanging over SpaceX stock. In a reply on X on Sunday, Musk said the company’s capital expenditure efficiency is severely underestimated. He was responding to a Milk Road Stocks post citing analyst Kyle Reidhead, who estimates SpaceX will need to spend roughly $470 billion over the next five quarters.
Reidhead built that figure around the target SpaceX set on its third quarter earnings call: 13 gigawatts or more of compute by the end of 2027. In his breakdown, Nvidia captures 83 to 89 percent of the spending. SpaceX ended the quarter with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute and guided to $35 billion to $40 billion in fourth quarter capex, as Teslarati reported.
Musk did not attach a number to his claim, but the earnings call shows the argument. CFO Bret Johnsen said new compute currently pays for itself in under a year at today’s pricing, and Musk said that window could shrink to six months next year. Using that pace, Reidhead argues about $230 billion of the $470 billion could come from operating cash flow and about $60 billion from SpaceX’s roughly $90 billion cash pile, leaving around $180 billion to borrow. Musk confirmed last week that SpaceX had already closed a new $40 billion debt raise to buy GPUs.
The ground buildout is not the end goal. It is what is meant to pay for the move to orbit. Replying on Friday to charts built from Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire’s SpaceX model, Musk wrote that “Terrestrial compute will be peanuts compared to orbital compute,” adding that orbital compute deployed per month “probably exceeds terrestrial around the end of 2028 and then far exceeds it in 2029.”
Maguire’s model shows how steep that path is. It has capex climbing from $88 billion this year to $290 billion in 2027 and $369 billion in 2028, with SpaceX burning $77.8 billion in cash this year and $122.6 billion next year before turning $114.9 billion cash positive in 2028. Musk’s response to the model was, “I think we can do better.”
The orbital half runs through Starmind. SpaceX plans to operate up to 1 million AI satellites flying in clusters of about 10, linked by roughly 10 terabits of bandwidth, with deployment of thousands of units starting as soon as late 2027 out of its Gigasat factory in Bastrop, Texas, according to SpaceX’s space safety page. Musk has said each Starmind spacecraft will carry more than 250 kW of solar power.
Getting there depends on launch volume. Maguire’s model assumes 250 Starship flights in 2028, up from two this year and 38 next year. The nearer test is financial: SpaceX guided to $33 billion to $37 billion in first quarter 2027 revenue, more than double the $14.58 billion it booked in Q3, and Musk reposted that guidance again on Sunday morning.
Elon Musk
SpaceX President to gift Trump Accounts her SpaceX stock
Gwynne Shotwell’s 2 million SpaceX shares are headed to children’s Trump Accounts starting this December.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Friday that more than 2 million SpaceX shares belonging to her and her husband, Robert, will be distributed to children’s Trump Accounts in December, turning a pledge she made over the summer into an actual transfer. “Robert and I are thrilled that our gift of over 2 million shares of SpaceX stock will be distributed to children’s Trump accounts in December!” Shotwell wrote on X, adding that the shares are “transferring to escrow as we speak.”
The first round goes to children aged 11 to 17 who live in ZIP codes where the median family income is $57,000 or less, along with kids in ZIP codes with too few residents for the Census to report that figure. Shotwell said those families should receive a notice by Monday, Reuters reported.
A second gift is expected to be finalized in the next few weeks. That round will cover eligible children in military families serving overseas, children in foster care, and more kids in Texas counties near the Shotwells’ home where median family income is $90,000 or less. Elon Musk replied to the announcement with “Cool” and a heart emoji.
Shotwell first announced the donation on July 6, less than a month after SpaceX priced its record IPO at $135 per share on the Nasdaq. IPO filings showed Shotwell owned about 12.6 million SpaceX shares, Quartz reported at the time, which makes the gift roughly one sixth of her stake. At the roughly $146 per share used to value Musk’s own pledge earlier this month, 2 million shares are worth about $290 million.
How the stock would actually reach the accounts had been an open question since July. Treasury guidance acknowledged that stock donations could flow into Trump Accounts, but it did not explain the mechanics for a program whose contributions default into an S&P 500 index fund. Shotwell thanked the Treasury, the IRS, the Dell Foundation, Greater Horizons, Invest America and the law firms Morgan Lewis and Gibson Dunn for “working over the past few months to make this happen.”
The transfer also works as a dry run for a far larger gift. On October 19, Musk said he would give one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America next year and called it “the first of many.” With roughly 72 million children in the country, that pledge is worth about $10.5 billion. President Donald Trump thanked Musk the same day and said the shares would go through Trump Accounts, though neither SpaceX nor the Treasury has published how or when that distribution will happen.
Shotwell’s recipients also fill a gap in the program itself. Trump Accounts launched on July 4, and the $1,000 Treasury deposit only goes to babies born between 2025 and 2028. Teenagers aged 11 to 17 receive no government seed money, so for many of the families getting a notice on Monday, SpaceX stock will be the first asset in the account. The accounts convert into retirement accounts when the child turns 18.
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