SpaceX Might Be Tesla's Biggest Advantage

Kind: captions Language: en Many Tesla investors are worried about a Tesla merger with SpaceX. But what if SpaceX is quietly becoming one of Tesla's biggest growth drivers? Whether there is a merger or not, SpaceX is a net benefit to Tesla. That's exactly the case Basher lays out in a new analysis called 21 ways SpaceX drives value for Tesla. And some of the examples are hiding in plain sight. SpaceX has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Tesla mega packs and cyber trucks. Terra could give Tesla a strategic advantage in AI chip manufacturing. Starlink could become the communications backbone for robo taxis, connecting vehicles, charging hubs, and fleet operations across the globe. SpaceX's massive AI compute infrastructure could accelerate FSD and Optimus development. Optimus could eventually become labor infrastructure for Starbase, Starlink factories, and even future Moon and Mars settlements. And then there's perhaps the biggest surprise of all, a joint Tesla SpaceX project called Macroheart designed to automate digital work across entire companies. When you connect all 21 pieces together, a very different picture emerges. Maybe SpaceX isn't just helping Tesla. Maybe SpaceX is expanding the entire arena in which Tesla can win. Joining us today is Cernin Basher. He's a chartered financial analyst running his own investment advisory firm called Brilliant Advice providing wealth management services. Welcome, CERN. >> Hi, Herbert. It's good to be here and I think this is a a topic worth diving into and thinking about. Yeah, you uh put this together last week uh right after kind of just hearing also the the the common concern that a lot of Tesla investors seem to have right now. Many of them they're worried about a SpaceX merger. Now that is >> we don't know if that's going to happen. Number one, that's not set in stone. SpaceX is going to go IPO in June 20th, sorry, June 12th, which is like a couple weeks from now. And uh but there's lots of signals that this is going to happen. So I guess we're not here today, right? Sir, you're not here trying to say you're not going and say, "Hey, we want a merger to happen." What you're just simply saying is merger or not. There are 21 ways that SpaceX could actually benefit Tesla. Is that is that what you're trying to do today? >> Yeah. The purpose with this was really to say, let's set the merger aside. That is what it is out of our control. It's Elon's decision when and if that happens. But let's think about all the ways in which Tesla benefits from SpaceX. And I came up with at least 21 ways I think that that Tesla does. Uh and that's totally independent of of whether the two companies merge. >> Okay. Let's walk us through this. And then I know we joked about it before the show, but uh you're you're going to lead with you're gonna end with the best ones. You're going to start with some smaller ones at the beginning, right? >> We're going to start with the weakest one first. Um but but yeah the you know the obviously SpaceX is hugely important for Elon for long term with his desire to you know make humans a multilanetary species. So obviously SpaceX is going to be an enormous focus for him. That's down the road. That's long term. In the meantime I think there's a lot of things that SpaceX is doing and working on that that greatly benefit Tesla. Tesla uh this matters enormously for Tesla before it is for it is becoming the machine layer of the AI economy. All right, let's uh walk us through this. >> Yeah, so the first one and the most obvious one is that Tesla owns some SpaceX stock. So as SpaceX does well, Tesla derives some value from this. And I say that this is in my mind is the least important aspect. This is a little bit of a sore spot perhaps for Tesla investors who've felt like we should have gotten a slice of of XAI and maybe even a slice of SpaceX when it was much had a much lower valuation. But nonetheless, uh Tesla owns just under 19 million shares of SpaceX which is less than 1% of the company. >> So it's not nothing but it is small. >> Okay. Uh and then so as the stock rockets up and it has already this value has gone up also but yeah like you said it's not not a big deal. Okay >> that's right and there it is in the perspectus you know referencing that. >> Yeah. >> Why do why do you think that they did this? Why do you think that they decided to have Tesla buy SpaceX shares? >> Well I think a lot of shareholders shareholders had been agitating for it. M >> um and I think Elon, I forget when he said this, but it was basically saying, well, it was up to the board as to whether or not, you know, to to go through with this. Um and they did, but you know, in a small way. >> Mhm. >> Um you know, it's not like Tesla hasn't had lots of things going on themselves. the whole move out of Delaware and all that all that situation, Elon's compensation package, I think, absorbed a lot of board of director time and they probably put this on the back burner and said, you know, we've got bigger problems to deal with right now. We we really can't think about this. That's my guess. I I don't know. >> Yeah, it seems like a token purchase. Uh nothing strategic, nothing important, but okay, let's get to the strategic stuff. So, number two, SpaceX is already a Tesla customer. >> Yeah, and this is a clear one. Uh SpaceX is already buying uh products uh from from Tesla. Uh they purchased uh you know half a billion dollars of mega pack products in 2025. >> Uh that's that's pretty sizable. Um and it was about just under 200 million of mega packs in 2024. Um and then they bought, you know, $131 million of Cybert trucks in 2025. Uh if you go to Starbase, you will see a fleet of Cybert trucks like you've never seen before. It's really quite impressive. Um, so that's something and that that that could continue as as SpaceX expands. Uh, SpaceX is likely to be building additional launch sites uh around the country. Uh, rumored to perhaps be be buying land in in Louisiana potentially. So, you know, you need more Tesla products for that, another fleet of trucks, etc. So, there there's opportunities there. >> Yeah, I'm sure you'll cover later the big one, which is Optimus. Starlink will need SpaceX will need to buy a ton of >> Optimus in the future. and uh solar panels, chips, all that. Uh let's But before we get there, you you know, some people just the negative part said, "Hey, uh this is SpaceX bailing out Tesla's Cybert trucks." Do do you agree with that? >> I don't agree with that. I think Cybert trucks will do fine on their own. The problem with Cybertruck was it was an expensive product. Uh we've seen what's happened to orders uh when the company lowered prices and we're seeing now a ramp up in Cybertruck production. Um the reality is that SpaceX needed a fleet of vehicles. it makes sense to purchase Teslas and it makes sense to buy the Cybertruck. It's the perfect vehicle for for SpaceX. Uh did they need as many as they needed at that time? It sure seems like a lot of those vehicles are just parked there. I can't speak to that. I don't know what all the uses of those cyber trucks are. Um but there was certainly an opportunity. Now, you know, $131 million of cyber trucks for Tesla, you know, it's not it's not a lot of money. >> Yeah, it's not a big deal. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Number three. Mega becomes the energy backbone of SpaceX and XAI. What do you mean? >> Yeah, I mean, you know, as AI becomes the focus of SpaceX, um, and these, you know, AI data centers that Elon has built in record time, um, he's shown, I think, the world how important it is to pair that with with reliable energy. Uh, any fluctuations in power as you're running these these data centers become a problem. So, the Megapac can moderate that. Um, and so as XAI continues to scale up compute here on Earth, uh, they will also need a lot of megaps to go with that. We're also seeing that at at Tesla's own facilities with Cortex, too. The phenomenal number of mega packs that sit right next to that building. So depending on how many more data centers XAI builds here on Earth, uh, that that should drive me demand. >> In fact, uh, it's starting to happen, isn't it? I think last week Meta bought mega packs also. So this is going to happen more and more. Uh every data center will probably end up buying it from them. They just needed somebody to show off and so yeah. Okay. How much was that? Do you know how much I think you me you already talked about earlier. >> It's about half a billion dollars last year up from 200 million the year before. >> Okay. So >> pretty significant investment. Yeah. >> Okay. Great. Number four. So obviously Terapab um you know uh Teraf Terapab is a joint project between Tesla and SpaceX. There will also be other partners. They've already announced Intel. Uh it's rumored that ASML is interested in being a partner and I'm sure a bunch of other companies will probably come to the table. Um this is really something that I think can benefit the entire industry. It's not really a project in my mind where it's Tesla and SpaceX against everybody else. It's really Tesla and SpaceX helping bring the industry along to where they need to be ultimately >> in terms of chip production. >> So, it's in everybody's interest to figure out a way to build more chip fabrication >> faster, cheaper, more efficiently. And you know what better organization to sort of hitch your wagon to to Elon and his companies who has a proven track record of building things in record time. you know, the the the amount of time it took for them to build the XAI data centers just got quicker and quicker and quicker, and there's no other company on the planet that's been able to build data centers as fast as as as Elon has. So, you know, this obviously is uh an important project for Tesla. Uh Elon has massive plans to scale Roboaxi and even more massive plans to scale Optimus. You need a lot of chips for both of those. Um, and so you need to find a way, excuse me, to to build those chips at massive scale. So that can only help Tesla to the extent that that is achieved. Now, a lot of people say that this is down the road. It's going to take a while for Terap to to scale up. And that's true. But if it's wasn't for Terap, then the scaling up process would probably take a lot longer and according to Elon would never get to the point that they need it to be at. So this is actually a very important really important part for Tesla. you know maybe maybe five seven years from now. So certain do you think that uh terapab okay you can you can look at it in either way right one is that Tesla really didn't need SpaceX Tesla could have built terafab on its own or you will say no no no this is such a hard project it's so fortunate that you have another company like SpaceX who has money who has skills and then the two together can combine to truly do this massive endeavor uh or do you think that Tesla could have just done this on their own >> you know Over time, I suppose they could have. As you scale up Roboaxi, you turn those cash flows into the funding mechanism for Terra Fab. But as we know now, as we see right now, Roboaxi is not scaling yet. So there are no cash flows to turn around and reinvest from that business. That could change very quickly, but right now that's not the case. You've got SpaceX, who is going to do an IPO in a couple of weeks, who is going to refill their their coffers with 75 billion or more in cash. So you've got a nice partner there with the capital. And as Elon has said, SpaceX is going to build out the the initial phase of Teraf. Makes sense. That's where the money is. And maybe there'll be some other capital partners as well. I've I've I've speculated that the likes of Nvidia would probably get involved in this as well. >> Yeah, there's no doubt. Yeah. >> And if you're a company like Nvidia that's generating a ton of cash, you can only buy so much stock back and you can only pay so much in dividends. You know, you really need to look for things to reinvest in. And this for me is a logical place for that. >> Yep. I mean Tesla needs more chips for robotics and Optimus bots. We're talking billions. And then you've got SpaceX needs chips for AI data centers. And so he said, "Let's merge let's partner together and then it'll be like one team and we're working together." I think it's a it's a really big benefit for Tesla that this happened. The the other thing that relates to this Herbert too is if if Tesla has these massive plans and need all these chips as Elon has stated, SpaceX is in a similar situation with its desires to build orbital data centers and the amount of chips that they they need for that. So it derisks it to this to the extent that both these companies work together to build out this chip supply. It reduces them from just being, you know, a customer to the semiconductor industry, one of many. And now they're putting their own destiny kind of in their own hands. Now there's risk associated with that, too. this this may not work or it may be delayed or it may cost more than they expect all those things are risks but if you're Elon who would you rather have that risk like would you rather have it in his hands or somebody else's hands that that he can't control and I think time and time again Elon has shown us that he's willing to take that risk and do things himself and come up with a better faster cheaper way of doing things he's proven his ability to do that >> right um whether it's making batteries whether it's lithium refining, whether it's manufacturing, there's a whole list of things there that Tesla and SpaceX have done on their own. SpaceX is now the largest printed printed circuit board manufacturer in the United States with their Starlink terminal factory. That's traditionally something that you would have outsourced to another company. And they took that in-house and they're probably doing that, you know, faster, more efficient, and cheaper than anybody else possibly could. So I think together this is this is an important team to really make sure that their destiny is in their own hands and not in somebody else's hands. >> Okay. Number five. >> Yeah. And so you know obviously for Tesla uh the two big uh market opportunities is Roboaxi and Optimus. And so again these two companies working together allow them probably to accelerate that. Uh certainly Grock for Roboaxi becomes the voice of the car and the voice of Optimus. And so it's in Tesla's best interest to make sure that that Grock's capabilities are accelerating rapidly. So again, SpaceX SpaceX's success in that regard only helps Tesla here. Tesla has FSD in the car, right? The car can navigate itself, but if you ever want to be able to talk to the car and have that be an amazing experience and do all the things that that that we think that might allow, um, we want to see Grock develop as rapidly as possible. Um the other part of it too is there's a lot of there's a lot of real time um uh opportunities in terms of Grock processing data. So whether it's vehicle diagnostics uh further automation in the factory um I think we've already heard from some folks on the Tesla AI team that they've been using Grock to accelerate development of FSD >> and CyberCap. >> And CyberCap. Yeah. >> So this is this is an important I think partnership here. >> Yeah. And some people were complaining saying that Tesla should have created their own LLM. They could have created Grock themselves. Uh but Elon of course famously decided I need to create a separate team XAI to do this. The merge with X merge with SpaceX. End of the day I'm happier that Tesla has focused on FSD and and Optimus training the brains for Optimus and then the LLM separate. It's totally separate kind of a business. So it's a totally separate kind of product is being done by XAI but now backed by SpaceX. So they have I mean we just talked about it so much you know they're making real money now despite you know not selling it to consumers but they're sell now renting out space data centers now they make money so this is a big player they're a huge player now I'd rather have that that deep partnership rather than not or worse or another scenario would have been Tesla would have had to invest in it on their own. >> Yeah. >> Yep. Now there is some kind of unfortunate fallout with respect to this right with the whole way that XAI became you know became an entity it would have been nice excuse me >> yeah Tesla should have had 10% something >> well yes and it would have been nice to build this within Tesla that would have been ideal but as Elon tells the story >> it wasn't possible he wouldn't have been able to attract the talent >> now maybe if he had to do over again maybe he he could have found a way but at that time that's what he felt was necessary. >> I don't think so. Every I mean the whole reason why Anthropic left wasn't not they wanted to create their own. Everybody's creating their own AI and guess what they got? They're richly rewarded. They're all 10 billion plus hundred billion dollar companies now because they started something start new. All those guys who joined are now multi-billionaires and that's why they left. Part of the reason why they left of course >> there's other reasons but okay. >> Uh what did you mean by this? So Gro XA layer could become Tesla's general reasoning layer while Tesla's own autonomy stack remains the physical world control layer. >> Well, it's it's kind of the the cars FSD, you know, drives the cars. It makes the decisions about what the cars do, right? It's photons and actions out, but there's a layer that sits on top of that in terms of being able to reason. uh being able to look at the world and uh provide diagnostics or in the case of a passenger in the car, you'd be able to have a conversation with the passenger or the passenger to ask the car what it's thinking when it cut the other car off back there or didn't change lanes or whatever the car did or didn't do to be able to have a conversation with the vehicle about its own behavior. Right now, you can't do that with FSD. FSD is not built to have that kind of conversation. >> No, it's not. >> But Grock sitting on top of that in theory would have the capability to do that. And that opens up all kinds of all kinds of possible things. And also I think it makes it for a pretty magical experience when you can have a conversation with your car or with your robot. And ultimately that's that's critical. That's going to be very important. >> Yeah. I think Elon also said that the Gro is going to play the role of orchestrator fleet management of all the robo taxis of all the optimuses. It's like you know you have a swarm of bees. How do you control them? How do they all work together? How do they know to, you know, all the ants out there walking together and be, you know, just organized and orchestrated? This is Grock. And then again, it's like you could have you can he could buy it from somebody else or he could have built it himself, but how good would it have been? And in this case, you have the best of both worlds. And good thing that they're sister companies. Yeah. >> It's a bit like watching one of those uh displays like at a sporting event where there's like hundreds or a thousand people all doing things in unison. >> Yeah. right? They're not all talking to each other. There's maybe cues that they're following and they've certainly trained. But in this case, there's a layer that sits on top of all the robots that can do all these things in unison. And as we saw by Figure AI's demo, that 8day demo that they did, when one bot needed to sub out, another one appeared before the first one left. >> So, there's a there's a layer there of communication that needs to happen between the bots to the whole fleet. >> Uh, and that will make things look like it's magic. >> Yeah. It's going to be great. >> Yeah. Okay. Uh, Starlink could improve Tesla vehicle connectivity. Yeah, this is one is is uh we I did a show on this and I think it's huge. Um, I think we just recently started what seeing a lot of cyber cabs appearing in Austin with a Starling terminal >> at the back roof. Uh, many of them are showing up. So, it seems to be that this is going to be their path that they will probably embedded it. Well, it makes sense not only from the ability to have backup to to the current systems that they have the 5G network uh but eventually replace that and also of course allow have connectivity basically anywhere in the world is is important uh where the current cellular network doesn't provide service. So so Starling can cover that but ultimately it's probably also about cost and ultimately in addition to that it might be about capability. Um, and so, you know, this there's different layers to this, but I think ultimately, you know, this is very important to have every single car connected. Again, you get some kind of fleet behavior where if there's a a backup on a street ahead, the vehicles can kind of communicate to the other vehicles around them and these other vehicles then can take different pathways. So, things just kind of again magically happen without you even knowing what's going on. That because there's connectivity amongst the whole fleet, that kind of stuff becomes possible. It also becomes possible at some point in the future by the way once all vehicles are autonomous you no longer need stop signs or traffic lights. Yeah, people have been talking about that and they in fact you remember the conversation years ago was you cannot do robo taxiing unless you have communication of every single car to each other and it's like no that's not you don't need that >> no but if you're going to orchestrate a million robo taxis uh let's say you know 20,000 in one city how do you do that you need to have continuous communication with each of them and then you can you know no matter what like somebody told me today which is brilliant. You know like if one is going under a tunnel well AT&T's it doesn't may be out you don't know you want something that's a little bit more reliable. >> Yeah. So there's all kinds of issues like that and that may not be resolved with Starlink at all but certainly there's lots of dead zones as it stands today. Um and so just to be able to explain expand the connectivity amongst more of the fleet I think is really helpful. >> Mhm. >> Um >> this is huge. Starlink could improve Tesla vehicle connectivity. And of course, do you have another one? Starling could improve Optimus connectivity. >> Well, just before we leave this, yes, but that's true. Just before we leave this, it also opens up additional revenue streams to the extent you've got high bandwidth coming to the cars. Now, you've got like gaming opportunities. For example, u the thing I've joked about is you could play like Mario Kart like in real time as you're going down the road with the other cars. The other cars to you look like they could be like other other Mario Kart players. Um, stuff like that becomes possible in in real time in the virtual but also real way if all the vehicles are connected at high speed. >> Um, that could make it fun, you know, just to be sitting in a car playing playing games like that. >> Yeah. >> I don't know. I asked somebody that do you think that Starlink on Cyber Cabs is there for connectivity or is it there for entertainment? I think the answer was, well, you can already watch a movie. You can already do Zoom calls just using a normal connectivity, just your own mobile phone. So >> yeah, and that's true. And maybe we take it a step beyond that and say, well, what are the things you can't do right now? Um, you know, >> yeah, holograms or or like Yeah. like 3D movie capability, not just >> that, but also just maybe real-time inference, AI inference in the vehicles. Yeah. >> Um, maybe limited. So >> there you go. That's the answer right there. It's inference. It's like your computer chip being able to connect. >> Uh because right now you can't really download software and others unless you go home and you have Wi-Fi connectivity >> right >> here. You may be able to just do it on the wherever no matter where the car is. >> You know, that's probably the big answer. That's a big one. >> Yeah. >> Because that will benefit Tesla huge. Like that's a lot of money for Tesla robo taxi. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Now number seven, Herbert is is really fairly similar to number six, but Starlink could become the communications layer for Roboaxi, right? But it's it's all the things that needs to go on behind the scenes. >> Yeah. >> Right. We touched on some of these, right? It's dispatch, routing, payments, fleet monitoring, remote assistance, you know, maps, safety alerts, all this all the stuff that happens behind the scenes that you need to make this a seamless experience. Um, and that's that's critical. And again, we have some of this in place today, but maybe not as as widely spread as it really needs to be. >> Yeah, I think we we've seen Whimo have power outages. When there's a power outage, they all stop. The cars stop. We've seen that in BYU. That's why China actually stopped issuing permits because it was such a disruptive, dangerous scenario that happened. Hundreds and hundreds of cars just stopped moving. And then that's why we're seeing uh even before start we saw the Starlink terminal on the cyber cabs or the Tesla Model Y is being used for robo taxis. We already saw that they had something there for communications. There was some some box there. So they're just upgrading that. Yeah, they need this. >> Communications is critical for everything whether it's human to human but it's also, you know, vehicle to vehicle or or vehicle to network. Um it's critical for so much. And as as consumers of this, we may not recognize the need for, you know, to be able to update a map in real time, but at that time, it might be critical >> if a road suddenly is not is not available. You know, it'd be nice if the map knew that instantly. Uh, and other safety alerts, right, where there's flooding in the road. We have some some uh issues this this past couple weeks with Whimo uh driving into flooded roads. Um, >> well, if one car sees it, it's supposed to tell the other cars. And I think Tesla has talked about that scenario already that it's coming where one car sees something, it'll tell the other car. So they'll instantly on the same time frame redirect. Right. >> Yeah. And there's all kinds of situations like that, right? Where it's, you know, the road is temporarily blocked or there's, you know, there's a police chase on a certain street, you might want to avoid that street. There's just all kinds of situations like that where it's highly temporary and it would sure be nice if there was some communication between the cars about stuff like that. >> Celebrity celebrity spotted down the street. They'll tell the other cars, "Do you guys want to check her out?" >> That's right. Perhaps there's like an optin or opt out kind of feature with some of these things. >> Yeah, that's bad. That's bad. I'm joking. But uh All right. >> Yeah. So, so yeah, again, the robot taxi fleet that can communicate through all kinds of different means, whether it's cellular, Wi-Fi, satellite networks, >> it's just better. It's just more robust. >> Yeah. >> Right. You want redundancy, you want efficiency. >> Um, and the next thing I think is, >> you know, number eight is just the cost. We we mentioned it, we touched on this before, but you know, Starship is going to allow Starlink to deploy larger satellites at lower cost, right, and more frequently uh with higher bandwidth. So that cost decline uh will also help Tesla. >> Yeah. >> Right. And also will allow them to move more data per vehicles. We talked about how useful this might be for all kinds of different applications per robot. So here we I'm mentioning mentioning Optimus here and then peractory and also per supercharger. >> Mhm. >> Um this is also beneficial for Tesla. Um you know so again Starship's success here is going to help Tesla offer better service and drive down their costs. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I think Starlink use by Robotaxi and Optimus hasn't been uh examined enough but it is critical infrastructure and it's important and you've just covered it in many ways here. Thanks. >> Yeah. And the fact that Starlink has a direct to cell option, right? You don't need a big >> mini, you know, Starlink dish, you can just have a cell phone sized device in the robot and in theory then every single robot could be connected to every other robot. Um, so that's kind of exciting. >> Yeah. I wonder, you know, I'm pretty convinced that Tesla or Elon will create devices. He says we're not going to use smartphones, but you know, it's wink wink. I think he's going to create, right? It's gonna you have to have an ex an AI device anywhere everywhere. So, it's a ring, it's a jewelry, it's a watch, it's a glasses that you can, you know, and uh and maybe even if a device and uh I'm just wondering if it's going to be Tesla or if going to be ex SpaceX. Now, if XAI is part of SpaceX, which it is, it's more likely SpaceX. But boy, I'd love it if Tesla was part of that because that's direct to sell. >> Absolutely. And this also relates a little bit to the last one that we're going to talk about. So maybe we can touch on that again. Um, another one, and this is maybe pretty minor, but it's also important. Um, you know, if you want to test your products, you know, you want to test them in the toughest environments. Well, SpaceX is probably a pretty good proving ground. If if your products work on a rocket or on the moon or wherever in space, um, that's a good opportunity to test your products. um even even at launch sites and different places, you know, ports and different places around the world, uh you know, you want to make sure that things work in tropical storms and and all kinds of different environments. So, just just having having SpaceX as a good, you know, customer to test things is probably probably good >> merger or not, we we kind of already knew that for where where would Tesla first start robo taxis and Optimus? They do it on their own factories, which they're actually doing now, right? um all the factories in in in California, in Nevada, they're being there's actually optimist is there now being trained and then what are they going to do next? They're going to do their sister companies and then what are they going to do next? The suppliers and then move on. And so yeah, having a company this close that's huge that has tremendous needs and and all these different factories, perfect uh partner. You know, we you touched on mega pack sales and uh cybert truck sales. I'm telling you, man. Yeah. Optimus sales, robo taxi sales, it's going to go c. It's just it's just this one big customer alone is going to be massive. Yeah. >> Yeah. And that leads into number 10, Herbert, where uh >> Yeah. >> SpaceX needs Tesla Semi as well. >> Yeah. >> Uh as SpaceX grows manufacturing and all all of the logistics around the manufacturing, the rockets, the engines, the satellites, right? They have satellite manufacturing in Seattle. uh rocket manufacturing I think in Texas and different other other parts to make ceramics I think in Florida. So there's a lot of material and things need to be shipped around. So an autonomous fleet of semi-truckss would definitely benefit SpaceX and therefore that would become a big customer for for Tesla. >> Yeah, I I haven't even thought about that one. How big of a customer? Bigger than Pepsi? Well, maybe not initially, but growing over time as SpaceX scales out its business. Think about all the satellites that they want to put up in space and all the Starships that they want to build. All that material has to get to where it has to go to be built, fabricated, and then moved around. Um, now, of course, you can't carry a Starship on the back of a semi, but everything else before you build the Starship needs to come in via semi. >> Okay. Y >> So, that's that's a nice one. So, Optimus, you wanted me to talk about Optimus? Here we are. Number 11. >> Yep. >> Right. >> Uh, this is a big one. Uh, Elon has talked about eventually the amount of off Earth use of Optimus exceeds the amount of use on Earth. And he's talking about on Earth the potential for 8 to 16 to 24 billion robots needed. >> So, it's not like the opportunity on Earth is small, but the ultimately the opportunity off Earth is even larger. Um so in that sense SpaceX could become the ultimate customer for Tesla for Optimus. So what better situation to have than a sister company who's your big biggest customer. >> It is crazy. It is crazy. I mean if if you are creating a moon base and then you know how how difficult it is for humans to live there. You'll want to have thousands of optimists at minimum 10 maybe 10,000 plus I mean per city and more. And then what are they doing? They're actually right minerals converting into data centers, launching them onto space, making money, money, money, money. And it's like, it's like real. It's the largest business possible, not just making clothes, you know, factory making clothes. This is factory making AI data centers, which is high profit. >> And it's it's obvious because these are environments where humans can't really even survive, and it's highly dangerous, highly risky, right? So, put the robots up there, let them do the work. you're not taking away any any human's job. So, you don't have that that issue. >> Yeah. >> Um it's just so obvious. Now, this will take a while for this to play out, but for Tesla longterm, this is a a marvelous opportunity. It's really a dream situation as far as I'm concerned. As far as, you know, if you're building an Optimus business, uh what other company has a potential customer like this? So, let let's say there are two major bot companies in the world, Tesla and some other company. Well, fine. and they can battle it out for who sells bots on Earth. And that's great. It's a huge market for both of them. But does the other company have access in the same way that Tesla would to the space opportunity? You know, perhaps not. >> Even if they don't merge, SpaceX may actually become the largest company in the world, like 10 trillion, 20 trillion map market cap >> and then they'll be buying all the bots from Tesla. >> Oh my god. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> 10 10 plus years from now. Okay. This is huge. Obviously, it's very clear. It's very logical that Optimus is so critical to SpaceX. You can't really go build a moon base or you can't really build a Mars city if you don't have humanoid robots. >> It would be tough. It would be really tough. But if you send in millions of robots, it's possible. >> Yeah. And you're not as worried about, you know, failure. >> It's just Yeah. You don't have to worry about life support systems and all the all the issues that humans have and operating at different gravity environments and the length of space travel. >> Oh yeah. You don't have food yet. Yeah. You you send these guys, but they need energy. But if they don't need food, but then they create the ecosystem to create the food so that when humans come, they'll be like farms already built and ready to go. >> Yep. >> Yeah. This is exciting. My gosh. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Yeah. This was a good image, I guess, that the SpaceX had shared at one point. It's kind of the iconic image from from New York City building the skyscrapers, but on Mars with the bots. >> Mhm. >> They don't have their lunch boxes. >> No, they don't. They don't. I guess they don't need them. Yeah. Um, this might seem like a minor one, but actually, I think it's more important than we might realize. So to the extent that that um Tesla uh sorry SpaceX is successful in attracting talent and of course at this point for any young person uh coming out of school you know what better company to work for than SpaceX and of course Tesla that both of them have ranked very highly on the desire for you know for for people to work at right in terms of job job applications. But let's let's say for example that SpaceX sucks up all the talent. Well, Tesla benefits from that too because they can share that talent and the and the knowhow and some of the things that perhaps they develop. For example, the Cybert truck uses a an alloy that was designed by SpaceX. So, even if it's even if all the talent and all the knowhow flows to SpaceX, which I don't think is the case, but even if it does, Tesla could still benefit from that because of that, you know, that brother sister relationship. uh it's a shared culture because it's the same guy running the companies that basically the same culture in both companies um you know for the most part um so I think this this is only a positive as well now of course it becomes much much easier in a merger scenario but what I'm trying to say is even without that this is still a benefit to Tesla >> I mean it's already happening now I think there are employees who have told me that they have they're actually free to move across Tesla Elon Companies like one guy says, "Oh, I'm going to spend the week with Tesla. They can do that uh if needed." >> But this is, you know, the timing where SpaceX is no longer a tiny company. They're now going to be a massive large company with just killing it in every front, everything moving forward. So, this is going to just be much more significant. Yeah. And think about too the breadth of the things that you can work on if you go to work for SpaceX or Tesla. And then the fact that they can share back and forth like that's exciting for any engineer is to not necessarily be locked up into one one spot. Oh, I'm going to go work for a lithium refining company and that's all I'm ever going to do, right? Or I'm going to go work for a battery manufacturer and that's all I'm ever going to do. You have an opportunity to branch out if you want to. On the AI side, uh Ashok Kaliswami is now VP of AI that is responsible not only for FSD and Robbo taxi but also for Optimus but also for AcroAd and digital optimist. And so he's already crossed over and so the people who are working on Grock get to see the physical AI the re you know it's like AGI they're all working together and it's like you got the whole thing in front of you. >> That's right. >> Okay, that's the big one by the way. A AI AI sharing of AI uh manufacturing skills. Okay. >> Yeah. And I think we've already addressed this one. SpaceX can increase Tesla's talent um in terms of attracting talent to to both firms um >> AI data. Yeah. Okay. >> Yeah. So, we covered that. Um and we've also kind of discussed this, but let's dig into a little bit more. Um you know, Grock is going to become Tesla's customer interface. Um so for example um you know Grock can for one can become customer support uh you know X can be a marketing channel Grock can be a customer support um inside the vehicles you can have Grock assistance right you can interact with with Grock inside the vehicle you can ask your cars about maintenance charging route planning insurance energy use or the behavior of FSD um and so of course the more successful that XAI and Grock are that's a better and better product better service for for Tesla. Um, if you have customer service that where you don't need people where you've got AI that's really capable that can handle almost everything that that is really really amazing, >> right? >> And then you've got the whole layer that's not talked about too much and also this perspectives I don't think for SpaceX really addressed this but X uh movement into payments and money and then eventually identity and so on. So it's going to be interesting too from a financial perspective how X positions itself there. Um you think about payments in a robo taxi for example um and so on. So, you know, is that going to be integrated with X money? Right now, your your credit card is linked to the, you know, your your Tesla account. When you charge a supercharger, it charges your credit card. At some point, will that just come out of your X Money account? Right. So, there's there's just more sort of linkages and interfaces between the two companies in that regard, too. >> That's a big one. So every developer, every employee in the U, you know, in in the world today is now starting to use AI, you know, compute AI specifically. And uh so then you're spending money because it's it's inference, right? It's tokens. You have to pay for tokens every minute that you're using the AI, you're being charged. >> Yeah. And uh so now you're paying anthropic, you're paying open AI, but if you are the employee of the company that actually has that XAI, you know, code uh what uh what's it called now? Uh build uh Grock build >> grock build. >> And this is what uh Yasai said. He's one of the VPs of AI that's building robo taxi and cybercab and he said I use grock build to actually uh use it now to create FSD but also for cybercap which means not just like he just used it for cybercap progress meaning this is like a car and deciding how it you know how it's being implemented and so forth. So you but my my my point is that when you're an employee of Tesla, you have unlimited token usage because XAI happens to have just abundance of data centers and inference. In fact, Anthropic has to pay them for access. And Elon just said a few days ago, he said, "Hey, I I personally I purposely put in a clause to say that we can have a threemonth exit out of this terminate this agreement." It's Elon who said, "I put that in." >> Yes. >> Because in case we need it. That's right. >> And so, but if you think about if you're employee of Tesla AI, you have unlimited token as many tokens you want. Like there's no restriction. If you work for other companies, they're going to basically shut you down because it's costing them too much because you have to pay some other company for it. Like >> huge amount of money. >> Here it's like go for it. >> Go for it. And so so you Tesla employees, Tesla AI people are going to have even just supercharged progress and per uh you know efficiency and productivity faster than everyone else because you've got free XAI Grock code and compute. >> That's great. >> That's right. >> The money part, it's very interesting. >> The money part is interesting and it's the one I think that we know the least about right now because we don't know what that looks like. got to think a little bit more what that will do. But boy, yeah, because I forget that X, it's actually X and which is owned by SpaceX, not Tesla. And then we we you and I have talked many times that imagine when you're driving and your car your robo taxi is going to take you and you go, "Hey, I want to go to Starbucks by you know big the the the robot taxi already knows your profile, right? It knows what you order and then they'll just automatically charge it and it'll likely be through an X account. >> Mhm. >> Because it's X money. >> Well, it's interesting. So, you look at the customerf facing sides of things, right? So, you got the robo taxi network and so there may be a subscription for that. You've got Starlink subscription for that. >> You've got X is a subscription for that. So, is there the opportunity to bundle all of that together? >> Yes, obviously there should be. Well, there again, SpaceX success with Starlink and X is good for Tesla in in the sense that if you already are a customer of Starlink, you're instantly a Roboaxi customer, right? You don't you don't have to create a new profile with the Roboaxi app. You just sign on with your Starlink account, much like when we sign on to Roboaxi with our Tesla account, it knows who we are. >> So, those kinds of things too are great. I mean can you imagine like all sorts of things can happen right it's like okay if you sign up for uh X mobile uh X mobile right SpaceX mobile direct to mobile which is meaning say your phone is now going to your payment for your phone monthly fee for phone connectivity is through X through SpaceX you get you know I don't know 20 rides free a month on robo taxi >> or vice versa you know you sign up for robo taxi and you use that a few months uh you get your mobile thing for free just all sorts of package and there's just a couple you just mentioned there's all sorts of things right yeah the other thing that you think about too this is really interesting is Starlink right now operates in 164 countries okay um eventually I would imagine that Tesla would like to offer a robo taxex as many of those countries as possible >> so if you already have Starlink subscribers again when they roll out a robo taxi in a new country >> you instantly make make that available to all those Starlink subscribers. They don't have to do anything. Yeah, they they're in they're in the app. They're they're part of the robo taxi network >> and you can market to them if you wanted to through the Starlink app. >> I know. I'm not sure that that's a big deal. I mean, it doesn't take a much effort to download an app and get a you know, >> it doesn't. But again, this is just one one positive thing and maybe there's some incentive to say, "Oh, hey, try out robo taxi." >> Yeah. >> This is one of the reasons that some people say that Tesla should buy Uber to get the customers. And it's like, well, no. >> Ridiculous. They already have customers. >> Yeah. The X app is what 350 million users or something like that. It's more it's more visitors than Tik Tok. >> Yeah. >> Uh and so I just saw the recent stat about that. And and that one everybody is going to have access to payment, right? So you're going to use it for payment everywhere. That's what they use with WeChat is being used everywhere for China payments everywhere. Now WeChat added robo taxi, their version of roboaxi just right in there. And so I can see that where all X instantly have an Robbo taxi account. That is a great interface between X and Tesla can. So you have a Tesla separate robo taxi app, but if you have an X account, it's automatically there. Well, just use the X account >> and same with Starlink, I think, ultimately as well. >> Yeah. Yeah. So I Yeah. the whole show on this. I think Tesla's moving towards a subscription business and they're moving to a direct to consumer business >> in every way. And so then there probably will be a subscription package that pays for transportation. So instead of paying your car bill, your insurance bill, your phone bill, your entertainment bill, your X account, your money, it's all going to be packaged in one subscription that lets you have as many rides as you want or or you know, or to sub subsidize pricing, you know, if you have all these accounts. It's like it's the ultimate Amazon Prime. >> Exactly. Exactly. Right. They can get away with free delivery because you're you're promising to buy as more products from them. In the same way, if the more usage you do, they'll give you free rides. >> Yeah. >> Or or you know, whatever how they want to position it. But >> and then you tie that into Optimus at some point as well, it becomes really exciting. Uh by the way, as I mentioned, Starlink operates in 164 countries. Right now, Tesla has supercharges in I think about 55 countries. So Starlink actually has a bigger global platform than Tesla does. Mhm. >> That's another potential benefit as well is as Starlink and SpaceX expand internationally, it makes it probably easier in some ways for Tesla to follow along behind them. >> At some point Starlink will do direct to mobile and they will win. It could I don't know how long it will take but at one point every you know more people will be subscribing to a mobile plan through Starlink than anything else. And that's like every human >> and not just mobile but but internet service as Elon says that Starlink will effectively become the internet. >> Yeah. >> It's crazy. Okay. >> Yeah. So this is a little bit related but where there's infrastructure that's that's not there uh because again Starlink uh that makes it easier for Tesla to expand in those regions. So think about for example a supercharger site right? It's much more valuable if it's connected. And so, you know, if you've got something that that can be connected and managed remotely, it's easier for a Tesla to expand in those those areas. If you don't have to send somebody out to look at the supercharger to see if it's okay. If you can remotely manage that, that's helpful. Um, and again, this is the international expansion story. Tesla has supercharges in 55 countries. Starlink operates in 164. So there should be some piggybacking of y