Re:xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B
by nomel on Saturday March 29, 2025 @09:28PM
(#43520384)
> Well now you're just quibbling about the amount;
Of course, the question was about how to estimate the amount. It's a nonsensical answer that doesn't attempt to answer or help answer the question. If they were funded $1, their answer would still be correct: non zero multiple of a non-zero number (their last round of funding). It's an answer with unreasonable bounds, on both ends, especially the lower (fraction of last round of funding, even though current revenue is an order of magnitude more). It also has no precedence. The value of a company is never estimated based on rounds of funding from years ago (last was 2023 for SpaceX). It's based on both the present and projected performance.
It's not a rational answer, by definition, since it wasn't made with logic or reason.
Musk can say he's going to colonize Mars or mine asteroids, but the markets are perfectly capable of deciding on how likely (or unlikely) it is that he'll succeed, and price accordingly.
Colonizing Mars is a money-loser. It could completely tank the company. What business model involves colonizing Mars and then making a profit off that?
Mining asteroids is something we're so far away from that it's not worth baking in at that point. With current technology, it's far, far, far cheaper just to mine on Earth, even for things that are relatively rare.