Elon Musk’s SpaceX is many different things to many different people — but one thing that it definitely isn’t is a get-rich-quick scheme.

Since its debut on the public tickers back in early June, SpaceX shares have sunk from a high of over $225 to a dismal $110 today, as compounding failures and overvaluation fears take their toll. Overall, SpaceX is down nearly 30 percent compared to its opening stock price of $150 — and all those day-one rubes are now seeing red.

“Elon has ruined me,” one Redditor posted on r/WallStreetBets, along with a screenshot showing a loss of nearly $455,000 CAD on thousands of SpaceX shares. “He was supposed to take us to Mars and burn short sellers. Still holding 7300 shares. Please Elon fly again.”

On Musk’s X-formerly-Twitter, investor’s spirits, like his rockets, weren’t any higher.

Under a post showing off SpaceX’s Starship at sunset, dejected Musk acolytes moped about their fortunes, begging the company to get its act together.

“It sure would be cool if this stops crashing… 30 percent short interest and down 40 percent on the month,” one fanboy groused. “I believed in you and lost over 20k in a month. I really hope that it comes back.”

On Thursday, when SpaceX announced it was delaying the launch of Starship’s thirteenth test flight by a day, commenters were quick to point out that the update came just minutes after US stock markets closed. (The stock continued sinking the next day, falling more than another 3 percent by press time.)

“Notice they wait until market close now,” one poster quipped.

“Sure,” said another user, “wait till market close to announce…lol…as if we didn’t know what the weather was going to do hrs in advance.”

With that major test now scheduled for Friday evening, it remains to be seen whether a successful test will be enough to win back investors. On the flipside, a high-profile failure now could severely compound the company’s woes, putting SpaceX even further from the $2 trillion valuation Musk has promised. Time will tell.

More on SpaceX: China Is Catching Up With SpaceX Fast, Landing First Reusable Rocket Booster on Offshore Platform

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Last week, SpaceX’s enormous Starship rocket failed to ignite several of its engines, forcing the company to abort its first test launch since its IPO earlier this summer.

The scrub served as the perfect metaphor for the space company’s ongoing struggles to convince investors of CEO Elon Musk’s lofty ambitions — ambitions which have little to no chance of turning into a reality without Starship.

While the almost-trillionaire has promised that SpaceX will one day be worth “more than the rest of the Earth,” its prolonged decline on the stock market suggests otherwise. Instead of joining the AI race, SpaceX has resorted to selling compute to its competitors.

His EV maker Tesla, an early pioneer in the adoption of electric vehicles, has also been flailing. Vehicle sales have been plunging as customers are driven away by the richest man in the world’s tasteless behavior and erratic commentary. Even recent jumps in revenue were thwarted by major AI-related spending, causing Tesla’s share price to tank this week.

As a result of it all, Musk’s empire feels more like it’s coming down around him — making it a perfectly convenient moment for him to sit down with The Economist for an attempt at a clean slate. (Whether it landed we’ll leave to you to decide.)

In the interview, published Thursday, Musk lamented that he “got a little too involved in politics” and “got carried away, frankly,” by his efforts to systematically gut the government with the help of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency during the early days of the second Trump administration.

The scars DOGE leaves behind are as evident now as they’ve ever been. Instead of cutting spending, the group forced tens of thousands of government workers out of their jobs, laid waste to foreign aid — with catastrophic consequences — and leaked highly sensitive data. It has sparked waves of protests, hollowed out the Social Security Administration, and fundamentally undermined the role of science in the United States.

Perhaps worst of all to Musk, his disastrous stint as a “special employee” in Washington, DC, last year has made him staggeringly unpopular — possibly even one of the most hated men in America.

“And I got a lot of flack from this, for this obviously,” he conceded in the Economist interview.

Now that his empire is looking worse for wear, it’s no wonder Musk is looking for an opportunity to tell the public that he’s moved on from helping the Trump administration dismantle the government.

But whether he actually regrets his actions is unclear at best. During the interview, Musk showed “no sign of relinquishing the geopolitical bully pulpit,” per The Economist. He doubled down on accusing the media of wrongfully characterizing him as a racist, despite repeatedly making racist comments. He even argued that Europe’s far-right extremist leaders were simply misunderstood.

In an piece accompanying its interview, The Economist acknowledged it sees the centibillionaire’s political views as “plainly bigoted.”

Musk also promised that AI will make money irrelevant — an “age of amazing abundance,” he enthused — and that governments should simply “issue people checks.” Considering his actions at the helm of DOGE last year, it’s clear he sees little role for the government beyond that.

More on Musk and DOGE: Elon Musk Says He Is So Sorry for His Horrible Behavior

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Shares of Elon Musk’s embattled carmaker Tesla slid over 13 percent Thursday morning after posting dismal second quarter results the night before.

The stock is hovering at around $324 at the time of writing, down over 15 percent over the last five days and about 28 percent year to date.

The company missed Wall Street expectations, despite its core automotive segment generating just over $20 billion in revenue, up 23 percent from a year ago. However, the company’s gross profits dropped as operating expenses climbed far quicker than revenue, in large part thanks to AI-related capital expenses and other research and development — an intimately familiar refrain for the tech world in 2026.

In other words, investors are growing increasingly wary of Musk’s reinvention of his car business. The almost-trillionaire is trying to shift the company’s focus from selling cars to robotaxis, a humanoid robot called Optimus, and AI — a series of major undertakings that’re clearly weighing it down financially after multiple quarters of major losses.

Worse yet, Tesla’s woes are clearly having knock-on effects on his rocket company as well. SpaceX’s stock has had a bruising month since hitting an all-time high after going public in mid-June. An aborted Starship test launch and Musk’s dubious plan for orbital data centers have investors betting against the company in incredible numbers.

During Wednesday’s earnings call, the company claimed that production of its Optimus humanoid robot remains on track, but didn’t elaborate beyond promising that production is starting “soon.”

“This is going to be the hardest product to scale manufacturing that we’ve ever made at Tesla, because everything on the robot is new,” Musk said.

Tesla’s robotaxi service is also being rolled out to six major metropolitan areas across the country, but continues to lag far behind its key competitor, Alphabet’s Waymo.

Despite slightly more optimistic vehicle sales numbers, the company continues to burn through billions of dollars to keep all of those new plates spinning.

The elephant in the room during this week’s call was the long-rumored possibility of Musk merging Tesla and SpaceX — a doubling down on his portfolio that could set up some of the most unbelievable financial drama in economic history.

The mercurial entrepreneur didn’t rule out the possibility, saying that “we can’t talk about combining companies on an earnings call.”

“It’s got to be done with the appropriate process,” he added.

More on Musk: Elon Musk Says His Goal Is for SpaceX to Be Worth More Than the Entire Earth

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Shares of Elon Musk’s SpaceX are continuing their weeks-long decline, hitting a new all-time low of around $115 by Wednesday afternoon.

The scale of the accumulating losses since the company’s hotly-anticipated IPO last month is staggering. The company has wiped out over $1.1 trillion in market value since hitting an all-time high of $225 last month, and it’s possible that its decline is just getting started.

The rocket company has given investors little to grasp onto, apart from an ever-optimistic Musk claiming that it could one day be worth more than the entire Earth. On Thursday, the company was forced to scrub the launch of its Starship spacecraft because several engines failed to start — a perfect metaphor for the company’s recent stock market performance.

Meanwhile, countless short sellers are making billions by betting against the company, adding plenty of downward pressure on the stock.

Looming in the background is the second quarter earnings call of Musk’s EV maker, Tesla, on Wednesday evening. The company has been burning through cash at an alarming rate despite seeing sales and revenues jump. Analysts are still keeping close tabs on the chance that Musk may fold Tesla into SpaceX, a merger of unprecedented proportions. Tesla will likely be facing plenty of questions about the possibility during this week’s earnings call.

“I think there’s over 80 percent chance that Tesla and SpaceX get together in 2027,” tech analyst and longtime Tesla bull Dan Ives said in a note. “It’s the logical move from a data engineering perspective and Musk ownership. It makes too much sense for it not to happen.”

The level of uncertainty is palpable. SpaceX is lining up its prototype Starship rocket for another launch attempt on Thursday. Roughly a week and a half later, the company is expected to release its second quarter financials, a major litmus test of where the company is headed. As Yahoo Finance notes, investors are interested in how much the rocket company will be spending on AI products and the growth of its Starlink internet satellite business.

What likely won’t change is the fact that the company’s lofty valuation remains largely disconnected from its ability to make any money. SpaceX lost almost $5 billion last year — and xAI, which was folded into the company when it took over X-formerly-Twitter, lost a further $6.4 billion.

More on SpaceX: SpaceX Is Learning a Nasty Lesson About Going Public When Your Main Product Is Experimental

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Is it possible to not like a movie in a normal way? Can it simply not be “your thing” without being transposed onto some intangible, ever-raging culture war?

It certainly isn’t if you’re an anti-woke crusader like SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Like a lot of very online right wingers who are suddenly qualified classicists, he’s very upset about the new Odyssey adaptation directed by Christopher Nolan.

Nolan, according to Musk, “desecrated Homer and groveled on his knees just to meet the woke rules required to win an Oscar.” That’s because his movie dares to do stuff like cast Black women and a trans man in prominent roles, making the director what Musk termed an “anti-White racist.” In other words, it’s supposedly not “historically accurate” — never mind the fact that the epic poem contains gods wandering the Earth and a Cyclops.

Thankfully, there’s a wonderful piece of technology called AI out there that’s perfect for realizing the juvenile aesthetic predilections of stunted creatives who want to wallow in an imagined idea of what the past was like.

“Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer,” Musk declared Tuesday, referring to his own AI video generator.

Musk’s post quoted, and implicitly endorsed, a three minute dialogue scene that another user generated with Grok Imagine, featuring a virtual cast that looks more Western European than Mediterranean. No comment from Musk on if this was sufficiently “historically accurate,” of course, despite previously accusing Nolan of having “total contempt for the Greek people” with his casting.

Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026

Someone should probably let Musk know that there’s already a fully AI-generated Odyssey adaptation coming out, but the creators behind that one seem to respect Nolan, so it probably won’t be anti-woke enough for his taste.

But maybe the perfect Odyssey film doesn’t have to be AI-generated, if it’s in the hands of the right director.

One Musk fanboy suggested that he should “give Mel Gibson $100 million” to create a “painstakingly historically accurate” adaptation. Musk replied, “I’m down.” (The last movie Gibson directed, “Flight Risk,” was ripped to shreds by both critics and audiences.)

Though for the past few months Musk has fought like a combatant in the Trojan War to drum up controversy over Nolan’s film, his efforts have failed spectacularly. It opened to $264 million globally and will probably make a billion dollars, if not more, by the end of its run. It’s gotten rave reviews from critics, and moviegoers seem to love it, too. 

And is anyone surprised? Nolan is a beloved figure in Hollywood with legions of fans. Musk has his own army of devout followers, too, but the difference is that Musk is constantly miserable, alienating even some of his own followers with his extreme takes.

Nolan, whether you like his movies or not, is a showman that wants you to have a good time. Even Musk said Nolan was “awesome” a few years ago. Audiences will remember that they liked some of his other films and turn out for his new one. They probably won’t take notice Musk melting down about it online, even if each of his posts gets hundreds of thousands of likes on his platform he remolded to be his personal echo chamber.

More on Elon Musk: Elon Musk Says His Goal Is for SpaceX to Be Worth More than the Entire Earth

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As shares of Elon Musk’s SpaceX continue to dip, short sellers betting against the company are making an absolute fortune.

As Reuters reported last week, short sellers had already made a whopping $8.7 billion in profit — and that was when the company’s stock was trading around $135. Since then, shares have cratered, dipping all the way down to an all-time low of $118 by Wednesday.

As a result, even more short sellers are throwing themselves at the chance to bet against the company, as CNBC reports. According to estimates from financial software company S3 Partners, around 206 million shares are being shorted, just under a third of all publicly tradable shares. That’s up from around 185 million just last week and only 40 million shares one month ago.

“We continue to see short sellers adding exposure ahead of several key upcoming catalysts, including the company’s first earnings report as a public company and subsequent lock-up expirations,” S3 head of research Matthew Unterman told CNBC.

Musk, who has an extensive track record of raging against Tesla short sellers, is clearly letting the issue get under his skin.

“The survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” he tweeted.

The almost-trillionaire also rehashed his belief that “SpaceX will be worth more than Earth if we achieve our goals,” stating without evidence that his extremely far-fetched prediction was “obviously true.”

But before it has any chance to take over the entire world, SpaceX has a lot to prove. The company confirmed this week that it will release its first quarterly earnings report on August 4, a major litmus test of where the company’s headed.

Chances are it won’t be pretty. SpaceX’s market capitalization of over $1.6 trillion — making it one of the most valuable companies in the world — has little to no bearing on its current business fundamentals. The company lost almost $5 billion last year. Musk’s xAI, which was folded into SpaceX earlier this year and renamed to SpaceXAI, similarly lost $6.4 billion.

To regain ground lost ground, Musk will have to convince investors of his lofty and untested goals of sending data centers into space and settling on the Moon with the help of SpaceX’s behemoth Starship spacecraft.

Those claims will be put to the test Thursday, when the company has scheduled another test of the mammoth rocket — and regardless of the outcome, we’re likely to see substantial stock movement in its wake.

More on SpaceX: Short Sellers Are Having a Field Day Betting Against SpaceX as Shares Continue to Slip

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Look, dating in the 2020s sucks. The apps are bad, people are rude, and the etiquette of it all seems to be evolving at the speed of sound. Yet for all the downsides, there’s nothing that can’t be made 100 times worse with the addition of AI slop.

For better or worse, that’s exactly what Hinge founder Justin McLeod has in mind for his latest dating app, “Overtone.”

First spotted by TechCrunch, McLeod announced an $18 million round of funding on the company’s blog. While that’s a hefty chunk of change for any startup, confidence from venture capitalists isn’t exactly shocking considering the founder’s previous success. What really stands out about the blog, though, is that McLeod used the bulletin to vague-post about his grand vision for a new, AI-integrated dating app.

“Think about the most un-human parts of the dating app experience,” McLeod challenged: “writing personal ads for ourselves, judging each other in a split second based on photos, sorting through thousands of potential partners, and wrangling them through the precarious funnel of like to match to chat to date.”

“None of those steps exist because anyone wanted them,” McLeod’s pitch continues. “They exist because they were the best the technology could do.”

Like many, many startup founders before him, McLeod asserts that Overtone is “not a dating app,” but something different — in this case, a “service.” That may be a distinction without a difference, but it signals a sloppified shift in the founder’s approach.

While details remain scarce, we do know that Overtone is meant to be a “a voice- and audio-forward service, enabled by AI, that provides highly curated introductions.” What that means in practice is difficult to say. Will the app be manipulating voice messages meant for potential lovers? Does it connect people based on the information they give, or on the information generated by AI?

In his blog, McLeod provides few concrete clues as to what Overtone might encompass, though the app he envisions isn’t exactly inspiring.

“We get to know each person deeply, learning about them in their own voice, hearing their own unique story,” McLeod writes. “And we make only the introductions that are worth making, grounded in relationship science and thoughtful reflection. We transparently explain why we believe someone is a great match. And we leave it up to our daters to meet in person and discover chemistry, with guidance along the way.”

So, if you ever saw some AI-generated fruit slop and thought, “how can I integrate this into my dating life?” Overtone might be just the app for you.

More on AI startups: Startup Upset After Journalist Points Out How Creepy Its Humanoid Robots’s Hands Are

The post AI-Pilled Tech CEO Convinced He Has the Perfect Solution for Online Dating, Announces Harebrained App Idea appeared first on Futurism.

After years of being engaged, it looks like SpaceX and the Pentagon are finally ready to send out save-the-dates.

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk’s formerly-just-rockets company is now in talks with the Department of Defense over providing the military access to its data-center capacity for running AI models, tying the knot on their already close relationship.

People familiar with the matter told the newspaper that the arrangement could cost the Pentagon billions of dollars, but stressed the talks are ongoing and could fall apart.

Computing power is a precious commodity during this ever-raging AI boom, and SpaceX has it in spades. Musk has rapidly built data centers in Memphis, Tennessee and a lot of that capacity hasn’t been tapped into, with Bloomberg reporting that his AI startup xAI is only using 11 percent of its total computing power.

Selling this excess compute would help generate the company some much needed revenue, even if it directly benefits its rivals. SpaceX has struggled to be profitable, losing $5 billion last year. And xAI, which was folded into SpaceX before its IPO last month, burned through $6.4 billion over the same period. All the while, Musk has struggled to sell his Grok chatbot to businesses, as its capabilities lag behind leaders like Anthropic and ChatGPT.

The real story, though, is the deepening ties between Musk’s business empire and the Pentagon, which goes way back. SpaceX has worked with the military to deploy a secretive network of spy satellites, for example, and also had a small contract to experiment with building a rocket that could deliver military cargo across the globe.

Those collaborations have gotten way bigger in the past year. In May, it won a $2.29 billion Space Force contract to build a network of satellites that could function as a military internet service, connecting weapon systems across the globe. That same month, it was awarded an even larger $4.16 billion contract to provide the technology to build a system that can track missiles and aircraft from orbit.

To be clear, Musk’s companies are far from the only tech leaders to be getting in bed with the Pentagon. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle all have similar deals for providing cloud computing capacity to the military, as well as for providing their AI models, the WSJ noted.

But it’s a particularly hypocritical road to be going down for Musk. When Musk cut off Starlink satellite access to the Ukrainian forces in 2023, he reasoned that he didn’t want SpaceX to be “explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.” Fast forward to this June, when a Pentagon official bragged that the military used Grok to fire 2,000 missiles at Iran during Operation Epic Fury, sparking a war that killed thousands of civilians in the country.

More on SpaceX: SpaceX’s Shares Tank After Starship Fails to Launch

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Shares of Elon Musk’s SpaceX took another beating when trading resumed on Monday, sliding to an all-time low of just under $139, well below its IPO opening price of $150.

It’s now over 38 percent down from its all-time high of $225 three weeks ago, illustrating how rapidly the hype has inverted into widespread skepticism over Musk’s vision.

Following a blockbuster Wall Street debut, the space company has struggled to maintain any degree of momentum as investors continue to ask some very hard questions, including over its major pivot to orbital data centers and its near-term profitability. Despite being valued at almost two trillion dollars, the company lost nearly $5 billion last year.

Shares have hovered below the company’s opening price for weeks now, despite plenty of bullishness among analysts.

The news comes just days after Chinese state-run media showed a Long March 10B rocket booster being caught by an offshore recovery platform, indicating the country was making major strides in catching up with SpaceX’s reusable rocket tech. Over the weekend, an experimental Japanese reusable rocket safely took off and landed, suggesting the nation may be right behind China as well.

Beyond some steepening international space launch competition, experts believe SpaceX’s transformation into an “AI play” may be closely related to its Wall Street woes, as the BBC reports.

“Everyone saw SpaceX as an AI story,” CFRA investment research analyst Keith Snyder told the broadcaster.

“With Elon Musk, any company he touches gets people excited,” he added. “But this was also the first time people felt like they were able to invest in something that was being marketed as an AI play.”

How SpaceX will cover its enormous losses and start actually making some money — not to mention, prove that orbital data centers don’t just make sense but are even feasible to begin with — remains a major point of contention.

In short, the initial enthusiasm surrounding SpaceX’s IPO is firmly behind us.

“If you bought around the first tick you’re definitely underwater,” Snyder told the BBC. “It started to look a lot like a meme stock.”

“If you’re an IPO investor, you’re ok,” Mergermarket analyst Samuel Kerr added. “If you bought in the first few days, you’re not very happy right now.”

Investors remain sharply divided on where SpaceX shares are headed next. Many analysts from major investment banks remain bullish, expecting the stock to make massive gains. Case in point, Morgan Stanley believes the company will reach a price tag of $300 — far more than double its current stock price.

Snyder has a far more muted outlook, expecting SpaceX to fall down to just $115 a share.

Meanwhile, Musk has said he thinks “SpaceX will be worth more than the rest of Earth if we accomplish our goals,” a characteristically ambitious and perhaps delusional argument that assumes a lot of things will go right for the company.

Whether investors will buy into this lofty vision remains to be seen. Given its recent stock performance, it’s far from a guarantee.

“If SpaceX can do all the things it says it will do, yes, investors are sitting on the most valuable company ever,” Kerr told the BBC. “But it’s got a lot of work to do to get there.”

More on SpaceX: Elon Musk Says His Goal Is for SpaceX to Be Worth More than the Entire Earth

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As tech companies go, the surveillance giant Palantir plays it looser than most. Specializing in deadly military targeting software and domestic police technology, Palantir isn’t afraid to lean into the reactionary, dystopian schtick.

That’s not an exaggeration. In a since-deleted post on X-formerly-Twitter, Palantir’s head of “strategic engagement” Eliano Younes shared an AI-generated propaganda video depicting the company logo surrounded by cult imagery, bloody crosses, and the grim reaper.

While the edgy ragebait is part-and-parcel of Palantir’s favored type of marketing material, the video evidently ruffled some feathers, exposing a deep cultural rift within one of the largest military tech firms in the world.

Speaking to the Financial Times, one former staffer explained that the incident caused the company to have an “absolute internal meltdown.”

Per the employee, a debate quickly overtook the company’s internal messaging channels, where workers reportedly expressed their outrage out in the open.

“You had people being like: ‘my customer is a children’s hospital — how am I supposed to explain this to them?'” the staffer recalled.

It’s not the first time the company’s leadership has alienated its rank and file. Earlier this year, Palantir workers registered their disgust with the company’s collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

After the murder of anti-ICE activists Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, one employee took to Palantir’s message boards to declare that “in my opinion ICE are the bad guys. I am not proud that the company I enjoy so much working for is part of this.”

Politically, it all reads a bit like Mordor’s orcs registering HR complaints about Sauron’s management style. The objection is noted, but you’re still helping the guy conquer Middle Earth; Palantir, after all, is named after a fictional orb in JRR Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” that corrupts anyone foolish enough to peer into it.

More on Palantir: “Televised Nervous Breakdown”: Palantir CEO Suffers a Bit of a Meltdown During Live Interview

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has long heavily relied on selling science fiction to investors.

He wants to pollute our planet’s orbit — already brimming with junk — with gigantic orbital data centers. Then, he wants to settle on the surface of the Moon. Ultimately, he wants to make humanity an interplanetary species by building a city on Mars with the help of an enormous fleet of Starship spacecraft, leaving a planet reeling from a climate crisis behind.

It’s the kind of lofty — and, according to his many critics, delusional — thinking that turned him into an (almost) trillionaire. And, as SpaceX continues to struggle selling investors on Musk’s lofty imagination, the mercurial CEO is already conjuring new visions to keep the hype train chugging. According to a recent tweet, he believes that “SpaceX will be worth more than the rest of Earth if we accomplish our goals.”

Musk was responding to one of his supporters questioning SpaceX’s recent AI compute deal with Anthropic, arguing that it was giving too much money to a competitor.

To Musk, it all comes down to our ability to fully harness the power of the Sun. As illustrated by the Kardashev scale — a method devised by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev that measures a civilization’s level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it can channel — Musk believes we’re not even close to unlocking our full potential as a species.

By utilizing all that untapped solar energy, Musk thinks SpaceX could eclipse the Earth’s entire GDP of around 100 trillion dollars — if you’re willing to entertain his outrageously lofty vision, that is.

Back in January, Musk argued that “space-based industries will vastly exceed the value of all of Earth, given that you could harness roughly 100,000 times more energy than Earth and still be using less than a millionth of the Sun’s energy!”

Skeptics will differ. He also claimed that “due to autonomy, Tesla is worth more than the rest of the auto industry,” while his EV maker’s struggling Optimus robot will increase “Earth GDP by an order of magnitude.”

It’s the kind of wishful thinking his entire business empire is teetering on top of lately. For years now, tech leaders have been trying to sell us on a utopian “age of abundance,” in which manual labor is a thing of the past and everybody enjoys a high standard of living.

However, reality tells a dramatically different story. Despite Musk’s repeated promises for over a decade, in one telling example, Tesla vehicles are still far from reliably driving themselves without constant oversight.

Even investors are having trouble buying into his dreams of training AI models from space. SpaceX’s shares initially rallied following a blockbuster IPO last month, but have been in decline ever since. The muted enthusiasm highlights persistent doubts over a multitrillion dollar valuation for a company that lost a staggering $5 billion last year.

In short, his claim that SpaceX will somehow become worth more than the entire global economy should be taken with an astronomical amount of salt.

It also assumes that SpaceX is operating within a vacuum. Considering the major strides China’s space program is making as of late, that’s far from a given.

More on SpaceX: If You Thought SpaceX Stock Was Doing Badly Before, Now It’s Really Tanking

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During a speech commemorating the 250th anniversary of American independence last week, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani took aim at the richest person in the world to make a salient point about growing inequality.

“We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world, one where children go to sleep hungry, while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more,” he said.

Elon Musk, who temporarily became a trillionaire following his company SpaceX’s IPO last month, didn’t take kindly to the slight.

“Mamdani has built nothing,” he tweeted angrily in response. “He is a taker, never a maker.”

But his knee-jerk retort didn’t exactly land. The most-liked reply pointed out that Musk’s empire had been built on tens of billions of dollars of government handouts. One user called him out for being the “biggest single recipient of US taxpayer dollars of all time.”

One particularly scorching takedown came from grassroots political organizer Jay Ponti, who pointed out that many of Musk’s business successes were built on the shoulders of others.

“[Martin] Eberhard and [Marc] Tarpenning founded Tesla,” he wrote, referring to the EV maker’s original CEO and CFO before Musk joined in 2004. “You didn’t invent eBay or Twitter.”

“Your wealth is from acquisitions, hostile takeovers, and stealing credit,” Ponti added. “Everything you have was built by workers and you fight to keep from unionizing while you receive [government] welfare.”

“You are a parasite,” the political organizer concluded.

The scathing remarks highlight Musk’s more-than-rocky rise to fame and how his companies, Tesla and SpaceX in particular, have massively benefited from government contracts over the years. According to an eye-opening Washington Post investigation last year, Musk’s businesses have sucked up at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits.

If Musk himself hadn’t been a “taker,” his companies could’ve easily flatlined without regular taxpayer-funded cash infusions.

Meanwhile, Mamdani has done little to earn such a title. On the contrary, his administration has been built on giving — from plans to expand low-cost childcare, fighting wage theft affecting gig workers, setting up city-run grocery stores, and adding a second homes tax for wealthy New York City residents.

After SpaceX’s blockbuster IPO last month made Musk the world’s first trillionaire, Mamdani had some choice words.

“Reason #1,000,000,000,000 why we should tax the rich,” he tweeted at the time.

There’s at least one subject where both Mamdani and Musk do see eye to eye: eliminating waste and pushing for efficiency. In a jab at the billionaire’s ill-fated and enormously wasteful Department of Government Efficiency, Mamdani recently launched what he calls the Commission on Government Efficiency.

However, instead of cutting foreign aid and condemning thousands to die around the world, Mamdani is using the group to make it easier for NYC residents to access affordable city services.

More on Musk: Elon Musk Has Sucked Up $38 Billion in Aid From the Federal Government, and Now He’s Slashing That Help for Others

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