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- Hacker News
- What’s that in data centers?by bombcar
- This puts google in the circular chain of SillyCon Valley businesses under-writing/financing each other's debt.
That said, as indicated by the presence of Fidelity Investments, everybody is in on it at this point.
- by ur-whale
- Makes you wonder about whether Google's deal to lease SpaceX's compute is about Google doing what's best for Google, or about shoring up SpaceX's very bad bottom line.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/05/google-to-pay-spacex-920-mil...
- Google also has around a 14% stake in Anthropic (as at 2025 [1]) and they participated in the "G" funding round [2]. Amazon has a significant stake in them too.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/technology/google-investm... , https://archive.md/f0BxC
[2] https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-raises-30-billion-s...
by kristianp - Maybe hacker news is wrong and SpaceX is actually valuable.by nonethewiser
- Yeah, I have put my money where my mouth is, but I think it is. Extraordinarily so, and I think the Musk hate has clouded people’s judgement.
For what it’s worth, I get it. I have found Musk insufferable for the last decade since he attached himself to the right and got into drugs, however I think SpaceX is undervalued right now.
1. They are literally the only company on earth with a reliable partially reusable launch system. There are a few people trying, but everyone else is way behind.
2. When they eventually (hopefully) get Starship right, we will see a price drop in the cost of transportation to orbit we have never seen. When I did the numbers a few years ago, the price for space mining to be comparable to terrestrial mining was around $20-60/kg to orbit. They’d effectively be the ONLY way to access that. That’s one of a gazillion things that becomes possible with cheap access to space. UPS becomes a competitor at those prices… it’s game changing.
3. They are basically dominating the satellite internet world. Nothing compares. Starlink is amazing, especially here in Alaska, I suspect they will eventually have a phone, which will be revolutionary.
4. A gazillion government contracts, Star shield, and arguably point to point QRF shuttle (after starship). The defense implications alone mean that they are going to be around indefinitely.
I don’t know, but I think people are sleeping on this.
by piloto_ciego - $500bn marketcap is still valuable
Its how it declines to that point at another 70% loss from $1.5 trillion that people are worried about
by yieldcrv - I don't think anyone is arguing SpaceX is actually valuable, just overvalued and the repeated recipient of obvious corruption.
- It seems obvious that the deal Google signed to rent compute from xAI just before the IPO was specifically to goose the IPO, giving xAI nice looking growth. They could have paid a lot more for that deal and still made it all back on the IPO. I don't believe for a second Google needs the compute. They've got their own AI inference hardware, the biggest data centers in the world, and they don't make any of the most popular AI products. They're not desperate for compute.by SwellJoe
- Also the agreement can be can be terminated with only 90 days noticeby lefty2
- One of the best corporate investments in recent history. >100x returns in 10 yearsby fco356pal
- 6% is more than all of the issued IPO shares. They were 5%, right?by grim_io
- Correctby fancyfredbot
- 100x return, I would sell immediately after this kind of gain, maybe that's why I am not a Googleby throwaw12
- if you are big company like google, another 100 billion is not gonna make you feel better since cold cash is liability at that scale
100 billion is nothing if that money can put you in better spot at technology landscape
by tonyhart7 - Feeling sated and not constant greed is no way to build billionaires, nope.
- There would be some laws in place. And it would also stress the relationship with Elon.by sidcool
- (1) there's a lock out, they can't legally (2) Moving that kind of volume at market price is extremely difficult (3) This disclosure was required by law as part of their earnings. They would rather have said nothing and quietly offloaded it.
One consequence of booking the revenue is that they're going to have to report a loss when they sell it.
It's possible there's some tax shenanigans at play (idk): report the profit, mark it against their massive AI capex, sell later when they can book a loss. (I'm not sure if it works that way, it wouldn't for an individual, but maybe they can find a way to trigger a stepped up basis.)
by hiddencost - I'm sure at an $80 valuation they will tell everyone how it's time to buy as it slides down furtherby rf15
- This is a micro/macro mistake. You obviously can't dump a 6% stake at strike price on Robinhood.
"The Market", at this scale, means "You find the buyer(s) yourself and work up the deal with a hundred lawyers and PR staff and hope the contract negotiation stays secret".
by ajross - Per the article, they can’t, yet.by rsynnott
- Alphabet is the modern day berkshire hathaway.
Alphabet’s investment holdings (eg, spacex, anthropic..) are worth in the same order of magnitude of BRK’s (~$300B)
The track record of google’s M&A is pretty good.
Except for search and cloud, many of Google’s important products were from M&A - Maps, Docs, android, doubleclick, youtube , deep mind, etc.
by wenbin - How is Alphabet the modern Berkshire Hathaway?by nonethewiser
- The companies you listed have great synergy with Google's core business. What's Google's play with SpaceX? Data centers in space?by glimshe
- This investment has never been secret.
Google (now under parent company Alphabet) invested roughly $900 million as the majority of a ~$1 billion funding round alongside Fidelity Investments. This gave Google an initial equity stake of about 7–7.5% in SpaceX at a valuation of roughly $10–12 billion.
by miohtama - No one made any claim that it was a secret. The linked article is literally about public disclosures from Google themselves.by mvdtnz
- In fact it was often mentioned as a recommended way to try to invest in SpaceX via proxy, before IPO. I don't think that advice had much merit, but it was there nevertheless.by 3form
- Original HN thread, 11-years ago (220 comments):by alberth
- Remember this was also when SpaceX was actually about space, instead of mostly AI and Twitter. Long-term shareholders that were sold on the space, have to be thinking about how to get out once their lockups expire.by matwood