00:00Ross, I don't even know how much usefulness it is to even go through some of the numbers on a
00:06quarterly basis backwards looking. I know a lot of investors are looking to figure out kind of
00:10whether Starship sort of fulfills that promise and whether what's going to be attached to these
00:16rockets, presumably whatever sort of servers and other sort of orbital data center type of
00:21equipment are going to be along for the ride sometime soon. Well, I think it's going to be
00:26sooner than what people think, judging from the last Starship flight that we saw, which I would
00:31consider pretty successful. And when you look at the size of this thing and the fact that they're
00:37now getting it in and out of space without exploding and landing pretty well into the water,
00:43we're pretty close to having a reusable massive rocket ship other than many of the technology
00:51challenges that they still face to get this to work, let's say over and over again in scale.
00:56But just the fact that they've gotten this far is very encouraging. And I don't think people should
01:01doubt whether or not this is actually going to happen. It's just when. Yeah. And I think that
01:07seems to be the consensus. And we've certainly seen some degree of a proof of life with regards to that
01:11ship. The question, though, becomes in terms of monetizing this further beyond just being sort of a
01:17taxi service, if you will, into space. How much of this gets monetized by SpaceX itself with regards to
01:24what it's able to put there? And that flows back into the company for its own for its own coffers?
01:29Yeah. And I thought it was interesting because I thought the most important announcement from
01:34SpaceX was their deal with NVIDIA to build these, you know, they're calling StarMine data centers in
01:41space. So really, they're putting the hardware pieces together to do something that's never been
01:47done before, which works because they have Starship and they have Starlink. So by putting the data centers
01:54in space, it really adds a whole new element of what can be done through Starlink as far as not
02:00only just connectivity and Internet access, but also sending and receiving data. So it's a very
02:06exciting, you know, idea or premise to be able to do this. And only SpaceX can do it. And I
02:13think
02:13that's what makes this investment compelling isn't really what it's doing today, but what will this
02:18look like in five years? And it could be pretty damn impressive.
02:21Were you surprised that they would make that announcement on with regards to NVIDIA and using
02:25those Rubin GPUs?
02:27I wasn't surprised because they have a very close relationship with NVIDIA. What I'm surprised about
02:32is how rapidly they're moving forward with the development of these satellite-based data centers,
02:38which, you know, obviously has never been done and is technology, you know, the challenge from a
02:43technology perspective is massive. So, you know, they're moving forward full speed ahead. And I think it's a,
02:49you know, a really exciting prospect and it's a high risk investment because obviously all these
02:54things could fail. But on the other side, it's a high reward investment if they succeed. And so I
02:59think investors need to weigh both of those cases when looking at the stock today. But considering it's
03:05trading below the IPO price, individual investors who want to buy the stock certainly are getting it
03:11at a discount compared to everybody else.
03:13Let's talk about the AI business obviously created after you merged XAI with SpaceX. We should point
03:20out they're also saying in the release that they do plan to close the cursor merger sometime this
03:25quarter, in the third quarter. This has been a bit of a drag and it seems like there were a
03:29lot of
03:29investors that would have liked to see SpaceX go public with just the launch business and the
03:35connectivity business and not necessarily XAI. Are you comfortable with maybe what his vision is for
03:41how XAI fits into all of this?
03:44Well, I've been sort of, XAI is a painful thing because I sort of think Tesla should have owned
03:49XAI. And I know Elon didn't want Tesla to own it because he didn't control Tesla. So, well, he does,
03:55but shareholder wise. And so XAI is a part of SpaceX. But the way I look at it is Elon
04:01is really good at
04:02building factories and AI. And XAI is going to be successful whether they use the compute or sell the
04:08compute. And so the fact that SpaceX or XAI is investing, you know, billions of dollars into
04:15building these data centers, it's going to pay off one way or another because the demand for compute
04:20is so much larger than the supply of compute. And Elon is super good at this. So, you know,
04:27I think investors are so short term minded to be worried about CapEx during this incredible technology
04:34boom period. We would need the CapEx to be spent if we're going to be competitive. And that's
04:39exactly what SpaceX is doing. And I think if you take XAI out of the business, yeah, it's more
04:45profitable. It's easier to sell on the short term. But on the long term, you're missing one of the
04:49great opportunities to be able to provide compute from space, which is actually, you know, potentially
04:56massive as far as an opportunity. So, you know, I think it should be part of SpaceX and investors just
05:02have to be patient and let this stuff play out. Starlink coming in, 12 million subscribers at the
05:07end of the second quarter. It's only profitable business. The company says it has ARPU for Starlink
05:12of $66 for the most recent quarter. I mean, this is kind of the one part of the business that
05:19doesn't
05:19really have to prove itself. I am curious as to whether there is a growth story for Starlink or has
05:24it already sort of matured? Oh, no. I mean, Starlink is just beginning in so many ways. You know,
05:30Starlink is a critical system and pretty much everybody in America should have it as a backup
05:36for their Internet access. As a fire survivor of the Palisades fire, Starlink saved us. You know,
05:42like without Starlink, I can't even tell you what would have happened during that fire. So it's
05:47literally a life or death critical system and you should have it as your backup Internet. So there's
05:51a massive market even in America that doesn't have Starlink. And then when you talk about globally,
05:56it's huge. But there's another element to Starlink that people have to understand,
06:01which is the military element to Starlink, which is one of the reasons Ukraine is having so much
06:04success with their drone attacks all throughout the country of Russia is because they now have
06:09Starlink satellite antennas on the drones and same with the U.S. drones. And by doing that,
06:15it gives us a guidance system that's global that can be managed anywhere in the world. And it creates
06:20a weapon that is almost unstoppable. And we're seeing this right now in real time.
06:24And this is due to Starlink. So the military side of Starlink is only also just begun because we
06:31haven't even built that many drones yet. Like if we're going to be prepared for the future of combat
06:36and war into the 21st century for real, Starlink is going to be just a critical element to our
06:43military and our success in this new autonomous, you know, military world. So Starlink is just at the
06:49beginning, whether it's, you know, internet service on a boat or a backup service at your house or
06:55putting it on a drone to go blow up the Wildberries factory in Russia. This stuff works incredibly well.
07:01And, and I just, there's no competitor.
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