He spells it out, which is, you know, first data centers in space, then stuff on the moon, then Mars and the light of consciousness extended everywhere. And that's the vision. And if you just take a look at what's going on down here on Earth right now, it seems a bit more like someone is combining a lot of his very costly ventures together and hoping that some magical synergies will emerge. This is a race between the US and China.
Yes, these companies are big, but they have one thing in mind, which is not just to beat each other, but also to beat, you know, the world's second biggest superpower. Should we have concerns that so much power potentially is in one man's hands and that man is Elon Musk? Hello and welcome to the forecast, Elon Musk. SpaceX has acquired his AI startup, merging his two most ambitious companies into a trillion dollar entity, the most valuable private company the world has ever seen.
And he says this is only the beginning, describing the merger as the start of a new book in a mission to build space based data centres, harness the power of the sun and scale AI far beyond anything possible on our planet Earth. But behind the cosmic ambition lies a bigger question. Is this trillion dollar valuation grounded in reality or is it another example of Musk's ability to bend markets, investors and public attention, don't forget, to his unique
vision. Well, to discuss it all, we're joined by our economics correspondent, the Channel 4 News Heliot Ebrahimi and Jacob Silverman, who's author of Gilded Rage, Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley. Jacob, were you expecting this? Because there was sort of chatter about Musk doing something along these lines, wasn't there? And it's not like he hasn't merged his companies but before.
Yeah. I think there was some reporting the last week that he had been looking for some kind of internal tie up between some of his companies. And as you said, I think this is something that Musk has done before, most recently last year when he combined X&X AI. So his social network and his AI company, both money losers of the AI company, of course, drains a lot more resources. So this does seem to be in line with his tendencies.
It's just doing something on a far bigger scale perhaps than we've seen him do before, and really concentrating, as you said, his interests into one big entity. Yeah, you you've both made the point about the XAI aspect of this being sort of loss making it losing billion dollars a month. I think what Jacob said, it's quite interesting, you know, this is a pattern and by the
way, it's not always successful. He also requested Tesla investors agree to invest in X AI and 57% of them said they didn't really fancy it. Although he's managed to persuade them, now he is forever trying to conglomerate, as you said, Kieran, get get his this power base together because he thinks that essentially if you merge these technologies, you
are going to win the AI race. Now whether that is smokescreen, you know, whether that is kind of a call to legitimacy just by saying, look, we're, we're we're by being bigger, we're going to
by owning the future. It gives him some kind of foundation, essentially to say that it's justified that you bring together a business that has NASA contracts, that has EV cars, that has a AI compute and bring it all together and launch it into Mars. Yeah, Jacob, I mean, he's competing in the AI sphere with Google, with Meta, with open AI. There's this rush to build data centres, isn't there?
Is it? The only way that Elon Musk can compete in the AI sphere is to sort of loop it in with SpaceX, which actually is valuable, is attracting investment and is making money. Well, I think the capital expenditures, expenditures, excuse me, with AI have gotten so huge that the promises and sort of ideas surrounding him have also had to scale in proportion. I mean, we weren't really hearing about data centers in space before sometime last year. And now it seems to be the
latest way forward. And I find it a little dubious, but this is seems to be must latest promises that somehow this can't be done down here on Earth, it can only be done in space. But by the way, he's not the only one, right? You've got Jeff Bezos up there. You've got NVIDIA investing. You've got the former boss of Google, Eric Schmidt. Everybody seems to be looking at space as a cheaper alternative. Why? Because apparently you've got 24/7 solar power you can use.
You've got the ability to create data centres without water, perhaps without citizens, without politicians, you've got less regulations. And this race that we've got at the moment where various companies are spending hundreds of billions of pounds trying to build out AI data centres without really the infrastructure in place. That is the problem. The infrastructure, the energy needs, the water needs, they're not in place. And so these companies are looking for easier, cheaper
answers. So is he there and Jacob sort of going for first mover advantage as the guy that puts data centers in space? So while everyone else is scrabbling around trying to acquire land and energy and water down here on planet Earth, Musk's vision is is rather more intergalactic. Yeah, I think he's trying to leverage what he has with SpaceX, which is that right now they are the leader in in putting stuff in space in, you know, launching satellites in particular.
And they can do it more cheaply than a lot of their competitors, including Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. Bezos has talked about putting infrastructure in or manufacturing in space actually for a number of years. So it is kind of this potential first mover advantage. What needs to happen though is the cost of putting a kilogram of any material in space or just putting the stuff in space needs
to go way down. There needs to be a lot of innovation in how you run a data center, how you replace it's hardware every five years perhaps. But it is this dream of them being 1st and being kind of beyond the strictures of Earth so that, as Helia said, they can access unlimited solar energy perhaps. Heli, just on that point then, I mean, is it potentially if not now obviously, but in future going to be cheaper to have data centers in space, going to be more financially viable to do it
up there down here? That is the claim that you save both on the energy corset so that in terms of cooling gets easier, and some of the reports by different consultancy firms claim that it would be 50% cheaper. And of course you don't have part of the infrastructure around water that you would need here on lowly planet Earth.
But of course, all of this feeds Kieran into Musk's kind of rather grandiose vision of him self, you know, not just creating data centres that, as he put in his blog post, is going to serve, you know, the citizens of Earth, but is actually going to help create self, you know, serving the civilizations that will ultimately end up in Mars. So it is this really big big ideas. Yeah, you can't. You can't fault the ambition,
Jacob, can you? But I mean, I don't know, it feels like this is all happening so quickly. And then today, here we are talking about what? Maybe factories on the moon Jacob. Yeah, it could seem a little grandiose, certainly. And also just like, ripped from the sci-fi novels of must Youth, which has always been away. He's seen the world or the universe, the cosmos. I mean, he has long said he wants to name his city on Mars, Terminus, after an Isaac Asimov
novel or series of novels. And I would encourage people actually to go to the SpaceX website and read the blog posts that Hell he was referring to because he spells it out, which is, you know, first data centers in space, then stuff on the moon, then Mars and the light of consciousness extended everywhere. And, you know, there the that's
the vision. And if you just take a look at what's going on down here on Earth right now, it seems a bit more like someone is combining a lot of his very costly ventures together and hoping that some magical synergies will emerge.
But if if you peel away, hell yeah, some, some of this, the space stuff is it's actually quite a cool headed business decision because you you've got the XAI which which is losing money folded in with SpaceX, which is going to float publicly, we think sometime this year that can sort of 1 can subsidise the other. SpaceX needs AIAI needs SpaceX, doesn't it? And, you know, his other businesses, people like, you know, companies like Tesla, which he wants to work with XAI as well.
He wants XAI to be making, you know, operational AI programmes within those cars as well. He wants Tesla to move into a robotics firm. Yeah. I mean, clearly there is a industrial use case from a capital perspective. You know, there's been lots of talk about the huge funds. I saw a report that was suggesting that, you know, there are 10 start AI startups that saw just last year alone their valuation increase by a trillion
dollars. That's, you know, companies including Open AI. These are AI startups. So these are huge amounts of valuation being added to this company. I mean, in fact, even just in this deal alone, I would tell you that SpaceX, he's he's upped the valuation just from December, it's gone up by 200 or so billion dollars for Spacex's value. So the kind of money you're talking about is huge. The kind of cap X required to, you know, build out the
infrastructure is huge. And so all of these businesses at the moment, all of these companies are busy trying to create some kind of circular financing, some ways of bringing money in. And by bringing money into an enlarged Group, A super company that's going to list on the stock market and raise all of this cash, it also not only does it give that company money to spend and it kind of starves the ecosystem and his rivals from getting some of that capital.
Because he wants to compete, doesn't he? In the AI field? But he hasn't got the capital in X AI to do it, has he? Well, I think exactly. And I think that there is a, there is a feeling within tech bosses in the US that it's winner take all. And therefore you should do everything you can to, to, to build out as fast as you can to go towards AGI as fast as you can because the gains are going to be so massive. So it doesn't matter if you inflate the industry along the
way. It doesn't matter if there's a whole lot of market turmoil because there will be one or two companies at the end who will, you know, reap the rewards. And if it's winner take all, Jacobs isn't it? I mean, Elon Musk gonna want to be the winner. Oh yeah, that's absolutely his motivation.
And I think as, as we're getting at here, that the winner is going to come at least the the notion, I the popular notion among a lot of these startups and these big income and tech companies is that the winners coming by just spending the most money and scaling the infrastructure as much as possible. I mean, there has been some questioning within the AI industry that, you know, is just scaling LLM's the the sort of current models we have the way to go. But that certainly seems to be
what what must thinks. And he I think also the point about how SpaceX was valued at 800 billion before just in December, now 1 trillion now shows also how this kind of scaling is working, which is that the more often he does these deals, including just raising capital every couple months, it seems for for AI purposes in some of these, in some of his companies, every time he gets to kind of pump up their value and say they're worth more.
And this is also part of kind of circular economy that Musk has made, made for himself what's been called the Muskani. I mean, he's always kind of, if not merging things, then doing deals between his companies frequently now raising capital, especially for X AI. And each time is, you know, there's more money being spent, more money being raised, but also a higher valuation on paper for for these companies. But you can't just make up numbers. I mean, if you're going to float, can't.
Can't you query? If you're going to float this new super company, hell yeah. Surely there has to be some sort of basis in reality for I know AI everyone is over inflating left right and centre but I don't know what you think. Listen, I think there the, the problem you have at the moment is there is so much investor appetite in AI that you get this kind of real sense of fear of missing out and that blinds people to what those valuations mean. What, what, what are you looking for?
Are you looking for profits? Well, all of these companies are potentially going to fail. Are you looking for growth? And then what kind of growth are you talking about and what are
the hurdles? And a lot of investors in the current wave have been, you know, pushing aside red flags really because they're so desperate to be involved and be included on some of these big name tickets because because the gains that we're talking about, you know, the way these companies talk up, you know what NVIDIA is going to mean. I mean, there are there are VC firms that think, well, if we don't buy in, we're going to miss out completely.
And I think the same is true. Or this is this is what Musk would obviously like you to believe, that if you are not investing here, that you are not going to be part of this new industrial revolution, this AI revolution, which is going to completely change the economy. But the the more Elon Musk merges his various enterprises, Jacob, are you investing in any one of those companies in reality or are you now in future just whether it's you know, Tesla or SpaceX just investing
in Elon Musk? I think it's the latter. And you know, this is certainly a move towards what's been called Musk Corp or Musk Inc, you know, just one large Musk mega Corp. And given how involved he's always been in his companies, you know, spread across 5 or 6 of them at, at any given time, at least it's always been about, I think for a lot of his investors investing in Musk. And that's why also we see a lot of the same investors investing
across the Musk companies. I mean, this is venture capitalist, certain financiers who are friends with Musk and also the Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar and and a number of these entities have repeatedly kind of ponied up for mosque or a multiple rounds of XAI for example and it. And he's building, he's building data centers out there, too.
Yeah. And so I think this is very much about, you know, using those resources that and sort of that that strength of personality and celebrity that only he can seem to bear bring to bear on these mega projects. Do you think do you think that's going to carry through when he floats this mega company if it happens this this summer, then Jacob, that force of personality or investors looking for something else? Well, I, I think there's a question of when will the music stop?
And there have to be some major returns and actual innovations here. I mean, the same might be said for some of the other AI companies, especially like Open AI, which is committed to spending more than a trillion dollars on data center infrastructure, but doesn't necessarily have that money and doesn't have to show signs of having that kind of revenue ahead.
So Musk can kind of carry on this kind of dance longer, I think especially as he does these these mergers and he has such a wide portfolio of interests. But eventually, some of these returns will will finally have to materialize, and he has been able to push the ball down the road with things like full self driving. His promises keep changing, but you know, just this week he said that there will be. Dating quite a lot. Yes and just. Right.
I mean, like news that he fails his own metrics quite often. Yeah, but he does seem to get forgiven by his investors, which is. Extraordinary. It is extraordinary. And, you know, he said just this week we're gonna have data centers in space within two to three years. I mean, last month he was saying in five years is any of this stuff going to happen?
And especially some of these major investors like the Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds kind of get tired of this eventually because they will need their returns even as they want the kind of influence over must that they can have already. Yeah, if you're talking about actual market performance, we've got some Tesla car sales numbers didn't be in Europe recently and they were down at 42% in France, year on year to January, they only sold 661. Yeah, there.
Was some worrying numbers if you're an investor in Tesla, aren't they? Yes, yeah. But I mean, it's no longer an EV firm, Kieran. It's now going to be a robotics firm and a taxi firm. So. So, you know, don't worry about that. I mean, BYD, obviously when it comes to Tesla, he's had a real encroachment into the top spots by Chinese BYD, especially in Europe. And then you've had all of these tax subsidies taken away in Trump's presidency and that has really damaged Tesla.
But he is trying to pivot now to robotics to I can't remember what his what is his robot called exactly? Do you? Think he's giving up on cars, Sir Jacob? Do you think he's all robots? Now, well, this is The thing is, I mean, he seems so committed to Tesla, but now, you know, suddenly it's robots. And I mean, the few demonstrations we've seen of optimists have been unimpressive.
And a number of them we've, there's been confirmed reporting that these were basically remote controlled by human operators. I mean, they're the, I think Musk is running out of runway and promises he can make in, in some ways. And I think that the point about the, the BYD cars is very important. The Huawei and other Chinese
brands. And we had the CEO Ford talking about how he bought one of the Chinese cars, I believe a Huawei or BYD had it brought to the US and he loved it and felt rather jealous of it. And as you said earlier, the numbers are, are, aren't there. I mean, the, the, the sales are dropping around the world. And you know, this is also about must politics, which is, you know, Tesla was how he was reaching a lot of consumers and also his sort of soft
underbelly. And now he has alienated a lot of people, especially in Europe where he is very active in kind of right wing agitation. And people would rather buy cars that are cheaper and better and don't come with that kind of political baggage attached. If we're talking about competition with China, and then you look at a company like SpaceX, which is now going to be even bigger, it's unique, isn't it? SpaceX there's, there's nobody else doing what SpaceX is doing. Yeah.
And I think that's one of must remaining strengths, which is that the the US government, certainly the Department of Defense needs SpaceX for its launch capabilities and and has subsidized it to to that extent and given it a lot of contracts.
What might be a little weaker about SpaceX, and this is again, speaks to the kind of person Musk is and trying to fulfill these science fictional fantasies, is the amount of money that's been invested in Starship and this plan to eventually go to Mars. I mean, he's kind of ignored or at least not emphasized the core business of basically satellite launch and putting cargo into space, which they do pretty
well. But also, you know, in favor of of paying a lot of money and pouring a lot of resources into this dream of making a massive Starship that can take us deeper into the cosmos. But it's interesting, Karen, that, you know, he's really infiltrated the, the kind of NASA contract space, you know, when, when SpaceX was first formed, they undercut rivals. They bid really cheaply, you know, back in 2002 or 2000 and sorry, 2008 and, and now all of
these contracts. I mean, it's very hard to imagine how NASA could have the capabilities to ferry their equipment and their astronauts to the Space Center without SpaceX. So these are companies that are using, you know, government contracts, taxpayer money essentially to to help them grow, to help them develop. And then of course, they become very powerful, very dominant. And it's very hard for governments then to pull themselves out of these relationships.
So, so let's let's go big picture, you know, about like what, what on earth is he actually up to or what in space is he actually up to, you might say in this scenario? Because is he this visionary that is able to see into the future in the way that nobody else can? Or is he just a sort of a risk taker and a gambler? Which is it? Well, I would say, I would say more the latter, but also he is someone who kind of drags us
into his vision of the future. I mean, because of especially now the amount of resources he can deploy. You know, Musk has put more satellites into space than anyone. And a lot of that now supports Starlink, this this global communications network that he has done a lot to hype and that, you know, provides a useful service to some. But it is maybe not the kind of innovation he has claimed it to be. But again, we are often kind of being forced to play by must
rules. So if he wants to put a million satellites in the space, despite whatever native consequences there might be, but that's the that's the new promise, then we might, given his power and tremendous resources, just have to follow along and watch as he enacts that. It's interesting. I when I interviewed Jason Jensen Huang from the NVIDIA boss, asked him about Musk, he was very kind of diplomatic on saying, you know, he doesn't agree with his politics necessarily, but that as a
technologist he is a visionary. So I think within the tech community, he's seen as a visionary. He clearly knows how to leverage his celebrity to exert as much power and influence as possible. I mean, I remember when he originally bought X, which was Twitter for $44 billion, people were thinking, you know, what is this all about? And there's obviously an argument to say it was about
political power. But it's clearly also this idea that the technologies of the future where computers important, where AI is important, where data is important, bringing all of these things together helps your business grow. So you are able to train your chatbot, you're able to train Grok on this vast, um, data that is created by users on X. So the the synergies that he is able to create and and and take advantage of basically are huge.
You, you mentioned Grok Helly and we obviously had that scandal in the past few weeks about image generation on Grok and that that's just one small aspect of his empire and it was very problematic for. Him and there's pushback, by the way, here there's pushback here, there's pushback in France where there's been a raid, there's a there's pushback even in the US. So it's not that he's completely unencumbered, but you know, his, his power, our base is, is extraordinary.
Yeah, but but at the same time, we were talking about something much bigger potentially here, aren't we? I mean, you know, you said it's the the biggest private company in the world that he's about to to to create Jacob. I mean, should we have concerns that so much power potentially is in one man's hands and that man is Elon Musk? Certainly. And I think we've seen some pretty negative consequences already. And, you know, I think no one needs that much money or power.
And there are uniquely distorting effects from having so much wealth. I mean, we could talk about the 2024 election alone. And I think actually the point about Musk buying Twitter slash X for $44 billion and people kind of thinking, what is he going to do with this is a good
one. Because we saw what he ended up doing with it, which was that it helped him essentially win the 2024 election and become this enormous propagandists on behalf of of far right issues and, and often, you know, spread false information and some horrible lies about people. So, you know, that is a way in which Musk has unique capabilities and I think ones that might be, you know, harmful to democracy. And I don't think in in a lot of ways, the costs of Musk are necessarily worth the the
supposed societal benefits. And I think that's what people are starting to see now. But with a $1.2 trillion company, or however big it might be, by the time it goes public this summer, he'll have a lot that he'll be able to do.
And Kieran, I mean, these are questions at the moment that are particularly pertinent because given everything that is happening in geopolitics where Europe is having to re evaluate its relationship with the US again, that discussion about do we just become takers of America? Tech infrastructure is even more important because if we have problems with some of these companies, European countries have very little leverage in reality.
And there's been lots of talk through the years, I remember of Europe creating their own versions, creating alternatives. But fundamentally, we are now doing an AI, exactly what we did with social media companies and search engines, where we are a taker of US technology, US tech infrastructure. I mean, one example that I think of all the time is something that we have a lot of data on in this country, in the UK is
health. Because the NHS brings all of, you know, the populations, countries, data together. I mean not perfectly by the way, but it does theoretically bring our whole country's health record together, which is an incredible source to train AI on. And during COVID, the government gave another U.S. company, Palantir, the contract to help us with some COVID contracts and they and Palantir did it for a pound.
But by the way, two years later, once the pandemic was over, we were signing over multi £100 million deals with Palantir to do different NHS contracts and not just NHS. It then escalated to be MOD contracts as well. And in that way we are we are opening ourselves making us more susceptible in fields possibly where we have the ability to have home grown talent, but we haven't invested there.
Not really, but to be honest, I don't think they they need to, you know, there's a lot lacking in, you know, perhaps in the European tech scene. And I think Hellio was getting at, you know, this, this kind of dependency that that is unfortunately the case, the same kind of dependency that maybe the Department of Defense here in the US has on Musk, you know, Europe has on a lot of US tech companies.
But, you know, I, I think we don't need necessarily European CEO's talking about going to the moon or Mars, but we we, you know, we do need viable alternatives and, you know, a kind of homegrown text scene and the kind of regulations and laws and enforcement that European countries want for themselves. I mean, we did see a little bit of that today with French authorities rating that the ex office in Paris because the Grok chatbot has been creating sexualized images of people
without their consent. So, you know, it will be up to, I think to Europe to and to European countries about what kind of future they want to create there and how to how to get there. But you know that that thought is in the air now just as Europe is trying to think more about its own self-defense and its role in NATO and its relationship with the United States. That same kind of re evaluation of its relationship with US tech companies and US billionaires is ongoing, I think.
And you mentioned it earlier, Jacob, about Musk Inc and about that potentially being where we're headed here, that all the various Musk entities get folded into one with him at the top of it. I mean, how soon do you think we could be seeing something like that? And that's not a given either, is it? There are obstacles before you can get someone like that.
Yeah. I think there's one question about first, Tesla is the one publicly traded company at the moment in his portfolio that might have to stay sort of nominally independent that way. But I don't see much reason why all of his other companies might be combined together. I mean, what what do we have left with the Boring Company? Neuralink, you know, some of his smaller interests, Neuralink could be lumped in with robotics and AI.
So I think Musk is someone who likes a lot of control, of course, like a lot of lot of billionaires, and has long seen his own role as kind of centralizing all these interests together. So, you know, if the investors are on board for another round or two of this, I think by next year you could see most of us non Tesla companies be just, you know, under SpaceX or under someone X company.
And where would that sit then? Hellier in terms of the pantheon of big, powerful, great companies in the world right now. Well, at the moment NVIDIA is the world's biggest company listed company. I think that's on about four and a half trillion dollars. So you have Microsoft, which had a bit of a stumble last week. You have Google, Alphabet, the owner of Google. So these are huge, vast companies. And I think it's back to that idea of there being a race.
And this isn't just a race between companies, private companies or listed companies. This is a race between the US, US and China. And the anxieties that lots of companies feel in the US about losing out to China as a tech behemoth, as an AI behemoth. And when we're talking about, you know, being able to conglomerate data, you know, the best in class is really the Chinese government. No one really competes with that.
So yes, these companies are big, but they are all all, they have one thing in mind, which is not just to beat each other, but also to beat, you know, the world's second biggest superpower. Yeah, quite. And potentially to have more power than the governments that we elect, right, Jacob? Yes. And I think that is 1 concerning thing of course, about the power of tech companies and the geopolitical role they play.
Now. I think one important distinction also here that we should note is that most of the companies we're talking about are the competitors to Musk are publicly traded. Not all of them like open AI, of course, but these, these most valuable companies in the world. And because of the way public markets work and for example, SEC filings here in the US, we know more about what these companies do and the profits they they generate and, and where they get their revenue from.
And if we have some giant Musk Corp that's privately held, which is where we are right now, we know a lot less about how his business empire operates. And, and is it making money? You know, is it, is it making profits? So that is a little bit of of a different animal I think than you know, the comparisons to NVIDIA or Google or Microsoft are really important, but also that that distinction I think will make it a different kind of operator.
There will have to be a prospectus care and there will have to actually be, you know, line items about where the revenue is coming from, about what the margin is, about who the customers are. All of that detail will be, you know, a level of transparency we haven't seen before. And even today's deal, you know, the scant information about it and that if it's if this company becomes listed, will change.
Well, let's let's end where we started them with the with the prospect, you know, this new merged company actually being listed. I mean, there's going to be a lot of hype around that isn't that. It's going to be one of the the biggest things that the market
has seen for quite some time. Yeah, I I was curious when I was reading about this merger yesterday on Bloomberg, I believe just on the news site and right below the the news article about it, there was an opportunity to Click to find out how to invest in SpaceX. How how I could, you know, buy shares. And so I think that is very indicative of what you were saying. This is going to be a sort of mass consumer event of course
and but also a big market event. But you know because of must celebrity and the kind of public facing nature of him and his companies, this is going to be more than just you know another big M&A. Would you compare it hellier to sort of the early 2000s when we we saw some of the big tech companies go public then? Well, I mean, we, we are definitely in a bubble, which is what you're alluding to.
I think the the question here is, you know, it's always you get that same kind of comparison, which is, you know, can you be in a bubble and can the bubble burst? But still the technology is transformative and the survivors of that burst bubble make such significant gains that everyone
needs to be invested. And I think that is the problem we have at the moment is that even though you've had all of the all of the chief executives and founders from these AI companies all concede themselves that there is an AI bubble. You are still having money flowing into this this sector. You are still having both VC money flowing and you're still having the idea of these mega IPOs. I mean, to raise $30 billion.50 billion dollars on the stock market is a huge quantum of money.
I think the next biggest was Saudi Aramco on something like $29 billion. And by the way, they were quite a simple company. They had, you know, oil revenue and you could see that. So investors knew what they were buying into here year. I think it's about when does as Jacob was saying, when does the music stop? Do they get to IPO before there is some real market volatility? Because that changes the the the equation completely are? You in the predictions game, Jacob, do you like?
Do you like the prediction? Only as a as a hobby I guess it's not one of monetized yet on these new prediction markets I. Was going to ask you when the music is going to stop. You know, I, I've been, I'm a skeptic and I guess I've been wondering that about Musk. I mean, I think some of his based on his own personal behavior, I mean, he has been, of course, more erratic and can he sort of maintain some of the alliances and, and the veneer at least of legitimacy that he
needs? But I think we'll probably get to some kind of public offering this summer and see where we might proceed from there. But, you know, in the next few years, some of his fantastical predictions will finally have to come true and start returning revenue, and I think that's when the music does stop. Jacob Silverman, author of Gilded Rage, Elon Musk and the Radicalisation of Silicon Valley. That was really interesting.
Thank you so much. I'm Helia Ebrahimi, our economics correspondent here at Channel 4 News as well. You've been listening to the forecast. See you again soon.