Elon Musk is steamrolling Wall Street to become a trillionaire

Today on Decoder , I’m talking to Ryan Mac, a technology reporter at The New York Times and coauthor of the excellent book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter , which came out in 2024 . I can’t recommend it enough. I wanted to have Ryan on the show because we’re on the cusp of the SpaceX IPO, which promises to be one of the most consequential public offerings in history for a variety of reasons — its biggest-ever size, of course, at nearly $2 trillion dollars , but also because all kinds of rules that keep our markets fair are being bent, if not outright broken, along the way . I also wanted to talk to Ryan because buried somewhere inside SpaceX is X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, which Musk purchased in 2022. That’s what Ryan cowrote that book about. I was very confident that Musk would come to regret buying Twitter back then. I wrote a piece called “Welcome To hell, Elon,” which is probably the single most-read thing I’ve ever written. My thesis was that there would be no way to grow Twitter users and revenue without moderating the platform well and, ultimately, that Elon buying Twitter would destroy his reputation and cause damage to his other companies. Now, we have the numbers from the SpaceX IPO filing to see how right my prediction was. X is shrinking by every major metric, but it may not matter, as Ryan points out. Take a listen, and let me know what you think. Ryan and I also got into all those rules being broken to land the SpaceX IPO — rules about shareholder control, inclusion in the major index funds, and all the other levers of market accountability that usually serve to keep companies in check. You’re going to hear us say “corporate governance” a lot in this episode, and while it may sound boring, it won’t be if you take a shot every time it comes up. Okay, don’t do that. But do consider what it means that Elon has become so rich, so powerful, and so detached from the levers of accountability that he can apparently get away with anything. That’s all without any of the major fund managers or investors calling foul because they don’t want to miss out on what could be the biggest financial windfall in recent memory. There’s a lot to think about in this episode. Okay: New York Times tech reporter Ryan Mac, on Elon Musk, X, and the SpaceX IPO. Here we go. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Ryan Mac, you’re a technology reporter at the New York Times . Welcome to Decoder . Thanks for having me. I am really excited to talk to you. I can’t believe you’ve never been on the show before. I feel like we’ve done a lot of reporting in and around each other. I’m a big fan. Thanks so much for being on. I know. What the hell, man? You just have avoided me this whole time. But no, I’m kidding. It’s good to be here. I’ve listened to many episodes, so great to be a part of it. Well, now we’re going to ask you to answer for your crimes, which is what the Decoder audience really wants me to do, I guess. Speaking of crimes, we’re going to talk about the SpaceX IPO. Elon Musk has obviously filed to take SpaceX public. There’s a lot in that IPO, including the idea that there’s a $28 trillion addressable market for SpaceX services, which is more than the world. Just a lot in there. You’ve reported on a lot of it. So I do want to dive into it, but I actually want to start with X, the everything app, the app formerly known as Twitter. Because the SpaceX S-1 really gives us our first look into what that business is, what it has become, where it’s growing. In 2022, I wrote an article — maybe the most viral article I’ve ever written — it was called “Welcome to hell, Elon,” in which I very confidently predicted that buying Twitter would be a disaster for Elon Musk. I’m just going to read you my thesis. It was the first sentence of the piece. And then I want to try to back into what we know about X. I’m very curious if you think this has come true or not. So my thesis was: “Twitter is a disaster clown car company that is successful despite itself and there is no possible way to grow users and revenue without making a series of enormous compromises that will ultimately destroy Elon Musk’s reputation and possibly cause grievous damage to his other companies.” There’s one view to say, “Yep, that totally came true.” There’s another view to say that actually Elon is more powerful than ever and on the cusp of an IPO that’s going to make him a trillionaire. So tell me about X. What do we know about X, the company in the years since Elon has bought it and what do we know about its financials as reported in this S-1? Sure. I think you mentioned the word “growing” in all that and I think the place to start is the fact that X is simply not growing. It’s stagnated in terms of revenue, stagnated in terms of user growth. It’s been buried twice within Elon’s companies — first into xAI