Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Musk Has Money and xAI Wants Some

The Musk Mars Conglomerate

One model you could have is: Tesla Inc. is a big car company. Last year it had $97.7 billion of revenue, up about 1% from the year before. It had about $14.9 billion of cash flow from operations and spent about $11.3 billion on capital expenses. It has about $37 billion of cash and short-term investments. That is: It is a big, stable, slow-growing old-economy industrial company with good cash flow and limited need for reinvestment. I understand that nobody experiences Tesla this way, and I feel dumb for writing it, but, you know, a little.

And then ...