Lost in space: Elon Musk, Tesla investors and the great AI public offering

Race to be the first IPO in the AI age masks everything else

This column is for Callaway Climate Insights subscribers only, but it’s OK to share once in a while. Was it shared with you? Please subscribe.

This never gets old. Image: SpaceX.

At a time when investors are notably concerned that the AI promise of Big Tech might not yield the returns they bet on over the past three years, some AI leaders are dangling one final temptation — the initial public offering.

Both Open AI and rival Anthropic have said they want to launch IPOs in the next year. But none are more ambitious than Elon Musk, who last week managed to deflect the first annual decline in revenue in Tesla TSLA 0.00%↑ history by instead switching the company’s EV narrative to robotics and teasing a potential combination of it with his SpaceX in what could be the largest public stock offering in history.