Elon Musk is steamrolling Wall Street to become a trillionaire

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Support for this show comes from Klaviyo. Imagine hiring two brilliant employees. The first takes your marketing from idea to full campaign, email, SMS, push, and the time it takes to describe it. The second handles every customer conversation 24-7, answering questions, recommending products, handling orders, both on brand and always on.
Your next hires, Klaviyo's AI agents. Get started at klaviyo.com.
Support for the show comes from ServiceNow. AI is moving fast across the enterprise, but without visibility, it's just chaos. Different tools, different models, different teams using AI in completely different ways. ServiceNow turns that chaos into control. With the AI control tower, you see all your AI across the business in one place. What it's doing, what it's done, and what it's about to do, so you stay in control. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:11)
When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen, and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

**Nilay Patel** (1:43)
Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Nilay Patel, Editor-in-Chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. My guest today is Ryan Mac, technology reporter at The New York Times and co-author of the excellent book, Character Limit, how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter. The book came out in 2024 I could not recommend it more. I wanted to have Ryan on today 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, but also because all kinds of rules that keep our markets fair are being bent, if not outright broken along the way.
And also because somewhere buried deep inside SpaceX is X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, which Musk purchased in 2022 That's what Ryan co-wrote that book about. Now, you might recall that I personally was very confident that Elon Musk would come to regret buying Twitter. On the day of the sale, I wrote a piece called Welcome to Hell, Elon, which was 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 that ultimately, Elon buying Twitter would destroy his reputation and cause damage to his other companies. Well, now we have the numbers from the SpaceX IPO filing to see how right my prediction was. As you'll hear us discuss, X is shrinking by every major metric, but you're also going to hear Ryan point out that it might not matter.
I'm curious, take a listen to this conversation and let me know what you think. Was I right or was I wrong? Ryan and I also got into all those rules that are being broken to land the SpaceX IPO, rules about shareholder control, inclusion onto 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, say, corporate governance a lot in this episode. And while it might sound boring, it won't be if you simply take a shot every time it comes up. Okay, don't do that. But do consider what it means that Elon Musk has become so rich, so powerful, and so detached from the levers of accountability, that he can apparently get away with anything he wants. Without any major banks, 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.
Ryan Mac, you're a technology reporter at The New York Times. Welcome to Decoder.

**Ryan Mac** (4:16)
Thanks for having me.

**Nilay Patel** (4:18)
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 sort of in and around each other. I'm a big fan. Thanks so much for being on.

**Ryan Mac** (4:25)
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, listen to many episodes, so great to be a part of it.