TNB Tech Minute: Here Are SpaceX’s Big Tech Investors

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This podcast is sponsored by Comcast Business.

**Amit Verma** (0:03)
So CIO's role has evolved, and they're moving from being a technologist to being the bridge between AI capabilities and human adoption.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:13)
That's Amit Verma, CTO at Comcast Business. He believes that continuous intelligence and operating posture linking people, applications, data, and machines is essential for AI at scale. Later, learn why it requires strong executive leadership.

**Julie Chang** (0:31)
Here's your afternoon TNB Tech Minute for Monday, August 17th. I'm Julie Chang for The Wall Street Journal. SpaceX's biggest investors are being revealed in regulatory filings. NVIDIA said it owned nearly 123 million shares. SpaceX recently agreed to use NVIDIA chips exclusively. Meanwhile, Alphabet's Google held a 7.2% stake based on an investment it made more than a decade ago. Antonio Gracia's entities held a 6.5% stake. Gracia's currently sits on SpaceX's board. And VC investor Peter Thiel had a 5.5% stake. As for non-tech investors, Harvard University's Endowment Fund held a $2.2 billion stake in SpaceX at about 12.9 million shares. And we should note, Elon Musk himself had a 48.4% ownership stake.
Spinmaster, the maker of Rubik's Cubes and Paw Patrol, is buying a company that develops so-called kid-empowered AI for about $35 to $50 million.
Brooklyn-based Hapiko makes Stickerbox, a machine that uses AI to generate images based on children's spoken descriptions. It then prints them as stickers, which users can color.
And warehouses are bringing in more robotics. A report from the Association for Advancing Automation found that North American companies ordered nearly 18,000 robots worth $1.2 billion in the first half of this year. That's up from last year by 2% in units and 7% in value. And companies last year bought more than 36,700 robots, the highest number since 2022's pandemic-driven e-commerce surge. Despite new US tariffs and high fuel prices, 92% of companies surveyed by market intelligence firm Interact Analysis say they plan to increase warehouse automation spending to cut costs. For a deeper dive into what's happening in tech, check out Tuesday's Tech News Briefing podcast.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:36)
Amit Verma from Comcast Business explained the key role of CIOs in building systems of continuous intelligence across the organization, which is essential for AI at scale. But responsibility is shared across the C-suite.

**Amit Verma** (2:48)
The CEO and the board owns the business risk and the resilience. It involves your CFO organization for support on the investment.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:59)
The Chief Human Resources Officer steers and shapes AI-driven workforce transformation. The Chief Information Security Officer ensures data safety and compliance. And it goes on. Cross-functional teamwork helps make way for real transformation.

**Amit Verma** (3:12)
Without that partnership and collaboration, Verma says, You are going to develop solutions that just automate a part of the process and not the end-to-end process. So it limits or reduces the impact of the automation.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:27)
Visit comcastbusiness.com/enterprise to learn how Comcast Business helps enterprises navigate an ever-changing technology landscape.