Hoffman calls SpaceX 'the IAC of AI', buying its way into relevance
Reid Hoffman says SpaceX isn't an AI company despite an AI-central IPO, and reads its Cursor purchase days after going public as proof of absence, not strength.
SpaceX's S-1 projects $320bn of AI-services revenue by 2030 at a 74% margin, dwarfing launch and Starlink, which is how the IPO valuation was supported. Its 2025 AI segment was mostly Twitter, with Grok near $0.5bn.
The thread's flip: Hoffman invests in both OpenAI and Anthropic and sits on Microsoft's board, so commenters weigh the vested interest against numbers that still don't add up.
A bull case the IPO never quite earns
Reid Hoffman's case in Fortune is a valuation argument dressed as a put-down. SpaceX went public on June 12 with AI central to its story, then within days acquired Cursor, the AI coding tool. Hoffman reads the sequence backward: "You could almost think of it as the IAC of AI… buy your way into relevance," invoking Barry Diller's acquisitive internet-era conglomerate. On the compute-leasing line of business he was blunter still: "You're a premium-priced CoreWeave… which is not an AI company." On xAI he said the foundational-model effort was "a complete train wreck," noting all original cofounders had left.
The disclosure that frames it: Hoffman invests in both OpenAI and Anthropic and sits on Microsoft's board through year-end, a competitor talking his book.
The thread audits both the messenger and the math
Many readers flagged the conflict immediately, then went looking at the filing anyway.
"The SpaceX S-1 says they're going to be making $320bn by 2030 on AI services at a profit margin of 74%. That dwarfs all the launch business and even Starlink… This is how they supported the IPO valuation." — a reader citing the S-1
Another broke the current revenue down to show how little of it is AI in any real sense.
"Communications (i.e. Starlink) 11.3B / Space… 4.0B / AI (i.e. Twitter, Grok) 3.2B… the 2025 'AI' revenue is basically all Twitter." — a reader segmenting the filing
A structural objection cut at the category itself, that renting GPUs is a different business than building models.
"They are either datacenter company or an AI company - but it cannot be both." — a commenter on the colocation argument
Skeptics noted the obvious incentive in the thread, an investor in rivals declaring a rival a wreck. The sharper point, raised by one reader doubting the durability, is that the rental income may commoditize within five years. If so, the question the S-1 leaves open is not whether SpaceX is an AI company today, but whether the projected $320bn ever shows up.
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