Elon Musk’s Mega-Merger + We Test Google’s Project Genie + What’s Next for Moltbook Creator
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Did you hear about the prediction market grocery wars? No, what's going on over there? So in New York City, Polymarket and Kalshi are doing dueling stunts involving groceries. So Kalshi launched a $50 grocery giveaway at an East Village grocery store. And Polymarket said that they are opening a whole grocery store that's going to be totally free, subsidized, of course, by the tears of the gambling addicts who power their site. Wait, a free grocery store? A free grocery store. They're calling it the Polly Market. I checked. It's not just for Polly people. If you're monogamous, you can go to... But yeah, for five days, they're doing a free grocery store in New York City.
Just for five days. Yeah. It seems... I saw someone make a comment about this online, which is, it seems like these people feel like they have about 20 minutes left to generate goodwill before they're just sort of shut down by the police. Is that what's going on here?
sure what's going on i don't think you open a free grocery store if you don't think that people are about to like crash the gates and take down your entire operation no i think this is sort of like how the you know if you go to a casino in vegas like they give you free drinks if you're at the table you know or they used to you know but when vegas was good yeah
Yes. You know what would be a good prediction market is a market that could predict where all of the items I want to buy are. I know we've all spent a lot of time walking down those aisles saying, where's the pasta sauce in this grocery store? Somebody should predict that. Is this a Seinfeld bit? Yeah, I'm doing my type five. What's the deal with airline peanuts?
I'm Kevin Roos, a tech columnist at the New York Times.
I'm Casey Noon from Platformer. And this is Hard Fork. This week, SpaceX acquires XAI. What does it mean for the AI race? Then, Google lets Project Genie out of the bottle. Now, how do you rub it the right way? And finally, Malt Book founder Matt Schlicht is here to discuss building a social network for bots. Are there pokes on Malt Book, Kevin?
I'm not sure.
Casey, let's spend the first segment of today's show talking about our exes.
Well, all of my exes live in Texas, Kevin. Is that what you mean?
No, I'm talking about SpaceX and XAI. There has been a lot of drama in the AI industry this week. We're going to talk a little bit later about some involving OpenAI and NVIDIA. But now I want to start with the news this week that SpaceX SpaceX is acquiring XAI. The deal was announced on Monday. These are both private companies, so the details are not public, but it's been reported by Bloomberg that this was an all-stock deal and that it may value the combined company at $1.25 trillion. This is, of course, in anticipation of SpaceX going public. That's expected to happen later this year. And if this is sounding familiar, it's because Elon Musk loves to do this. He loves to kind of bundle his companies up into mergers.
Tesla in 2016 acquired another Elon Musk company, SolarCity. And just last year, XAI itself acquired X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter, in an all-stock deal. I'll just read a little segment from the memo. This was from Elon Musk. He said, quote, This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and XAI's mission, scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars. Casey, your reaction?
Ketamine is so powerful, but it must be used carefully. Talk to your doctor before using ketamine. Now, this is a very grandiose statement from a man who is prone to grandiose statements. I think there is a less grandiose way of describing what we have just seen here, Kevin, which is that a very valuable and profitable company in SpaceX has acquired a cash furnace named XAI.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–12:59
2
How did SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI reshape the AI IPO race?
12:59–24:32
3
What are Elon Musk’s stated plans for space-based data centers and a “sentient sun”?
24:32–1:01:01
4
How might the SpaceX–xAI merger affect accountability for X (formerly Twitter)?
1:01:01–1:06:30
Speakers
6 identifiedMore from Hard Fork
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