Elon’s Empire: SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink After the Storm & Anduril’s $2.6BN Power Move

Rory O’Driscoll and Jason Lemkin on Circle’s $1B IPO underpricing, Anduril’s $1B Founders Fund check, and why SpaceX is untouchable but Tesla is not.

• Circle IPO sellers left ~$1B on the table: ~20M secondary shares sold at $31, stock traded to ~$80 within days.
• Founders Fund wrote a $1B check into Anduril’s $2.6B Series G — their largest-ever check, and prior record was also Anduril.
• US holds 4% of world population, 23% of GDP, but 67% of global equity market cap — Wise stock jumped 8% just on announcing a US listing.
• Of ~1,500 unicorns, Rory estimates ~20% will fail outright, ~20% will IPO, ~50% will end up in M&A or PE with notional equity never accessed.
• Contact center software is a $10-15B market but labor is $150B; AI 2-for-1 rule implies a potential $75B TAM expansion, though Gorgeous customers replaced 40-50% of humans with AI while ACV rose only 50%.
• SpaceX is structurally protected: the US government has no alternative rocket provider, so it must keep buying regardless of politics; Tesla lacks that moat and is exposed to EV subsidy cuts.
• NYT vs. OpenAI most likely ends in settlement; O’Driscoll argues OpenAI may not need to license a third or fourth national news source if it already has AP and one major paper.

2025-06-12 · Watch on YouTube