Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Last Friday morning, Avi Patel was scrolling on X when he saw a post that made him crash out. The post, from General Catalyst investor Yuri Sagalov, announced a $31 million seed round for a startup called Luel, which pays people for AI training data. Patel is the founder of a startup called Kled that also pays people for AI training data. When Patel looked at Luel’s website, it appeared almost identical to Kled’s, right down to the font. Kled had recently raised a $5.5 million seed round, and Patel had taken multiple meetings with General Catalyst. Now, the fund…

SpaceX’s IPO filing is written for Wall Street — but parts of its 277 pages read like a sci-fi novel. Loading audio narration… Sprinkled among the necessary financial disclosures for Elon Musk’s rocket company are a bevy of glossy images of his futuristic vision, planets, and products floating in space — tied together with a whole lot of nerdy nomenclature.The tone is set right out of the gate with the first image. The first image that greets you in SpaceX’s S-1 filing.  SpaceX No, that’s not a still from “Interstellar,” it’s an image of one of SpaceX’s rocket ships.And here’s…

Scorned by his time helming Tesla, Elon Musk went a long way to ensure he’s not at the mercy of SpaceX shareholders. Loading audio narration… On Wednesday, Musk’s SpaceX kicked off its public journey as a listed company, publishing the S-1 paperwork required for its highly anticipated IPO.Throughout the document, the company detailed all the ways it differs from a traditional public company and how influence would remain with Musk, who holds over 85% of voting power. Read more about SpaceX’s IPO 1. Control of the boardThe hotly awaited filing said that Musk will serve as the company’s CEO, chief…

Elon Musk’s latest pay package has a distinctly SpaceX twist: To unlock all of it, he’ll have to help build a city on Mars. Loading audio narration… In SpaceX’s long-awaited S-1 filing on Wednesday, the company disclosed that its board approved a grant of 1 billion performance-based restricted shares for Musk as part of a compensation plan tied not only to valuation milestones, but also to one of Musk’s most ambitious goals yet: establishing “a permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants.”The filing says the award vests in 15 equal tranches tied to specified market-cap targets,…

Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang is, perhaps, one of the greatest corporate hype men of all time when it comes to his company. He may even surpass Salesforce’s Marc Benioff when it comes to relentless optimism in his company’s future and revenues. Even so, he delivers on the hype, quarter after quarter. Instead of cautioning you to view the proclamation that he’s found a “brand new $200 billion TAM for Nvidia” with skepticism, I’d argue he’s earned a bit of trust. Huang positioned this massive new market at the feet of Nvidia’s new CPU product, Vera, which was introduced…

SpaceX wants investors to think far beyond rockets and Starlink satellites. Loading audio narration… The rocket company’s S-1 paperwork, a required step before an initial public offering, lays out a sweeping vision for billionaire Elon Musk’s future space empire. Parts of the filing read more like a blueprint for an extraterrestrial economy that could one day include colonies on the moon and Mars, a booming space tourism industry, pharmaceutical manufacturing in Earth’s orbit, and asteroid mining using autonomous robots.The SpaceX IPO is expected to be one of the largest in US history and comes after the company announced its acquisition…

Anthropic has told its investors that it will more than double revenue to around $10.9 billion in its second quarter, and deliver an operating profit for the first time, the Wall Street Journal reports. That’s a big milestone and fast quarter-over-quarter growth that would put it in an advantageous position relative to its chief competitor, OpenAI. However, the WSJ reports, it may not remain profitable throughout the year due to the large compute costs it’s scheduled to incur. These financials were recently shared with the company’s investors as part of a funding round. The startup has gained in popularity over…

Elon Musk bet big on “spicy” AI. Now, it’s officially a risk factor. Loading audio narration… SpaceX acquired xAI three months before it filed its pre-IPO S-1 paperwork. That brought in-house xAI’s social media platform, consumer chatbot — and not-safe-for-work Grok AI features.In the Wednesday filing, SpaceX said that such features could pose “heightened risks” and “reputational harm” because the Grok NSFW modes are “more irreverent and harsher than our standard offerings.”The filing warned about the possible “generation of potentially explicit content,” as well as “potential nonconsensual or exploitative imagery” and content that infringes on intellectual property. Such content could…

Antonio Gracias, one of Elon Musk’s oldest friends and closest business allies, could land a massive multi-billion-dollar windfall from SpaceX’s IPO. Loading audio narration… The SpaceX S-1 filing shows that Gracias owns more than 500 million shares of SpaceX stock through investment firms affiliated with Valor Equity Partners, the private equity firm he founded. The filing says those holdings represent roughly 7.3% of SpaceX’s Class A stock before the IPO. Based on a conservative estimated $1.5 trillion valuation investors expect SpaceX to achieve in its IPO, those holdings would be worth roughly $91.6 billion.For someone who has mostly stayed out…

Elon Musk’s SpaceX officially kicked off its march to Wall Street on Wednesday, filing the S-1 paperwork required for its hotly anticipated IPO. Loading audio narration… Although the S-1 didn’t reveal key figures investors are waiting on — such as SpaceX’s estimated stock value and anticipated public share price — it did offer the first close-up look at the financial details and strategies behind Musk’s rocket company and AI business, xAI.Here are the biggest takeaways from the filing.There’s an incentive to build a ‘human colony’Making life “multiplanetary” is at the forefront of SpaceX’s mission, and Musk has a massive financial…