Musk's $1.5T SpaceX IPO Target, Grok’s Slow Enterprise Push, Space Data Centers | Dec 15, 2025

0:13Welcome everyone to the information's TITV. My name is Akash Pasricha. It is Monday, December 15th. We have got a great show lined up for you today. Before we get going, iRobot, the maker of the Roomba vacuum cleaner, has filed for bankruptcy. The company says its devices will continue to work as it looks to restructure, which is good news. Bad news about the bankruptcy, but the vacuums are working, so that's great. Today on the show, we are talking about our new Apple org chart that we published, which comes after a series of high-profile executive exits. We'll then get into some analysis on building data centers in space and the anticipated IPO from SpaceX.

0:54We also have some exclusive reporting around Elon Musk's push to get companies around the world to buy XAI's Grok model. And we will end the show with a deep dive into the first edition of our brand new AI infrastructure newsletter. It is a big show, so let's get right on into things. Apple has seen a series of departures from the company in recent weeks. Its chief operating officer and AI chief both retired recently and also one of its design leaders left for Meta. It's all prompted our newsroom to do a bit of reporting on who the new guard is at Apple. And so today we are publishing our updated Apple org chart.

1:31I want to bring on Wayne Ma, who has closely covered the company for years to tell us more about what he's learned. Wayne, welcome to the show. Good morning. Thanks, Takash, for having me. So let's talk about the Apple org chart. You know, there was a lot to it in the story that you wrote and in the org chart that we published. And so I thought maybe a good way to do this was let's talk about three big changes that you've noticed at the company's org chart from the last time that you did your big update. And then we'll talk about what each of those changes sort of signal about the direction the company is going in.

2:05So let's start with one of the first big changes you made. Sure. One of the biggest changes is in artificial intelligence. So in 2018, it was elevated to its own executive level C-suite position run by John Guillandrea, who came from Google. With his retirement, they're moving it back under the software engineering group. So it's more considered a product and not its own type of thing. And so considered a product, what does that sort of signal about the way Apple is looking to innovate in AI? Because it's kind of had a bit of a choppy run here, right? Yeah, I think it signals that they think about AI differently than other companies like Meta or Google who are chasing kind of super intelligence, which is trying to make AI smarter than a human and is a very lofty goal.

2:49Whereas Apple is really trying to make AI, I guess for the rest of us, right? Making it good for the tools that you need for writing or summarization or for notifications. Hmm, okay. What's another big change that you noticed in your org chart overhaul? Well, earlier this year, Apple announced that Jeff Williams, its longtime COO, was retiring. And so he was actually in charge of not just operations, but the design team, the robotics team, and health even. And so they've moved. With him stepping down, they've kind of had to divide his responsibilities up with other Apple leaders as well. Did they not think to elevate someone to the COO position or just took over the role entirely?

3:31Well, they have elevated Sabi Khan to COO, but it's not a one-for-one match. And I think the most striking thing about this is that Williams was supposed to take over from Tim Cook in an emergency. And as a result, he had lots of overview of teams that were outside of his area of expertise, like design and like the self-driving car at one point. And so we should have seen, if we were going to see a successor to Tim Cook sooner, we would have seen them give some of these responsibilities to another person so they'd kind of divide them all up again. And so I want to dig into this idea of it not being a one-to-one replacement.

4:09I mean, tell us about Sabi Khan. What's his background? Was it sort of a lack of experience that was the hesitation behind giving him all the responsibility? No, I think it's just he's more specialized in operations. He mainly, he has a long history in operations, but not in design or these other kind of areas. And so because he's just started out as COO, I think they didn't want to give him such a huge portfolio right off the bat. And it may not be him that replaces Tim Cook ultimately, right? In an emergency, I think he will. But long term, we don't think it's Sabi Khan. We actually think it's John Ternus, this hardware engineering chief at Apple.

4:46Right. Was there a third big change that you noticed that tells us something about the company? Yeah. So within the AI group, there's this key group called the Foundation Models Team, and they're the group that is responsible for the underlying software that powers Apple Intelligence. And so the head of that team, who ran a group of 60 people, he left earlier this year. And so we found his replacement, it's Jif and Chen, who joined from Google. And then we noticed that of his 30 direct reports, 60 overall, more than half come from Google. And so then the question is, how long will those people stay, given that one of the big selling points for bringing people from Google over was John Key and Andrea, who is now leaving.

5:30Now, one of the things you called out in your story was that despite all of these executive-level changes, there's a lot that hasn't changed. Yeah, there's like a running joke that, you know, 10 years ago, Apple had like 100 VPs and SVPs, and now the company's grown by like 23%, but how many SVPs and VPs are there today? Still 100. and that just shows the company I guess is very conservative when it comes to promotions but also they run a very flat organization where they're not constantly adding new layers. Right, right. And last question for you, you mentioned John Ternus and the idea that look, succession around Tim Cook is a very popular topic in the Apple orbit at least amongst people who follow the company.

6:16So did anything about the structure of the business tell you anything about how they're approaching succession? Is it really just these few people that are being thought of as successors? Yeah, actually, the absence of any major changes and the absence of giving Turnless any sort of additional portfolio shows that maybe they're not thinking about succession right away or they're hesitant to start it. And so I think that was the big change, or the big thing that I noticed at least was that there wasn't really much movements that show that there is a successor for Cook anytime soon. Great. Well, Wayne, it's a great discussion.

6:53I want to thank you for coming on. We appreciate it. That is Wayne Ma, our reporter here at The Information. Okay, next up, data centers in space have gotten a lot of attention recently, or at least the prospect of having data in space one day is one that billionaires cannot stop talking about. The roots of that excitement in some ways tie back to our recent reporting that SpaceX is looking to go public next year. But as per usual, there is a lot more to that story. I want to bring on Nick Wingfield, our features editor who co-authored a great piece on that topic over the weekend. Nick, welcome back to the show.

7:27It's great to have you here. Thank you for having me. You ended off last week and you're starting us off this week. It is very much the Nick Wingfield show here. So where did the origin of this idea of putting data centers in space? I mean, did it start with Elon Musk? Were there startups who have been working on this for a long time? Just talk a little bit about that. It actually didn't. I mean, you would think Elon Musk would have been one of the first to talk about this. He founded and leads the leading rocket company on the planet. He has the largest constellation of communication satellites out there in low Earth orbit.

8:06So it would have been a natural thing for him to start talking about it. But in fact, he really just started to get very vocal about it this past week. Prior to that, I had noticed more talk from startups. Jeff Bezos has talked a bit more about this topic. And we wrote a story actually last or earlier this year, really, about how the notion of space data centers, orbital data centers was starting to pick up. And then for that, you know, it's been a science fiction, I mean, maybe not the data center part of it, but the notion of having satellites doing, you know, industrious things in space has been around for quite a while.

8:49Now, it's a big lift, and I want to talk about some of the challenges here, but if we just sort of stick with the 10-year vision here, I mean, what problems could this solve? Is it power that's the big problem here? Power is a big one. The story that I wrote over the weekend was largely about, like, what does this say, the fact that this is really starting to pick up right now, What does this say about data centers on Earth? There are people out there who believe that, well, A, that power, you know, free 24-7 power, solar power, is a very compelling reason to put data centers in space. There's also a cooling element to it, too, which is related to power and also water.

9:40In space, though, the cooling challenges have really not been figured out. And if you want to look for skeptics of the notion of orbital data centers, they really tend to focus in on this. Musk thinks that it's or says that it's free cooling, essentially. But I'm not sure that that technical problem has been solved. Now, the other thing that I think this says is that data centers on Earth are, in many cases, running into obstacles. connecting to the power grid, but also people don't want these data centers in some of their communities. You're starting to see reports of protests and slowing down the process.

10:22And theoretically, putting them up in space could allow you to cut through all of that red tape. Right. So, I mean, in terms of the challenges, they haven't figured out the cooling. I remember in that story that we wrote about a year ago or something like that, I mean, also space debris was another issue, right? The idea that these things could, I don't know, knock it down the satellites or something like that. Well, some of the mock-ups that I've seen, in particular from a startup called StarCloud, show these vast solar arrays. I think that their mock-up is something like a two-kilometer by two-kilometer solar array.

11:03So just, you know, taking up a massive amount of space. And if you imagine a lot of these things in space, then, yeah, I think space collisions become a real concern. Now, there may be ways to mitigate that by making sure that obsolete data centers are deorbited and you reduce the amount of junk effectively in space. But I still think that's a big issue that these companies are going to have to figure out in the future. One of the things that you pointed out, and there's a great chart in the story, is you talked a little bit about how the cost of launching things into space has been coming down.

11:47And SpaceX plays a large part of that. I mean, is that really the key data point here that is propelling the idea that we could get anything in space, conceivably? One of them, for sure. And, you know, right now, SpaceX, which is the most prolific launcher of rockets anywhere, has brought the cost down dramatically through the reusable rockets. I think the estimates that we have in our chart is for the Falcon Heavy, which is their kind of their biggest rocket, that they're now down to about$1 ,500 per kilogram of payload. They have this giant new rocket, Starship, that they are trying to really get rolling.

12:31And that rocket, some people think, could come down into the hundreds of dollars within a few years. So that starts to open up the possibility of bringing up a lot more payloads. And then you also have competitors to SpaceX. Really, it's been a kind of SpaceX show for quite some time now. But Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' rocket company, has successfully launched payloads from their big rocket, their Starship equivalent, which is called New Glenn. But they really have to get those rockets rolling. And then you have a number of other smaller startups that could also introduce more competition and help lower prices.

13:12Right. So last question for you, Nick. Now, you've studied the space sector, at least from afar, you know, for the past couple decades as you've been a reporter. You know, given what you've seen now with the momentum in the sector, do you think it's realistic? I mean, 10 years from now, you know, do we have data centers in space or is it really just an idea, an Elon Musk sized idea, maybe? There are not too many topics in tech where I can say that I just don't really know. I mean, it's extraordinary to see some of the smartest, most powerful, richest people in tech, Jensen Long, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, all starting to talk about data centers in space as really the only solution to the long-term AI compute problem.

14:08Right. Then whenever you write about this, you will get engineers, space people, like data center people telling you why you're an idiot and why this will never work for X, Y, and Z reason. Radiation zapping the chips. The cooling issue is not solved. I mean, there are just so many different objections to this whole concept. Will they get compute into space? That's already happening. there are starting to be demonstrations of NVIDIA chips going up. And just this past week, StarCloud announced that they had trained an LLM, a small one, on a satellite effectively. So people will do this. Will it ever scale up to the level of actually solving the AI compute problem?

15:00I think that's really uncertain. And we'll have to start to see people try it. Let me ask you one more question, Nick. I mean, I always wonder how much of these innovation discussions are bull market behavior. I mean, if the market was down, right? If we were sort of watching the stock market slip and maybe the bubble bursts in a way that people are waiting for it to, I mean, do you think this gets as much attention if people are worried about the fundamentals a little bit more? Well, I mean, AI compute is the bigger question. Like, what happens to that if we tip into a bear market? All of a sudden, maybe AI starts to grow more slowly and we can meet the AI compute needs here on the planet.

15:46But if you assume that AI growth is going to the moon, you know, literally, then, you know, then, yeah, space data centers start to make more sense. I think the other thing here that we haven't really talked too much about is that the reason we're hearing about this right now is because Elon Musk wants to take SpaceX public. And this gives him an opportunity to tap into the AI story effectively for SpaceX. It's already a pretty compelling business. They dominate the launch market. They have the most satellite. They have the dominant position in satellite internet. if they can get a piece of this like AI compute market.

16:31The story becomes much more compelling. Well, Nick, I want to thank you for coming on. It was a great piece and I look forward to talking to you again soon. Thanks for having me. Okay. Sticking with our space coverage, one of the big questions that investors looking ahead to the SpaceX IPO will have to answer is which other companies they may turn to for a suitable comparison as they try to sort through what the company is worth. As of now, SpaceX is reportedly targeting a$1.5 trillion valuation. That is, according to Bloomberg. I want to bring on Tim Ferrara, president of satellite consulting company TMF Associates, to offer his thoughts.

17:11Tim, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here. Thanks very much. So I do want to get into the fundamentals of SpaceX in a second here, but look, data centers in space, are you bullish? Are you bearish? Where do you think this stands? Well, I think the most interesting thing is how quickly we've pivoted from a story for SpaceX which has been about launch and then it's been about satellites for the last decade. Everyone was saying, okay, well, Starlink's going to generate enough revenue to take Elon Musk to Mars and now we're suddenly talking about data centers instead. And I think that's indicative of the fact that SpaceX has missed its forecast for the last three years.

17:51I mean, three years ago, 2023, we're hearing$8 or$9 billion of revenue. Now we're told it's$7.4 billion. This year, Musk said it's going to be$15.5 billion. Now it looks like they're trying to get to$15 at best. So yeah, they need a new story. And I think that's what data centers in space do for them. Well, let's talk about the story that has carried SpaceX so far through its growth. I mean, for people who haven't studied the company in great detail, just walk us through how the company actually makes most of its money right now. Right. So the company started off, obviously, in launch business.

18:27It's got very dominant in that. And then about 10 years ago, Musk saw that people were thinking about launching satellites into space to do broadband. And he jumped on that bandwagon. He's been incredibly successful at that. And that's what's driven SpaceX's revenues from$2 or$3 billion five years ago to close to $15 billion this year. And that's really surged in popularity. We've now got 8 million people using Starlink's broadband service. They've just launched a new direct-to-cell phone service with T-Mobile in the summer. And that's already had over 8 million users in the US and internationally.

19:09So people are looking at that as a great success story. But again, it's not been quite as good as they hoped for. And Starlink right now makes up most of their revenue, is that right? That's right. Yeah. I mean, Starlink this year is probably going to be around two-thirds of the total revenue. Obviously, that includes both the services that they provide to consumers and a lot of stuff that they're doing for the U.S. government. So they're building a$1.8 billion system for the National Reconnaissance Office. There's talk about them getting into Dolden Dome, talk about a Milnet communication system for the DoD.

19:46So that is also on top of the sort of consumer and enterprise services, a big driver of their business. But launch, yeah, it's only three or four billion dollars right now. And, you know, I just want to go back to the launch business because this could become more relevant, I guess, in this AI data center future. But for the launch business, who traditionally has been paying SpaceX to get their satellites in space, whatever they're launching in space? Right. So, I mean, it's a mixture of government missions. They are launching satellites to the Department of Defense. They're launching astronauts into space for NASA.

20:25They're getting funded by NASA for the Artemis program. And, of course, they've dominated the commercial launch business. So they've been launching for a lot of other people, including great rivals like Amazon and OneWeb. So now as we look ahead to the IPO, I mean, what other public companies are there that play in this market that you might look to as comparable? Well, I think that's really difficult because what you've got in the space industry is a mixture of legacy players, the Boeings, the Lockheed Martins of this world that really aren't comparable at all in terms of valuation. And then you have a lot of other new space companies that are way, way smaller than SpaceX.

21:08And in the main, they're mostly just saying, well, SpaceX is worth$800 billion now. Maybe it's worth$1.5 trillion next year. So we ought to be a percentage of that. So it goes that way around. Everyone takes their valuation from SpaceX, not the other way around. And so, yeah, really, you've got to look at Elon Musk's other companies to find any comparison. I mean, that's outside the space industry. But if you can justify that your Tesla's valuation, then maybe you can justify SpaceX's valuation as well. It's about belief in Elon Musk after all. So 1.5 trillion. I mean, where do you this number?

21:46I mean, it comes from what? It's just Elon Musk setting a price. I mean, is there any fundamental backing behind it? Well, I mean, you know, the irony of the$800 billion number that we saw last week is that it seems to be a conveniently rounded number for$420.69 a share. So, you know, these things tend to have not necessarily a lot of fundamentals behind them. I think it's what they think they can get. And yeah, 100 times this year's revenues seems crazy until you look at what Musk has done with his other companies. Now, if we think about the IPO as a fundraising event, do you think SpaceX needs to go public for the ambitions that it has painted?

22:32I mean, we've seen that it's been able to stay private for so long. And, you know, we've talked on this show about the private market being at least tappable for the largest companies. Do you think an IPO is a good idea for the company? Well, I think the reasons why a lot of companies went public in the past has been to give liquidity to employees and investors. And that's not really been necessary because they've been able to do these really large tender offers every six months to give their employees liquidity and give them a reason to stay. So that's gone as far as it can perhaps now, and they need some money not just for launching these data centers into space, but also for developing Starship, for going to Mars.

23:19And they owe EchoStar about$17 billion in a couple of years' time anyway. I mean, half of that's in equity, but they're going to need some cash for those sorts of things as well. So it's a good time. But at the end of the day, if someone came to Elon Musk tomorrow and said, I'll give you$10 billion, no strings attached, and you can stay private, But he might think that's a better idea than all the problems in the public markets, which we've seen so often with Tesla. Right. Because it doesn't really seem to me like the space sector is necessarily the most predictable market in terms of forecasting revenues and quarterly results that actually give people any kind of confidence about what's coming in the six to nine months to come.

24:03Right. And because the company has fallen short of expectations, while it's private, it's able to tell these stories about$22 or$24 billion of revenue next year. Everyone will take them seriously because they don't really have a lot of data to analyze to come up with predictions that have been true. I mean, the company has fallen short. It's great being private because you can just select the best possible metrics to give out to investors. And when they're public, you'll see a lot more data and a lot more ability to analyze how the company is actually doing. Right. Let me ask you one more question here.

24:42As I've been thinking about a SpaceX IPO, I've been thinking about the companies that SpaceX may have helped lift in its orbit. I'm thinking about suppliers, people that make the parts for these rockets and stuff like that. And again, looking ahead to an IPO, look, my theory is that if and when it does go public, I think there's a lot of potential for this to turn into a bit of a meme stock in terms of people just wanting to get in on Musk's latest company. And then I started thinking about, OK, well, if SpaceX IPO goes well or if the stock ends up surging, right? I mean, are there smaller space companies that then would see an opportunity to then go public?

25:22Do you see sort of an orbit of companies here that could follow SpaceX in taking to the public markets? Well, I think we've already seen a sort of SPAC bubble about four years ago, and quite a lot of space companies took advantage of that then. And, you know, not all of those have gone super well. Certainly after their IPOs, they fell back a long way. Now, in the last year or 18 months, a lot of them have been inflated on the back of this growing SpaceX valuation. And I think that even in the last couple of weeks, since we saw the news of a potential IPO for SpaceX start to emerge, we've seen some of those share prices increase further.

26:02So I think people are looking really at competitors to SpaceX because people's assumption is this can't be a monopoly forever. So what are the alternatives? And people say, well, okay, maybe this will work, maybe it won't, but maybe it's worth 5 % or 10 % or 1 % of SpaceX's valuation. And so, you know, that gives a lot of attention to those other sort of meme stocks in some cases who are trying to compete with SpaceX so far pretty unsuccessfully, to be frank. Great. Well, Tim, I want to thank you for coming on the show once again. It's always a great conversation. We'll talk to you again very soon.

26:41Thanks very much. Okay. XAI is looking to be an enterprise software company, or at least it is trying to build a group that will sell its software to businesses. That is according to a new report from The Information, and I want to bring on Theo Waite, the reporter behind that story, to tell us more about Elon Elon Musk's ambitions in that arena. Theo, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here. Good to be here. This is really, it's the Elon Musk show today. I mean, we're talking about space. We're talking about XAI. We haven't yet done Tesla, but we'll have to get there soon. So let's talk about this report that you published.

27:16Talk a little bit about the product that XAI is trying to sell to businesses. They want to sell Grok for business. It's the enterprise version of the AI models that we've all seen on X. And they have about a dozen people or so that they've built up over the past six months that are out there pitching this. Okay, so it's not too big a team yet. I mean, it's a dozen people. It's tiny, yeah. Okay. And how has the progress been? You know, there have been some somewhat limited tests. I've heard from sources that Palantir, Morgan Stanley are some of the bigger names. But the scale is just incredibly tiny compared to Microsoft or Google or OpenAI.