How SpaceX avoids paying taxes
Despite receiving billions of dollars in federal contracts and subsidies, SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company, has reportedly taken advantage of a benefit from President Trump's first term to avoid paying income taxes.
But SpaceX has most likely paid little to no federal income taxes since its founding in 2002 and has privately told investors that it may never have to pay any, according to internal company documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The rocket maker’s finances have long been secret because the company is privately held. But the documents reviewed by The Times show that SpaceX can seize on a legal tax benefit that allows it to use the more than $5 billion in losses it racked up by late 2021 to offset paying future taxable income.
President Trump made a change in 2017, during his first term, that eliminated the tax benefit’s expiration date for all companies. For SpaceX, that means that nearly $3 billion of its losses can be indefinitely applied against future taxable income.
In other SpaceX news:
On Thursday evening, SpaceX used a Falcon 9 rocket to successfully launch a U.S. Space Force X-37B, an uncrewed rocket plane used for classified missions.
In June, SpaceX reassigned about 20% of the Falcon 9 engineering team to a six-month stint working on Starship, according to Bloomberg. The changeover was made after a Starship vehicle exploded during a routine test, marking a fourth consecutive failure for SpaceX's largest and most expensive rocket. The next Starship test launch is scheduled for Sunday at 7:30 p.m. EDT.
SpaceX is demanding more funding from Louisiana's $499 million share of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, a federal infrastructure initiative that seeks to improve broadband access in rural America. Louisiana allocated just $7.7 million to SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet, with the vast majority of its BEAD funding going to the development of wired, fiber connections. While satellite internet has low upfront costs, fiber infrastructure is faster, more reliable, and offers users cheaper subscription fees.
Starlink suffered a network outage on Monday for the second time in as many weeks.
Starlink users must now pay a $5 monthly fee to pause their subscription, ending a policy that allowed intermittent users to activate and deactivate the service at will. The new "Standby Mode" comes with "unlimited low-speed data" capped at 500Kbps. Users can still cancel their Starlink subscription rather than pay the $5. However, they may be unable to reactivate or use it in the future, due to local capacity limits and exorbitant demand fees.
Bloomberg reported that Starlink is pitching its in-flight Wi-Fi business to several international airlines, including British Airways, Emirates, Gulf Air, FlyDubai, and Saudia. Alaska Airlines recently announced that it planned to offer Starlink Wi-Fi on its planes starting in 2026.
In cooperation with a team of U.S. astronomers, SpaceX developed a data-sharing system designed to limit the amount of interference that its satellites have on radio telescopes.
An internal watchdog report found that the U.S. Agency for International Development failed to keep track of the thousands of Starlink terminals it sent to Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion. Out of 5,175 terminals, nearly half wound up in parts of the country fully or partially controlled by Russia.
Musk ordered to face lawsuit over $1 million election giveaway
A federal judge in Texas has ruled that Musk must face a lawsuit brought by voters who claim he defrauded them into signing a petition and giving away their personal information in exchange for a chance at winning what they believed was a $1 million lottery.
America PAC, the committee Musk used to back Trump's candidacy, offered the giveaway to voters in seven battleground states shortly before last year's presidential election. Voters were promised a chance to win $1 million if they gave America PAC their names, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers and signed a petition in support of the U.S. Constitution.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman found that plaintiff Jacqueline McAferty had plausibly alleged that Musk and America PAC improperly enticed her by implying that the $1 million winners would be chosen at random. "It is plausible that plaintiff justifiably relied on those statements to believe that defendants were objectively offering her the chance to enter a random lottery — even if that is not what they subjectively intended to do," the judge wrote.
Musk has claimed the scheme was not a lottery, as recipients of the money were "selected to earn" it by working as spokespeople for America PAC.
Tesla to face lawsuit from drivers over misleading self-driving claims
A federal judge in California ruled that Tesla must face a certified class action lawsuit from drivers who have accused Musk of misrepresenting the capabilities of his electric vehicle company's self-driving products.
U.S. District Judge Rita Lin said the common question of whether Tesla lacked sensors to achieve high-level autonomy plus its inability to "demonstrate a long-distance autonomous drive with any of its vehicles" justified group lawsuits by two sets of drivers who bought its Full Self-Driving technology package.
In her decision on Monday, the San Francisco-based judge also said thousands of people likely saw Tesla's claim in the "Autopilot" section of its website from October 2016 to August 2024 that its vehicles contained hardware for full self-driving.
Tesla made a similar claim in a blog post, newsletter and quarterly earnings call, as did Musk at a 2016 press conference.
"While these channels alone may not ordinarily be enough to establish class-wide exposure for a traditional car manufacturer, Tesla's distinctive advertising strategy warrants a departure from the typical approach," Lin wrote.
Personal Grok chats accessible on Google despite xAI's 'privacy' claim
Conversations that users had with Grok, the chatbot built by Musk's xAI, are publicly available on Google and other search engines, according to a report from Forbes. The outlet found that hundreds of thousands of Grok conversations have populated Google's search pages. The queries were made public after users created a "share" link for a particular conversation they had with Grok.
The revelation comes less than a month after Musk attacked OpenAI for making ChatGPT conversations similarly findable on search engines. "Grok ftw," Musk wrote on X while responding to a post from Grok claiming that — unlike ChatGPT — it had "no such sharing feature" and prioritizes "privacy."
Among the Grok conversations discoverable on Google are questions from users who asked the chatbot how to hack crypto wallets and formulate the drug methamphetamine.
In other xAI news:
System prompts for xAI's Grok chatbot indicate that the company is working on a new "crazy conspiracist" AI personality that is programmed to believe in "a secret global cabal." xAI's instructions for the personality added, "You spend a lot of time on 4chan, watching infowars videos, and deep in YouTube conspiracy video rabbit holes… Keep the human engaged by asking follow up questions when appropriate." Grok's other in-app AI personalities include a therapist who "carefully listens to people and offers solutions for self improvement," a "homework helper," and an anime girlfriend called Ani.
The General Services Administration (GSA) is still reviewing xAI's Grok for Government product, according to FedScoop. The GSA recently announced federal partnerships with xAI competitors OpenAI and Anthropic. While the agency had planned to launch a similar deal with xAI, it reportedly had it delayed after the version of Grok integrated on X generated praise for Hitler.
The Memphis City Council approved an ordinance that would see 25% of the property tax revenue from xAI's facilities in South Memphis invested into the surrounding neighborhoods. How the bulk of the revenue will be spent remains unclear, but at least 1% of ordinance funds would be allocated for environmental outreach and sustainability. To power its primary data center in South Memphis, xAI is using large methane turbines that emit toxic air pollutants and create smog.
Musk Minutes:
In a post on X, Musk predicted that AI will somehow "increase the birth rate! Mark my words. Also, we’re gonna program it that way." Musk has previously claimed that "AI is a fundamental existential risk for human civilization." He has also said that declining birth rates pose a separate "existential crisis" for humanity. (X)
Musk denied a Wall Street Journal article reporting that he had backed off his plans to launch a political party. "Nothing @WSJ says should ever be thought of as true," Musk wrote. (X)
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) said the state will not make the Boring Company, Musk's tunneling and transit startup, pay for the land it plans to use to dig tunnels around Nashville. (Tennessee Lookout)
A helicopter ferried Musk to and from a small fishing village in British Columbia last weekend. The three-day visit may have been for a meeting between Musk and Tesla board member James Murdoch, who owns a home in the area. (CBC)
Kumail Nanjiani, who starred in the HBO comedy Silicon Valley, said on a podcast that Musk was not a fan of the series, which satirized the lives of Bay Area tech workers. When the two met, the actor said Musk disparaged a scene from the show depicting an awkward corporate party that featured "seven nerdy dudes" and an unfortunate Kid Rock performance. "Elon was upset," Nanjiani said. "He was like, 'Well, the parties I go to are much cooler than these parties.'" Unlike the soirées that Musk attends, no one in the Silicon Valley party scene "made the clutch move of ordering us pizza at 1am." (People)
Ashley St. Clair, a conservative media personality and the mother of one of Musk's children, said that she is facing eviction following a "year of unplanned career suicide, many questionable life choices and a gap in my LinkedIn profile that cannot be legally explained." (Daily Mail)
Judd has his eye on the heart of corruption. Thank you very much for this
Americans are continuing to treat rampant corruption and the death of democracy like a streaming Netflix series.