Elon Musk’s SpaceX has hit a $2.4 trillion valuation—making it the sixth most valuable company on Earth—while burning through billions and promising to put AI data centers in space, a scheme that raises serious questions about how much taxpayer money funds these empires and who controls the future of speech beyond the reach of the Constitution.
Newsmax reports SpaceX is now valued above $2.4 trillion, driven not by profits but by grand promises of orbital AI and Mars colonies. The establishment press fawns over the technology, but ordinary Americans should ask why a company that has lost $13 billion since early 2023 is soaring on Wall Street. While the media focuses on sci-fi dreams, they bury the financial reality: following the money means asking how many government contracts and taxpayer dollars are propping up this empire as Big Tech consolidation accelerates and free speech remains an afterthought.
SpaceX’s pitch relies on moving AI data centers into orbit. Musk argued Thursday that orbital data centers were "always going to be" the answer because "you can scale a trillion times more than you could on Earth," Newsmax reported. The company plans to launch initial demonstrations of space-based AI computing infrastructure by late 2027, according to Benzinga.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong cheered the move, blaming "excessive regulation" on Earth. "It’s more efficient to fly to outer space than to try and build on land," Armstrong said. "Freedom is always on the frontier." Armstrong argued the Constitution failed to restrain "unchecked" regulations and government spending.
But when billionaires talk about "freedom" in space, they mean freedom from accountability. Greg Martin, managing director of private markets at Rainmaker Securities, told The Washington Post that if anyone else made these claims, "they would probably have him institutionalized." Martin noted that investors "certainly are ascribing a ton of market cap to things that they have not yet demonstrated."
SpaceX itself admitted in documents released before its blockbuster IPO that "space is inherently hostile" and that "we have not, and no one else has, previously operated or attempted to operate orbital AI compute." Despite this, Musk predicted the company "might be able to reach approximately $1T revenue in 2030."
The technical fundamentals may be sound—Ben Wild, chief technology officer of Hubble Network, told the Post that orbital systems solve the real estate, power, and cooling problems plaguing terrestrial AI. But the press omits the underlying financial alchemy. A company bleeding billions achieves a multi-trillion valuation, and Americans are right to ask how much public funding underwrites this private power. As Big Tech pushes computing infrastructure to an unregulated frontier, the digital public square moves further away from constitutional protections and democratic oversight.
Musk and Armstrong claim freedom lives on the frontier. But as taxpayers fund the infrastructure that underpins these orbital empires, the open question is whether the Bill of Rights will reach orbit—or if the new frontier will be governed by billionaire fiat.
