Gavin Baker, an early SpaceX investor, continues his podcast tour discussing xAI tools and the broader Elon Musk empire. These clips from the a16z podcast highlight several significant developments and predictions for SpaceX and xAI.
**xAI's Grokbot and Agent Dominance:**
Gavin Baker praises xAI's recently released Grokbot, noting its ability to create sophisticated AI agents like podcast summarizers, Substack summarizers, and X sentiment trackers in mere seconds (7-12 seconds), compared to hours with traditional "cloud code." He describes Grokbot as "fucking amazing," "user-friendly," "intuitive," and "rapidly evolving," predicting that xAI could capture a significant share of the "agent market." The podcast host even suggests Grokbot could replace his entire workflow, from content creation and voice cloning to video production, uploading, and scheduling. He urges all SpaceX investors to install and utilize Grokbot, noting that he had "massively and intentionally underestimated" xAI's success in the model layer, but now expects massive market share gains. He notes that xAI, starting from scratch just a few years ago, has "leapfrogged the whole industry with agents with Grokbot." Grokbot is reportedly experiencing high usage, with "servers overloaded every once in a while."
**Orbital Data Centers (Starmind) and Cost Economics:**
The discussion delves into orbital data centers, a venture SpaceX is reportedly focused on. The current cost to bring a gigawatt of AI compute online on Earth is approximately $50 billion. However, by leveraging space, this cost can be reduced by about $15 billion (eliminating terrestrial power, cooling, and labor expenses), bringing the orbital cost to around $35 billion per gigawatt. This is a "very big deal," with only SpaceX having the capacity, provided Starship achieves rapid and reliable reusability. The podcast highlights that terrestrial costs are inflationary, citing electricians now making "well in excess of half a million US dollars per year" due to the demand from AI data centers. In contrast, orbital compute, especially with Starship reusability, is expected to be deflationary, with launch costs potentially falling "under a billion." Elon Musk and Jensen Huang have "co-designed a reuben rack" for orbital compute, scheduled to launch in Q4 2027 (or Q2 2028 if delayed). The speaker envisions "Starmind" as SpaceX's second "gigantic global constellation that prints money," leasing AI compute to companies like OpenAI or Anthropic, who, lacking their own launch capabilities, would be forced to seek SpaceX's services.
**SpaceX's Robust Valuation and Diversified Opportunities:**
The podcast emphasizes that SpaceX's long-term valuation remains incredibly strong, even when ignoring major potential revenue streams. The host's 20-year valuation model, which assumes "almost zero meaningful success in the agents layer" (Grokbot) and "no meaningful impact on the company at all" from AI models, still views SpaceX as an "absolute steal" and "dirt cheap bargain." He states that the "AI infrastructure" (compute on and off Earth) is currently "carrying" his long-term SpaceX valuation. Other significant opportunities include Starlink Mobile, projected as an "$800-900 billion of revenue" market, contributing to a "close to two trillion" market for broadband and mobile. SpaceX also has a "rapidly growing AI ARR base" and has made "very aggressive compute investments." Even if xAI "fumbles the ball with their first party AI applications," SpaceX still possesses a "massive infrastructure business." The valuation suggests that deleting "entire multi-trillion dollar opportunities" within SpaceX "doesn't meaningfully move the fair value of the company."
**Starship and Future Launch Infrastructure:**
The discussion touches upon the development of "Starbase Louisiana," which is expected to enable "thousands of launches a year." There are predictions for multiple global Starbases in locations like the Middle East, Europe, Japan, and South Korea. The distinction is made between China's "jury rig system" for catching rockets (suggested on the SpaceX subreddit over 10 years ago) and Starship's full reusability, where the booster and Starship are caught, stacked, fueled, and sent back up. Starship pads are being engineered for potentially "more than two a day" launches, suggesting a highly ambitious launch cadence.
The podcast concludes that while success is not guaranteed, the speed at which xAI has progressed from non-existence to catching up and then "leapfrogging" the industry with agents like Grokbot is an "extremely promising sign," making future dominance "increasingly more likely."