CSpaceX just sold bonds, and the lowest-rated slice was priced at over eight percent interest.
MEight point three? For a company everyone treats like it prints money?
CThat's what Semafor is reporting, from people familiar with the deal. And Carl Quintanilla posted the kicker: Donald Trump personally bought five million dollars of those bonds back in August.
MThat's the same month SpaceX was raising this debt. A president buying bonds in a private company he's been handing contracts to.
CIt's not new for him to have business ties, but this one's pretty direct. You've got a sitting president holding private debt in a company that gets federal launches.
MAnd nobody saw a conflict there? The optics alone should have stopped it.
CThe argument you'll hear is that five million is nothing to SpaceX, and the bonds were open to accredited investors. It's not like they were reserved for him.
MSure, a president just happened to get a piece of the riskiest tranche of a company he's effectively subsidizing.
CI'm not saying it looks great. I'm saying the mechanics aren't unusual. Private companies sell bonds to wealthy individuals all the time.
MBut they don't usually sell them to the person who controls their biggest customer. That's not normal mechanics, Chris.
COkay, fair. But here's the part I find more interesting: eight percent on the riskiest slice. That tells you what sophisticated investors think about SpaceX's actual credit risk.
MEight percent is what you pay when lenders want real protection. This isn't a company without questions about its cash flow.
CRight. Everyone talks about the valuation, the launches, the Starlink revenue. But bond buyers look at free cash flow, and eight percent is them saying 'we want a premium for this.'
MAnd a president bought the riskiest part of it. I keep coming back to that.
CI keep coming back to whether this even matters for SpaceX. Five million is a rounding error to Musk.
MIt matters because it's a sitting president with a personal financial stake in a private company that depends on his government. That's not a rounding error.
CI'll give you that the timing is terrible, at minimum.
MTerrible is the generous word.
CAlright, different world entirely. Rivian's cutting jobs again.
MThe number going around is about two hundred employees, roughly one and a half percent of the workforce.
CThat was actually reported back in September, tied to the federal EV tax credit expiring. But here's the part that's worse: Rivian has since made larger cuts.
MThe LA Times reported over six hundred more layoffs in October. So the 'two hundred' is already old news, and the real number is bigger.
CThis is the gap between what's trending and what's actually happening. The small number gets shared, the bigger one doesn't.
MAnd the reason matters too. The seven-thousand-five-hundred-dollar tax credit going away hits Rivian hard because their vehicles are expensive.
CThe R2 is supposed to change that. Under fifty thousand, aimed right at the Model Y.
MBut it's not here yet. And in the meantime, they're cutting people to survive.
CIt's a race between getting the R2 to market and running out of runway. I still think they make it.
MYou've been optimistic about Rivian for years, Chris.
CBecause the product is genuinely good. The R1S is the best SUV I've driven, electric or not. The problem is price and scale.
MAnd right now, price is losing. When the tax credit goes away, a Rivian starts looking even more expensive next to a Tesla.
CTesla's also losing the credit on a lot of models. It's not a Rivian-only problem.
MNo, but Rivian has less margin to absorb it. Tesla's been through the scale-up pain already.
CFair. Rivian's still in that awkward middle stage where every cost matters.
MSpeaking of awkward, one of those X accounts is also claiming Rivian's bringing AI agents into its cars.
CThe post says drivers could give more natural instructions instead of old-school voice commands. But that's not actually confirmed.
MRivian has talked about better software, sure. But an official 'AI agents are coming' announcement? Nobody's found one.
CThis feels like someone took a vague road map slide and added the words 'AI agents' because that's what gets clicks.
MClassic. Take a real trend, punch it up with unconfirmed specifics, and suddenly it's news.
CI'd wait for Rivian to actually say it. Until then, it's just a rumor wearing a facts costume.
MAnd the jobs story is the one that actually matters. Real people losing work while the hype machine spins.