TL;DR: Now that SpaceX’s record-smashing IPO has been filed, everyone’s getting a look under the hood. And it reveals something very telling. It isn’t really about rockets or AI—it’s a bet on Elon Musk himself. It hands the CEO of a public company an unusual amount of control and asks shareholders to implicitly trust Musk’s judgement (and his uncanny ability to drive his companies’ valuations to the moon).

What happened: SpaceX’s IPO filing this week revealed, among other things, higher-than-expected losses last year—and the company has delayed the first launch of its third-generation Starship rocket multiple times now. It’s all raised questions around whether the company’s targeted $1.75 trillion valuation is justified.

What SpaceX says: The pitch is that this is no longer just a rocket company, but one refocusing on AI—a market that SpaceX says in its prospectus is potentially worth $26.5 trillion. The company has been investing heavily into building out data centers and improving its AI model.

The reality: So far, the AI play hasn’t borne the kind of fruit that might back up such a massive IPO—the prospectus revealed that SpaceX racked up a net loss of $4.9 billion last year. (Though it’s not all dire: Anthropic just committed $15 billion a year for SpaceX’s compute.)

The loss isn’t even the most eyebrow-raising part. The filing also showed that much of the company’s success relies on ambitious promises like space data centers and the future earnings that could result. And it made clear that the star of the soon-to-be-public company is Musk himself—with the CEO-CTO-chairman keeping 85% of the shareholder voting power. In another unusual quirk, the IPO reserves an unusually high amount of shares for retail investors, who tend to bet on a name instead of just business fundamentals. That means that SpaceX’s fate also likely hinges on whether Musk can keep up his track record of driving up the value of his companies (even if his most outlandish bets often haven’t panned out).

Who stands to benefit: A few longtime SpaceX backers and insiders could make billions once the firm goes public—including a crypto investor behind SpaceX's surprise turn as an unexpected Bitcoin whale. But the biggest winner is likely Musk, who gets a huge injection of capital for SpaceX—and considerably boosts his personal wealth—while retaining tight control. (Tesla investors, on the other hand, may be the losers.)

Bottom line: Musk's famous cult of personality isn't just underwriting an unprecedented public listing—it's also a test case for how far that kind of faith can stretch in public markets. —WK

Your phone camera is an AI cheat code

This week one of my plants developed what I can only describe as a rapidly expanding patchwork of yellow blobs on the soil. Instead of spiraling down a Google rabbit hole, I took a photo and sent it to Claude, and it immediately diagnosed it as dog vomit slime mold (which is a real thing that exists). Not only did it tell me what it was, but it also told me why it appeared and what to do: Scoop it out, let the soil dry, don't bother with fungicide since it's not actually a fungus (my plant is fine).

Pointing your camera at something and asking AI a question applies to a lot of things that have nothing to do with slime mold. Here are some other good everyday use cases:

• What's in the fridge? Photograph what you have inside and ask for recipe ideas based on what it sees. It'll identify ingredients and suggest what to make—just be ready to correct it if it "spots" something that isn't there.
• That mysterious charge. Take a photo or screenshot of just that one transaction and ask what it is.
• The room or cupboard you've been avoiding. Photograph the chaos and ask it to break the cleanup into manageable steps—it'll assess what it sees and give you a specific, realistic plan. (Just be mindful of what is in the frame; a photo of your desk with personal documents scattered around is not ideal.)

As always, treat your AI’s first response as a starting point—push back, correct details it gets wrong, and go deeper where you need to. It's not a one-shot oracle; it's a thinking partner. —SM

Have a question about using AI—for work, life, or anything in between? Let us know. Nothing is too basic or too ambitious.

Being in the top 1% of Taylor Swift or Bad Bunny listeners now comes with more than just bragging rights on your Spotify Wrapped: It could get you some highly coveted concert tickets. A new Spotify feature called Reserved holds tour tickets for artists’ most diehard fans by using metrics like streams, shares, and playlisting. (It’s also clearly a ploy to keep you glued to the app.)

Many music fans have been calling for this feature for a while, given that scoring tickets to live shows in 2026 seems to require emptying your life savings and praying to the gods of every existing pantheon. Call it meritocracy or call it devotion theater—it’s one way to get around resellers who use bots to buy up all the seats before jacking up prices. Though that’s not to say being a “top fan” won’t get gamed either: Superfans were already padding their listening stats, with some leaving their favorite artists playing 24/7 on mute. And once those tickets are in hand, nothing’s technically stopping you from auctioning off the fruits of your hard-earned streaming to the highest bidder. —WK

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