Ashlee Vance’s biography of Elon Musk shows that Elon has always had strains of megalomania. My time at SpaceX began during a season where that character trait was already defining him. The Christmas party that year, which featured a chocolate fountain, an indoor train, and ceiling-suspended acrobats, was over the top, the subject of water cooler chatter for weeks, and seemed emblematic of Elon’s “work hard, play hard” mentality. This era of SpaceX was also characterized by Elon’s detailed involvement in the company’s goings-on. This remained the case for years, even after his wealth skyrocketed with Tesla’s success and his celebrity ballooned to stratospheric heights. There was an understanding at the company that SpaceX was Elon’s raison d’être, that more than anything, Elon Musk about humanity’s ability to access Mars reliably and regularly. 

I mention all this because SpaceX has indicated that it will seek to go public over the next 18 months. This news has been met by many with bemusement; why would Elon want to expose his crown jewel to the whims of public investors? Why would he want to allow the incentive structure of the company to change in a way that doesn’t align with his stated civilizational goals? Won’t the distractions of being a public company throw a lot of sand in the gears that allow SpaceX to tolerate failure and achieve new heights? Historically, Elon has exercised a lot of control over the projects that matter most to him, and this move by SpaceX may portend a relinquishing of that control. 

Of course, SpaceX’s leadership is not made up solely by Elon. The top brass has likely swelled significantly in recent years, but the old guard of Shotwell, Bjelde, Juncosa, and Johnson (amongst others) has capably led SpaceX over the two+ decades of its existence. While the company’s success is owed in large part to their efforts, there are costs to having unchanging leadership over such a long period of time. These individuals almost certainly have net worths reaching into the billions. While they surely gain a lot of personal satisfaction and validation by pouring their lives into the SpaceX project, I can’t imagine they want to be doing this forever. 

I’ve watched many startups follow a similar funding pattern. Founders are able to raise money in early series funds, cash out a fair amount during growth years, then bail on the company when the projects don’t reach fruition, and finally start raising money for new ventures. While this works out just fine for those visionaries, this scheme also prevents rank-and-file workers from sharing in the liquidity and equity gains promised as part of their compensation packages. SpaceX has always been an exception to this rule – engineers (and to a lesser extent, technicians) have always felt like they could share in the financial prosperity of SpaceX. However, this continued benefit relies on proper stewardship of the company’s long term growth and financial situation. Allowing the public market to price the value of SpaceX’s equity feels like leadership has decided it’s time they reap the astronomical rewards of their long-time service to the company at the expense of newer employees who believed in the prospects of their long-term equity. 

I quit SpaceX because Elon fired employees who accused him publicly over his enabling of an abusive and toxic culture at SpaceX. I don’t fault Elon for enforcing his vision of a proper company culture. There was an open letter published at the time identifying Elon as the primary driver for the company’s culture: 

“Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX—every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company. It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values.”

This open letter made clear that SpaceX’s long term success depended on subjugating Elon to SpaceX’s mission, demanding that leadership “Publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior” adding that “SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand.”

At that time, SpaceX’s valuation was around $130 billion and Elon was seen by leadership as a large source of that valuation (and the source of future growth). In subsequent years, the SpaceX valuation has ballooned to $800 billion, which in some sense validates leadership’s decision to fire rank-and-file employees rather than rein in their CEO. However, as Elon has grown in scale, the risk to the company’s ability to achieve its goals has grown in kind. Taking SpaceX public is one consequence of that risk manifest, in terms of the deleterious effect it may have on the company’s ability and willingness to take on its long term goals. 

Something I learned from my time at SpaceX: A company is a reflection of its leadership. SpaceX making moves to go public is indicative of Elon himself being a different creature than when I first joined in 2015. While I cannot speak with authority on who he is now, how exactly he has changed, it seems plausible to me that the cloak of intangibility conferred by his obscene wealth has warped his sense of self, sense of the possible, and sense of accountability. This can be seen in the myriad of distractions that have snagged Elon’s attention over the last few years: Thai cave rescues, Twitter, DOGE, LLMs. These incidents all reflect Elon’s ill-advised attempts to exert his agency on the world around him, based on his belief that he can achieve impossible goals. It seems to me that he has forgotten the investment and sustained focus that went into SpaceX’s success with him at the helm.

Stated reasons for AI projects aside, taking the company public, at its core, feels like a move by Elon to inflate his own sense of self, reminiscent of the  “Number Go Up” crypto boom. Is this worth the price of SpaceX losing its own identity? If his net worth can crack the 1 trillion mark, maybe such questions just don’t matter anymore.