Money where mouth award: to Ron Baron. $30+ Billion in stocks of Tesla and SpaceX, via his top-performing Baron One Fund, AND he privately owns a further $6 Billion stock in the two companies.
That’s commitment. As Ron makes clear, it’s a commitment to Elon Musk himself. Example: Whatever decision Elon makes re a merger of SpaceX and Tesla, he, Ron, will support it.
I’m with Ron. I’m an Elon fan boy. Even though I don’t believe everything Elon envisions can happen. Humans living on Mars, for example. Or going to the Stars (Ad Astra). These seem to be beyond the laws of physics. Even as they serve as monster stretch goals, inspiring visions.
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Grok summary of Ron’s main points:
Tesla:
- “The time to buy Tesla is now.” His pitch is FSD, not just selling more cars.
- FSD is going mainstream: ~1.4–1.5M users, ~55% YoY growth, and ~55% of new buyers taking it at delivery. He says it will be “everywhere.”
- People will want a Tesla, not just an EV — market share improving as legacy makers pull back; he called the driving experience (his Model S stopping for ducklings) a reason everyone will want it.
- Already sized up: firm ~$5B Tesla vs ~$25B SpaceX; asked if he’d buy more, he said that’s enough. He discussed a possible SpaceX–Tesla combination with Musk but wouldn’t share the arguments.
- Batteries, energy, robots. All big or potential huge, parts of Tesla. Which Ron doesn’t even include in his bullish outlook.
SpaceX:
- Starlink could be a $1T revenue business in ~10 years, with $700–800B of EBITDA, supporting a $14–15T valuation for Starlink alone vs SpaceX at under $2T today. [= 7 times its current value]
- Consumer broadband is only part of it; government, enterprise, and mobile make up most of the extra revenue, which is why the constellation plan moved from 20k toward 100k satellites.
- Cheaper launches (Falcon already cut cost/kg sharply; Starship aims far lower) make that scale possible.
- Second act: data centers in space — free solar power, vacuum cooling, less political/grid constraint — to serve AI compute demand, potentially starting around 2027 and worth multiple extra trillions if it works.
