Tag: Elon Musk

  • SpaceX’s Starlink wants to provide your in-flight WiFi

    SpaceX’s Starlink wants to provide your in-flight WiFi

    There’s no faster way to win the hearts and minds of the people than by bringing them fast, reliable internet on an airplane. Elon Musk knows this, and that’s maybe why his space company, SpaceX, is reportedly in talks with “several” airlines in a bid to provide their crafts with WiFi via the company’s growing internet satellite network, Starlink.

    On Wednesday, June 9, Jonathan Hofeller — SpaceX’s VP of Starlink and commercial sales — told a panel at the Connected Aviation Intelligence Summit that the company is forging ahead with its plans to shift its satellite-linked broadband network from servicing predominantly rural homes to more commercial interests by the end of 2021.

    “We’re in talks with several of the airlines,” Hofeller told the panel. “We have our own aviation product in development … we’ve already done some demonstrations to date, and looking to get that product finalized to be put on aircraft in the very near future.”

    SpaceX began a beta rollout of its Starlink satellites in 2018 in order to cover a global dearth of broadband internet connections, particularly in rural areas where fiber connections generally aren’t readily available. Under the beta plan, most Starlink customers pay a one-time fee of $499 for a bundle that includes a self-aligning Starlink dish and Wi-Fi router, and then $99 per month for monthly internet services after that.

  • Elon Musk compares chip shortage to toilet paper crisis on an epic scale

    Elon Musk compares chip shortage to toilet paper crisis on an epic scale

    Tesla CEO Elon Musk has once again raised concerns over the ongoing chip shortage crisis that has hit the carmakers around the world as an added challenge besides the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Musk, who recently blamed the crisis behind frequent rise in price of some of the Tesla cars this year, compared it to a hypothetical toilet paper crisis to drive home his point.

    Replying to one of the Twitter users in inimical style, Musk tried to show deeply the crisis has impacted the auto manufacturing world. He wrote, “Our biggest challenge is supply chain, especially microcontroller chips. Never seen anything like it. Fear of running out is causing every company to over-order – like the toilet paper shortage, but at epic scale.”

    Tesla and Elon Musk have been facing questions on social media over price increase on some of the electric vehicle models. Tesla has increased prices of its Model 3 and Model Y electric cars five times in a matter of months. The hikes started in February this year and, since then, price has been increased on these two Tesla electric vehicles every month till June.

    According to reports, Tesla is forced to hold around 20,000 units of Model 3 and Model Y cars because of a missing part. Tesla had admitted earlier that it has been going through some of the most difficult supply chain challenges.

    Defending the decision to hike price of Tesla cars, Elon Musk had said, “”Prices increasing due to major supply chain price pressure industry-wide. Raw materials especially.” However, he believes the crisis will not last too long. “That said, it’s obv not a long-term issue,” Musk wrote in reply on Twitter.

  • Dorsey, Musk bat for Bitcoin as future of renewable energy

    Dorsey, Musk bat for Bitcoin as future of renewable energy

    Arguing for Bitcoin as a key driver of renewable energy’s future on Earth Day, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have come forward to support the fast-growing cryptocurrency, saying that Bitcoin incentivises renewable energy.

    Dorsey’s digital payment services company Square and global asset management firm ARK Invest have jointly released a white paper on “Bitcoin as Key to an Abundant, Clean Energy Future”.

    In a tweet on Wednesday, April 21, Dorsey said: “Bitcoin incentivises renewable energy.”

    Musk replied: “True,” after tweeting that starting next week, “Tesla Solar Panels and Solar Roof will only be sold as an integrated product ‘with’ Tesla Powerwall battery”.

    In the white paper, Square and ARK Invest said that “the energy asset owners of today can become the essential bitcoin miners of tomorrow”.

    The ‘Bitcoin Clean Energy Initiative’ has developed a short research paper as a “starting point to share our vision for how bitcoin mining — in conjunction with renewable energy and storage – is especially well suited to accelerate the energy transition”.

    To complement this work, ARK Invest has contributed an open source model that demonstrates how bitcoin mining could augment these renewable + storage systems to supply a larger percentage of a grid’s base-load energy demand for comparable or lower cost unit economics.

    “Bitcoin miners are unique energy buyers in that they offer highly flexible and easily interruptible load, provide payout in a globally liquid cryptocurrency, and are completely location agnostic, requiring only an internet connection,” the paper read.

    Bitcoin miners are an ideal complementary technology for renewables and storage.

    “Combining generation with both storage and miners presents a better overall value proposition then building generation and storage alone,” the research paper noted. “By combining miners with renewables + storage projects, we believe it could improve the returns for project investors and developers, moving more solar and wind projects into profitable territory,” it added.

  • Elon Musk’s SpaceX raises $1.16 billion in equity financing

    Elon Musk’s SpaceX raises $1.16 billion in equity financing

    Billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX has raised about $1.16 billion in equity financing over the last two months, the private rocket company said in an amended regulatory filing on Wednesday, April 14.

    The filing comes after SpaceX, whose investors include Alphabet Inc and Fidelity Investments, in February disclosed that it raised about $850 million, which had reportedly lifted its valuation to about $74 billion.

    The private space company had raised $1.9 billion in August in its largest single fundraising round, according to financial software and data provider PitchBook.

    In February, a prototype of SpaceX’s Starship rocket, SN9, blew up on its final descent, like SN8 before it. The SN9 was a test model being developed to carry humans and 100 tons of cargo on future missions to the moon and Mars.

    Following this, the U.S. House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said last month it was investigating a SpaceX commercial space launch that regulators determined violated U.S. safety requirements and its test license.

    Musk, who also leads several futuristic companies, including Tesla Inc, Neuralink and Boring Co, said last month SpaceX will be landing its Starship rockets on Mars well before 2030.

    Is Elon Musk’s Favorite Meme Cryptocurrency the Next Bitcoin?

    It started as a joke, but now the joke appears to be on the people who didn’t take Dogecoin seriously. The meme-cryptocurrency Elon Musk wouldn’t stop tweeting about has reached an all-time high. According to Coindesk, it has risen to 70.22% in the last 24 hours – the highest ever recorded. Currently (at the time of writing this article) Dogecoin’s value is $0.122680, or almost 12 cents. The market cap of DogeCoin — which started as a joke and is literally classified as “a memecoin” — is currently over $14 billion. This is the highest-ever for the cryptocurrency, and the result of a semi-ironic movement that’s involved thousands of buyers, tens of thousands of online posters and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.

    In early January, each token was worth less than one cent. In late January, when both the GameStop and DogeCoin movements hit their stride, the value of DogeCoin shot up to 7.5 cents, well over a 10-magnification, before sliding down to 2.5 cents. The coin has spent the past few months in the three- to seven-cent range. On Sunday, its price began to rise, from around six cents, before it smashed the 10-cent milestone, reports CNET.

    Tesla CEO, SpaceX boss and currently world’s richest person, Elon Musk had announced that he “bought some Dogecoin for lil X, so he can be a toddler holder.” Dogecoin surged as much as 16% following the tweet, spiking from $0.069 to $0.08.

    The Shiba Inu-themed digital coin surpassed 8 cents for the first time, just a week after crashing to 2.5 cents and sparking an outcry on Reddit. It rose 53 per cent in the last 24 hours to 8.2 cents, breezing through its recent record of 7.8 cents posted in late January.

  • Elon Musk sets a new record. His wealth jumps $25 billion in a day

    Elon Musk sets a new record. His wealth jumps $25 billion in a day

    Elon Musk just hit a new milestone: He made a record $25 billion in one day. Tesla Inc.’s 20% jump on Tuesday, March 9 — its biggest in more than a year — pushed the billionaire founder’s fortune to $174 billion, closing the gap with Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Overnight, Nasdaq surged 3.7%, led by gains in Big Tech companies such as Apple, Amazon and Facebook. The surge in Bezos’s Amazon.com Inc shares helped him gain $6 billion, taking his net worth to $180 billion. In January, Elon Musk unseated Bezos as the world’s richest person. Musk’s fortune peaked later that month at $210 billion, according to the index, a ranking of the world’s 500 wealthiest people. Consistent quarterly profits, the election of President Joe Biden with his embrace of clean technologies and enthusiasm from retail investors fueled the rise in Tesla shares. Shares of electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc surged nearly 20% on Tuesday, rebounding from a deep selloff with its largest daily gain in a year after data showed an increase in China sales and an analyst raised his rating on the stock. On Tuesday, New Street Research analyst Pierre Ferragu upgraded Tesla to buy from the equivalent of a hold, saying the company has two years of earnings momentum ahead and its demand outlook is stronger than supply could ever be.