Quote · My First Million
The most simplified breakdown of the SpaceX IPO on the internet
Where this was said
Grok
At 26:00 · chapter starts 24:46
Shaan unpacks what he calls the 'failing forward' architecture of Elon's AI ambitions [1] — Shaan Puri "X's ad business is $1.8 billion — half of what Twitter earned when Elon bought it. Grok has 100 million users to ChatGPT's 1 billion. But t…" 24:24 . Twitter was supposed to be an engagement powerhouse; it isn't. X's ad revenue at $1.8 billion is half of old Twitter's peak, and subscriptions have added only $1 billion in ARR. Grok, meant to rival ChatGPT, has 100 million users to OpenAI's 1 billion. But the critical insight is that each failure produced an asset. Twitter's data fed Grok with some differentiation. Grok justified building Colossus — the world's largest GPU cluster. And Colossus, underutilized by Grok, got rented to Google and Anthropic at over $1 billion per month each in deals that only recently appeared in an amended S-1 filing. Sam notes the strategic genius (or convenient timing) of staggering those announcements to keep building IPO momentum. Elon built the mansion, couldn't fill it with friends, and turned it into a hotel.
Grok has approximately 100 million users while ChatGPT has 1 billion — a tenfold gap between the two AI platforms.
Google and Anthropic together are paying over $2 billion a month combined to rent Colossus, xAI's GPU cluster.
