Elon Musk is building a form of capitalism that Adam Smith would hate

The merchants are becoming princes, writes Tim O’Reilly

Tim O’Reilly

Illustration: Dan Williams

Jul 12th 2026|5 min read

ANOTHER WEEK, another cocky claim from Elon Musk: he now envisions SpaceX becoming “worth more than the rest of Earth” if it accomplishes its long-term goals. That prediction, made in response to a supporter who questioned the rocketry firm’s AI-compute deal with Anthropic, a competitor, may or (more likely) may not come to pass. There is, however, much about SpaceX that Mr Musk can control—indeed, much more than the typical majority owner.

In June the company went public very much on Mr Musk’s terms. Its initial public offering sold stock to the public without giving the public any meaningful governance rights. Mr Musk kept roughly 85% of the votes, locked in through super-voting shares that can pass to his heirs through trusts. Buyers of the ordinary stock must waive their right to a jury trial and to bring class actions. The company qualifies as a “controlled” one, which exempts it from the rule that a majority of its board be independent, and Mr Musk can be removed only by a vote of the share class he himself controls. Months earlier, shareholders of Tesla, his electric-car company, had handed him a pay package worth up to $1trn, whose real prize was voting control rather than cash. The world’s first dollar trillionaire has assembled a set of structures designed to make him answerable to no one, for as long as he likes, and possibly past his own lifetime.

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