SpaceX Earnings Call, The Boring Co's $20B Raise, and The Polymarket Stat Nobody Mentions
SpaceX Earnings Call, The Boring Co's $20B Raise, and The Polymarket Stat Nobody Mentions
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Note: AI-generated summary based on third-party content. Not financial advice. Read more.
Quick Insights

Capitalize on the structural surge in grid power demand by investing in localized energy infrastructure providers like Base Power, which is scaling rapidly amid an 800% jump in PJM grid capacity costs. Monitor Robinhood (HOOD) to capitalize on the mainstream adoption of prediction markets, which are currently generating more revenue for the platform than traditional stock trading. Approach private-stage investments like SpaceX with caution during periods of heavy volatility, keeping a close eye on management's Q2 2026 earnings guidance and upcoming AI data center partnerships with Anthropic and Google. Evaluate the speculative $20 billion valuation of The Boring Company against its slow-moving government infrastructure contracts and public construction timelines. Exercise extreme caution with prediction markets like Polymarket, recognizing that retail traders face an 84% loss rate while institutional quants capture roughly 70% of the profits.

Detailed Analysis

SpaceX

  • SpaceX held its first public earnings call for Q2 2026, marking a shift to public financial reporting.
  • Market participants are laser-focused on future earnings and revenue guidance rather than historical Q2 numbers.
  • Anticipated AI and compute-related partnerships—such as the Anthropic data center deal, Google data center deal, and Reflection AI data center deal—are expected to drive future revenue.
  • The company is seeing significant volatility, with 911 million shares recently becoming available for liquidation.
  • Long-term bullish sentiment views the company as potentially reaching a $5 trillion plus market cap.

Takeaways

  • Investors should closely examine the official Q2 2026 earnings guidance released by management rather than getting bogged down in historical financials.
  • Watch for how the CFO specifically details compute and AI business strategies to drive revenue.

The Boring Company

  • The company is reportedly eyeing a $20 billion valuation in a new fundraising round.
  • The business model heavily relies on government-driven revenue and public infrastructure contracts, which move much slower than typical technology companies.
  • Operational success includes the Las Vegas loop project, which had an initial construction cost of approximately $48.7 million and features a variable revenue model based on ridership (acting similarly to a toll road).
  • Long-term speculative concepts include underground tunnels for travel on Mars/the Moon, and futuristic high-speed transit like the Hyperloop.

Takeaways

  • Weigh the lofty $20 billion valuation against the reality of navigating slow government-driven permits and physical-world construction timelines.
  • Monitor whether the company can expand its commercial opportunities beyond government contracts to increase its total addressable market (TAM).

Polymarket

  • Polymarket is looking at a $20 billion valuation, following a funding round in April at a $15 valuation (referencing private market pricing mentioned in-studio) and annualized revenue exceeding $1 billion.
  • A competitor, Calchi, recently did $22 billion in May and is reportedly seeking a valuation round around $40 billion.
  • Robinhood (HOOD) announced in its Q2 earnings that prediction markets are generating more revenue for them than traditional stock trading.
  • Industry data shows that 84% of average users lose money on prediction markets, and 0.04% of participants capture 70% of the profits (primarily dominated by quantitative trading firms/quants).
  • Approximately 89% of trades on these platforms are still centered around sports betting.

Takeaways

  • Understand that prediction markets currently function largely as high-risk gambling platforms where institutional quants capture the vast majority of profits.
  • Look out for enterprise or B2B use cases, such as institutional prediction markets utilized by businesses to hedge against commodity price fluctuations (e.g., agricultural costs like tomatoes).

Interactive Brokers (IBKR)

  • Interactive Brokers features a massive global footprint, with 60% to 70% of its customers being non-U.S. individuals opening U.S. brokerage accounts.
  • The firm targets international users who lack access to domestic investment products and services.

Takeaways

  • Recognize the immense growth potential of international expansion for financial platforms, as underserved global populations represent a massive untapped total addressable market compared to U.S.-centric platforms.

Base Power

  • A residential battery storage developer founded by Zach Dell that recently raised $1 billion at a $13 billion valuation.
  • The company has already installed 23,000 batteries across Texas and the Chicago area, currently achieving a run rate of 100 installations a day.
  • The business model involves owning and operating home batteries in deregulated markets while partnering with utilities in regulated markets to store energy when prices are low and draw from them during peak pricing hours.
  • Operates in an environment where the cost to secure future power on America's largest grid (PJM) has surged 800% over the past year.

Takeaways

  • Treat residential energy storage and localized power management as an emerging infrastructure asset class, akin to a household utility (similar to HVAC).
  • Consider the surging demand for electrical grid stability and localized power solutions driven by heavy power consumers like AI data centers.
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Video Description
Aaron Ross and Aaron Dillon open on SpaceX's first public earnings report, and Dillon's position is that the historical quarter is close to irrelevant: the large compute and data center commitments landed too late in Q2 to move reported revenue in any material way, which means the entire information content of the event sits in the forward guide and in whatever the CFO — not Musk — is willing to say about how compute converts to earnings. Sell-side consensus is scattered, and the scatter is diagnostic: analysts don't have visibility into capex on new data center capacity, so the range of outcomes on the guide is wider than the range of outcomes on the print. Dillon's long-run framing is a $5T+ market cap, held independently of any single quarter. From there the conversation moves to the Boring Company's reported ~$20B raise, where the house view is considerably more cautious — tunneling is a physical-world business with a physical-world throughput ceiling, and the revenue model is structurally government-driven, which caps the TAM in a way software doesn't. The Las Vegas Loop was built for roughly $48.7M, and the interesting wrinkle is per-rider variable revenue on top of the build contract, a toll-road-like annuity that keeps paying — but the commercial applications (utility conduit, fiber runs, anything that doesn't require a municipal procurement cycle) are where the multiple would have to come from, and those aren't visible yet. Conviction is lower here than elsewhere in the book, and entry-point discipline argues for waiting. On prediction markets: Polymarket is reportedly marking toward $20B after an April round at $15B, on annualized revenue above $1B, with Kalshi rumored to be raising at a substantially higher mark and Robinhood disclosing that prediction markets now out-earn equities trading. The structural read is the one that gets missed — roughly 0.04% of users capture about 70% of profits, and something on the order of 84% of participants lose money, which makes this a quant-extraction venue wearing information-market clothing. The genuinely interesting call option is institutional: a hedging layer where a restaurant hedges tomato input costs, or any SMB hedges a commodity exposure it currently has no instrument for. And the demand driver almost nobody underwrites correctly is non-US access — the Interactive Brokers precedent, where the majority of accounts are foreign nationals opening US brokerage access, is the right analogue, and it's the same Starlink dynamic: the revenue isn't the American who already had DraftKings, it's the four billion people who never had anything. Closing on Base Power — Zach Dell's residential battery storage business, $1B raised at a $13B valuation, 23,000 units installed across Texas and the Chicago area at roughly 100 installs a day — buying grid power at trough pricing overnight and discharging at peak. With PJM capacity clearing prices reportedly up several hundred percent year over year, distributed storage is running the same cost-compression playbook against electricity that Baseten and the inference layer are running against tokens, and we would watch the pairing of home storage, rooftop solar, and eventually local compute as a single residential utility stack. Ross Pre-IPO | AGDillon & Co. Institutional-grade research on private and pre-IPO companies. Nothing in this video is investment advice. Valuations and figures discussed are as reported at time of recording.
About The Cap Table — Pre IPO Podcast
The Cap Table — Pre IPO Podcast

The Cap Table — Pre IPO Podcast

By @thecaptablepodcast

The Cap Table is a weekly podcast hosted by Aaron Ross and Aaron Dillon, breaking down the most important private and Pre-IPO companies before they hit the public markets. Interested in investing in Pre-IPO stocks? Let's talk. Aaron.ross@rosspreipo.com Aaron.dillon@agdillon.com