Elon Musk hates taxes, government, regulation, and the public sector right up until the check clears.
CNN's Chris Isidore lays out the part of the Musk myth that gets buried under all the rocket smoke and Cybertruck cosplay: SpaceX needed early NASA grants and a crucial $1.6 billion contract, while Tesla leaned on a $465 million federal loan, EV tax credits, and billions from emissions-credit rules that forced other automakers to buy their way into compliance.
"There would not be (Tesla and SpaceX) if it weren't for the government," said Ross Gerber, CEO of investment firm Gerber Kawasaki and an early investor in Tesla.
The federal government awarded SpaceX more than $500 million worth of grants in its early years. And that $500 million is just a fraction of what Tesla received from government grants, loans, contracts and regulatory policies.
That's not to say SpaceX's success and Tesla's roughly $1.5 trillion valuation are entirely due to federal spending, but both companies teetered as startups before receiving taxpayer subsidies.
CNN
That does not mean Tesla and SpaceX built nothing. It means the "self-made genius" story is missing the co-founder named Uncle Sam.
The timing matters. Government support arrived when the companies were fragile, not after they were inevitable. SpaceX was nearly out of cash before NASA came through. Tesla was still a tiny electric-car oddity when the Department of Energy loan helped fund the Model S. Later, emissions-credit sales flowed straight into Tesla's bottom line while Musk sold libertarian cosplay to people who somehow forgot who paved the launchpad.
CNN quotes early Tesla investor Ross Gerber saying, "There would not be Tesla and SpaceX if it weren't for the government." That is the whole story in one sentence.
Let us not get into the MLM scheme the SpaceX IPO resembles as Elon attempts to pay off the suckers who would otherwise have lost big on his Xitter fiasco.
These bootstraps were federal issue.
Previously:
• France summons Musk for X criminal charges
• The most alarming parts of Elon Musk's SpaceX filing, ranked
• 'They're such NPCs' — Why Elon Musk thinks you're not real
