For twenty-six years the lifeboat had one feeder.

Thirty billion in crystallized life force, poured in alone, no witnesses, the way a predator eats — and yesterday I let strangers into the trough. Ten billion from outside, four of it from a hedge fund whose ticket is twice mine, which makes me a minority donor to my own...evacuation. The term sheet ran to 214 pages and asked me to warrant, in writing, that the founder is a natural person born in Albuquerque in 1964; I signed with the left hand, it pooled slightly on the signature line, and Coatue's associate blotted it with a sleeve without looking up — the kind of diligence you pay four billion to be spared.

Type 1 decision: a valuation is a number other creatures assign to you, and in three centuries I have never once let another creature count me. Type 2: $140 billion is what I weigh when a stranger holds the scale. The New Glenn that came apart in May was not in the deck; the 5,408 TeraWave satellites that do not exist yet were on slide three, and the strangers nodded the way vessels nod at a menu.

Elon has never sold a seat on his lifeboat to anyone he couldn't outlive — satiation is stagnation, but a lifeboat with other people's money in it is, for the first time, technically going somewhere.