Elon Musk Is on a Clock

Dear Reader,

This is Dylan Jovine with Behind the Markets.

Happy Tuesday. Today is Tuesday, June 16th.

I'm going to have a smile on my face from ear to ear all week. The Knicks won the championship.

Anyway, we have a lot to discuss.

SpaceX is public, the stock traded well, and yesterday had really good action. You can see exactly what Goldman and Morgan Stanley are doing. Masterfully done, by the way.

But a lot of folks are sitting there asking the wrong questions. Does it go to $200? Is it still a buy? Should I take the profit?

I think those are all the wrong questions.

The right question is: where does the $75 billion go?

Musk Is on a Clock

Most people don't know this, but Elon is actually on a tighter clock than usual right now.

He just raised $75 billion and hasn't deployed it yet. And we're at that interesting moment I've observed many times over the years in these deals — the gap between the raise and the reveal.

The filing and investor pitches make it pretty clear where that money is going. But 95% of America has no idea, because they're too busy debating whether to buy, sell, or hold SpaceX.

They're looking in the wrong direction.

That $75 billion is going to start flowing heavily, and it's going to happen right in plain sight — straight into silicon.

The Deadline Built Into Federal Law

Here's the thing most people don't know.

Remember the CHIPS Act?

We were big fans of it.

$52.7 billion on the table to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to America. Of that, $39 billion in direct subsidies, $13 billion in R&D. And a 35% tax credit — Section 48D — for every dollar of manufacturing equipment that goes into a new factory.

On a normal fab, say a $20 billion Intel plant, that credit is worth several billion dollars. It's a big deal.

But Elon's Terafab and Gigafactory are a different animal.

Phase one alone is $55 billion, with a full build-out of $119 billion. That means the tax credit is worth as much as $25 billion — and he hasn't even broken ground in Austin yet.

Think about that. The federal government hands you $25 billion. They write you a check even if you owe zero in taxes. That's my kind of incentive.

But there's always a catch.

To qualify, construction has to begin by December 31st, 2026. Not January 1st. Not whenever you get around to it.

The last day of this year.

That's why everything is happening now. That's why it's all coming together at once. There's a hard deadline baked into federal law, and the clock is already running.

I'll see you tomorrow.

“The Buck Stops Here,”