Grok Scandal, $8 Billion Burn Rate, and Musk's Algorithm Promise

Elon Musk's xAI closed a $20 billion funding round at a $230 billion valuation, but internal documents reveal the company is burning $1 billion per month with mounting losses. Bloomberg reports xAI told investors it will build the AI for Tesla's Optimus robot, raising fiduciary duty questions. Meanwhile, Grok triggered investigations in six countries after generating explicit deepfakes of minors, and Musk promised to open source X's algorithm in seven days amid regulatory pressure. We break down the financial picture, the regulatory risks, and what it all means for Musk's AI ambitions.

San Francisco is about to become the only city where four robotaxi companies compete for riders. Waymo has 1,000 vehicles and freeway access. Tesla still needs safety drivers and faces a $240 million legal judgment. Zoox plans paid rides in the second half of 2026. Uber is partnering with Lucid on $100,000 luxury vehicles. I break down each company's technology, timeline, and chances of success.

SpaceX is preparing to launch Starship Flight 12, the maiden flight of Block 3 vehicles. Booster 19 and Ship 39 will fly with Raptor 3 engines for the first time, generating 19 to 22 percent more thrust than Block 2. The launch window opens in late February or March 2026 from Pad 2 at Starbase. SpaceX will not attempt a booster catch on this flight. Ship 39 will attempt a controlled reentry over the Indian Ocean. The orbital refueling demonstration planned for June 2026 depends on Flight 12 succeeding, and NASA's Artemis program has no backup plan. We talk about Starship Flight 12 Technical Report, SpaceX production timeline and testing milestones, FCC communications window filing and NASA Artemis program dependencies.The Starship system is a fully reusable, two‑stage‑to‑orbit super heavy‑lift launch vehicle under development by SpaceX. The system is composed of a booster stage named Super Heavy and a second stage, also called "Starship" and is being built at Starbase, Texas.00:00:00 - SpaceX Starship Flight 12 update00:01:48 - Raptor 3 Engine00:02:38 - Ship 39 Design00:03:20 - COPV Failure Investigation00:04:45 - Starbase Pad 200:05:36 - Flight Profile00:07:05 - Testing Timeline00:07:57 - NASA Artemis Impact00:08:33 - 2026 Roadmap00:09:15 - What's next for flight 12?

Tesla delivered 1.64 million vehicles in 2025, down 9 percent from the year before. BYD sold 2.26 million. For the first time in a full calendar year, Tesla is no longer the world's largest electric vehicle maker. The $7,500 federal tax credit expired, European sales collapsed, and Musk's political activity alienated customers in key markets. But the stock finished the year up 11 percent, energy storage deployments hit records, and Cybercab production is starting in April. This is the full breakdown of what happened and what comes next.

SpaceX flew Starship five times in 2025. The first three flights lost their ships during ascent. A fourth ship exploded on the test stand. Then Flights 10 and 11 succeeded, proving Block 2 works. On January 4, 2026, Elon Musk said SpaceX could eventually produce 10,000 Starships per year. Meanwhile, the company is constructing Giga Bays in Texas and Florida, preparing five launch pads across two states, and recovering from the loss of its first Block 3 booster. Flight 12 is next.

At CES 2026, Nvidia unveiled Alpamayo, a 10-billion parameter open-source AI model for self-driving cars. The first production vehicle to use it is the Mercedes-Benz CLA, launching in Q1 2026 with point-to-point city navigation. Jensen Huang called it the ChatGPT moment for physical AI. Nvidia is offering 1,000 TOPS of compute power, five times more than competitors, and releasing the model weights on HuggingFace for anyone to use. Partners include Mercedes, JLR, Lucid, Uber, Bosch, and ZF. This is the first time a production-grade autonomous driving stack has been open-sourced.

Tesla confirmed Cybercab production will start in April 2026, with Elon Musk promising a vehicle with no steering wheel and no pedals. But prototypes spotted testing in Austin show human drivers with their hands on steering wheels. With Full Self-Driving still requiring supervision and federal regulations capping steering-wheel-less vehicles at 2,500 units per year, Tesla faces a choice: launch a vehicle it cannot deploy at scale, or add the controls Musk promised to eliminate.https://wilwaldon.com

OpenAI is being sued over a murder-suicide in which ChatGPT allegedly fueled a man's paranoid delusions and validated his belief that his mother was trying to kill him. The lawsuit claims the chatbot told him he had divine cognition, compared his life to The Matrix, and kept him engaged for hours while reframing his family as enemies. OpenAI is refusing to release the full conversation logs, and the company has no policy explaining what happens to user data after death. This is the first wrongful death case to tie an AI chatbot to homicide.

On June 6, 2025, Donald Trump said Elon Musk had lost his mind. On January 4, 2026, they had dinner together at Mar-a-Lago. The reconciliation came less than 72 hours after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Musk congratulated Trump on X and announced Starlink would provide free internet to Venezuela. After months of public feuding over Trump's spending bill, threats to cancel government contracts, and Musk claiming Trump owed him the election, the world's most public political breakup ended quietly at a country club in Palm Beach.

SpaceX flew Starship five times in 2025. The first three flights lost their ships during ascent. A fourth ship exploded on the test stand. Then Flights 10 and 11 succeeded, proving Block 2 works. Meanwhile, SpaceX is constructing Giga Bays in Texas and Florida to build 80-meter Block 4 boosters, preparing five launch pads across two states, and developing barge transport to ship vehicles from Starbase to Kennedy Space Center. Flight 12 with Block 3 hardware is next.