Some people on these forums have been followers of, or like, Chamath (He of the Virgin Galactic and Clover Health SPACs). I’ve never been a fan myself. Here’s a recent Wall Street Millennial video walking through his recent apparent fall from grace. It’s kind of a hit piece really, but I’m just throwing it out here in case it presages a real reputation hit against him. Since I do not really follow him, I don’t know how representive these sentiments are.
I watched Chamath's early interviews on CNBC, he was with Cathie Woods one of the few positive and refreshing voices on Tesla, and very good at countering the CNBC interviewer. So good in fact that they edited parts of it out. Unfortunately he seems to have veered off track starting with CLOV . For those who may not have followed closely, the critical piece was from Hindenburg research
Clover Health: How the “King of SPACs” Lured Retail Investors Into a Broken Business Facing an Active, Undisclosed DOJ Investigation whose claim to fame was to have nailed the coffin on Nikola. That one was already soft-debunked by many but never as authoritatively as Hindenburg.
Speaking of SPAC's :
SPACs are starting to get a bad rap (didn't make a note of the pertinent analyses, but essentially the early founders get a huge piece like 50% for free).
The next SPAC getting Hindenburg'ed might be Lucid Motors, see Warren Redlich's
YouTube - BREAKING!! Lucid Motors & CCIV Sued
" Lucid Motors and CCIV were just sued in a federal class action securities lawsuit.
Lucid and CCIV, a Michael Klein SPAC, are planning to merge this Spring. Warren breaks down the details of the lawsuit in this video, which fits with Warren's previous videos saying Lucid looks like a fraud"
I watched Rawlinson's Lucid advert video and was
not impressed at all - his English accent might have endeared him to the Saudis and others, but to me he seemed slick, deceptive and just mouthing words. BTW Elon dismissed his contributions as minor in a tweet, also mentioning he bailed out when the going got tough - "not cool":
Elon's tweet: " Rawlinson didn’t design Model S. Prototype was done before he joined & he left us in the lurch just as things got tough, which was not cool. He did make some contributions to body/chassis engineering, but not to powertrain, battery, electronics or software".
However the FF1 (Faraday Future) seems very real - Munro had a look at an early model/ prototype and the basic parts, without endorsing it since they didn't break them down. Sound like they have a chance, addressing the ultra high end market, plus their factory is in an advanced stage of construction. Will go SPAC, but I wouldn't put money in them. Especially now when Tesla is ready to explode with Berlin/ Texas, the 4860 intro, CT, Semi, M2, FSD, DWS Dojo as a service, the VPP power/ utilities/ solar ramping up, Lithium mining, the Boring Co., and who knows what else the bright engineers at Tesla may come up with.