SpaceX Eyes an $800B Valuation, Beeple’s Pooping Robot Dogs Steal Art Basel, Google Defends AI Search, and Elliott Closes In on PepsiCo Deal

8th December 2025

SpaceX is closing in on a record-setting $800 billion valuation as it prepares a new insider share sale, cementing its return as the world’s most valuable private company and renewing speculation about a potential IPO as early as next year. At Art Basel, Beeple once again captured the cultural moment with a bizarre, headline-grabbing installation of robot dogs modeled after tech titans that quite literally “print” art, turning anxieties about AI and automation into spectacle. Over in tech policy, Google is pushing back against fears that AI search will drain traffic from the open web, insisting its new tools represent an “expansionary moment” rather than an existential threat. And in corporate power plays, activist investor Elliott Management is nearing a settlement with PepsiCo after months of behind- the-scenes pressure to restructure the business and boost shareholder value. All this and more in today’s Read It And Eat!

Major  Headlines

• SpaceX to Offer Insider Shares at Record-Setting $800 Billion Valuation

SpaceX is preparing to sell insider shares in a transaction that would value Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite maker at as much as $800 billion, people familiar with the matter said, reclaiming the title of the world’s most valuable private company. The details, discussed by SpaceX’s board of directors on Thursday at its Starbase hub in Texas, could change based on interest from insider sellers and buyers or other factors, said some of the people, who asked not to be identified as the information isn’t public. SpaceX is also exploring a possible initial public offering as soon as late next year, one of the people said.

Another person briefed on the matter said that the price under discussion for the sale of some employees and investors’ shares is higher than $400 apiece, which would value SpaceX at between $750 billion and $800 billion. The company wouldn’t raise any funds though this planned sale, though a successful offering at such levels would catapult it past the record of $500 billion valuation achieved by OpenAI in October.

Elon Musk on Saturday denied that SpaceX is raising money at a $800 billion valuation without addressing Bloomberg’s reporting on the planned offering of insiders’ shares. “ SpaceX has been cash flow positive for many years and does periodic stock buybacks twice a year to provide liquidity for employees and investors,” Musk said in a post on his social media platform X. The share sale price under discussion would be a substantial increase from the $212 a share set in July, when the company raised money and sold shares at a valuation of $400 billion. The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times earlier reported the $800 billion valuation target. Yahoo.Finance

• At Art Basel, Beeple Unleashes Pooping Robot Dogs Modeled After Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg

It seems Art Basel Miami Beach has perfected the art of the scroll-by spectacle. This year, the collective gasp was at the new Zero10 digital art section, and it happened every time one of about a half-dozen robot dogs “went.” The installation, Regular Animals by Beeple(a.k.a. Mike Winkelmann), is part satire, part dystopia, part slapstick theater. In it, a pen of robot dogs (or is it pigs?) have been fitted with grotesquely lifelike heads of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Jeff Bezos, and Beeple himself. They wander, they twitch, they clash, and then, at intervals likely engineered for maximum dramatic tension, they tip backward and eject a printed image from their backsides.

Beeple, whose practice often makes the symbolic embarrassingly literal, has built a working model of our algorithmic present: machines that see the world through tiny cameras, reinterpret it instantly, and spit out the results as if meaning were just another form of waste management. Kept in a thick plexiglass pen, the robots continuously capture their surroundings and output images in the style of the head they wear, mirroring the way digital platforms nudge billions toward seeing reality through curated lenses. (For example, the Warhol dog spits out Warhol-esque images, and the same goes for Picasso. Though I never did see what a Muskian or Zuckergian image looked like.) 

Surveillance meets celebrity meets cosplay. The whole installation plays like a Philip K. Dick fever dream. But the real drama is in the faces of the people watching. Among them was Courtney Karnez, a visitor who had rushed to see the installation after glimpsing it on Instagram. She found herself glued to the pen’s perimeter, transfixed by the uncanny liveness of the things. Even as we spoke, she couldn’t take her eyes off the flesh-colored quadrupeds. “The jiggle of the skin when they move, it’s robot meets human. It’s such a trip,” she said.

In a year steeped in fears about AI, automation, and the creeping power of the platforms that shape our reality, Beeple has seemingly produced a pressure valve for that cultural anxiety. But what are the crowds actually looking at? Most of the people who have crowded around the pen are only looking at the creatures through their phones. Is that part of the gag? Wall Street Journal 

•  Google executive sees AI search as expansion for web

  
  

A Google search executive on Thursday pushed back against fears that its AI-powered search will harm web publishers and its advertising business, calling the technology ​an “expansionary moment” for the internet. Speaking at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York, Robby Stein, vice ‌president of product for Google Search, addressed concerns that the company’s efforts to provide more AI-powered features, which deliver direct answers to queries  would ‌reduce traffic to external websites. “Google sends billions and billions and billions of clicks out every single day, and the outbound clicks are largely stable. So that’s actually not changing,” Stein said, adding that new ways people are searching, such as using their phone cameras or asking long, complex questions, are creating new opportunities. “We think over time that’s expansionary. The pie is ⁠growing very, very fast.”

Stein also sought to allay investor concerns that a shift to conversational AI could disrupt Google’s lucrative advertising model. He compared the current transition to the migration from desktop ‍to mobile, saying advertising will evolve to fit the new format. Ads in an AI chat experience can be “incredibly helpful,” he said, citing an example of a user with a raccoon problem being offered relevant products. Stein’s comments came as reports emerged that rival OpenAI ​had declared a “code red” to improve ChatGPT amid growing competition from Google.

The tech giant Alphabet has appeared to ‌wave off early threats to its core business with more diverse experiences, frontier model launches and viral products such as its photo-generation tool Nano Banana. Shares of Google have risen nearly 67% this year, fueled by growth in its cloud unit. Stein's remarks counter a growing narrative from media organizations that AI will decimate their traffic and revenue, while also reassuring Wall Street that Google’s core cash-generating machine is not at risk as it revamps its flagship product. “Google ⁠cares about the web more than anyone,” Stein said, describing AI ​as a “powerful discovery engine” that will help users go deeper by linking ​out to sources.Yahoo.Finance

• Activist investor Elliott nears settlement with PepsiCo, WSJ reports

  
  

Activist investor Elliott Management is close to striking a settlement agreement with PepsiCo (PEP.O), the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. Details of the settlement could not be learned, according to the report. Elliott had taken a roughly $4 billion stake in the beverage and snacks giant in September, and urged PepsiCo to boost its share price, revive its soda business and become more competitive.

In October, PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta said the company's interactions with Elliott had been collaborative and that he agreed with the activist investor about the stock's undervaluation. Laguarta added at the time that many of Elliott's ideas were included in PepsiCo's current strategy to grow its business, but did not provide a clear answer to the activist investor's idea to spin off the company's large North American bottling network to help grow margins.

The company, which named a new CFO and posted a quarterly results beat in October, had said it was working to cut costs in the snacks category in the U.S., with measures that included closing two plants and cutting nearly 15% of its product lines. PepsiCo is also betting on more consumers preferring healthier options, and plans to relaunch energy drink Gatorade following a similar rebranding of Lay's and Tostitos. It will also introduce a Propel drink with electrolytes, fiber and protein, following its acquisition of prebiotic soda brand Poppi. Reuters

Minor Headlines 

• Benin Coup Attempt Aljazeera

  
  

• Frank Gehry, Titan of Architecture, Is Dead at 96 New York Times 

  
  

• Briton Norris wins his first F1 title in Abu Dhabi BBC 

  
  

• US Treasury Market Tops $30 Trillion, Doubling Since 2018 Yahoo.Finance

  
  

• Leak Highlights Poor State of Louvre Infrastructure  Wall StreetJournal 

  
  

• Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff said he may rename the company “Agentforce Yahoo.Finance

  
  

• Carvana joined S&P 500 in rebalancing Yahoo.Finance

  
  

• Netflix's $5.8B breakup fee for WBD is the largest ever Yahoo.Finance