Forgive me if I discard the reporting of a company with this record, and with undisclosed bias via its shareholder Jeff Bezos.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/the-bad-news-could-get-worse...
[2] https://fortune.com/2023/12/07/elon-musks-spacex-valued-at-1...
Only theoretically.
In practice, just because someone is willing to buy a completely insignificant stake (0.2%) for $500mn doesn’t make the entire company worth $175bn.
If anything, this is probably Elon and his friends pulling off an accounting trick.
I can register a company with a share capital of $1 and issue 1000000000000 shares with a nominal value of $0.000000000001 each. Then I could sell you one of those shares for $1 and then I could tell everyone that I’m a trillionaire. Which would technically be the truth.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/26/three-men-charged-with-fraud...
Capitalism 101.
Private market means you set your price and then if someone buys, buys. It only speaks about Elon's self-confidence and not the merit of his business.
He also thought Twitter is worth $44bn and even found investors to pay for half of it, and banks to pay for over half of the remaining half. So uhmm, yeah, how's that going lately?