I figured you might be speaking about the pre-IPO investors.
Uber’s post-IPO stock performance has been a lot like “inflating away” the mediocre performance of the company. Its growth since IPO hasn’t been able to beat out any of the major indexes. Gaining only 7% value per year means that Uber’s valuation peaked at IPO in terms of real value against alternative corporate assets and considering currency inflation. There’s no real reason to have bought their stock on the public stock market in retrospect. The only winners are pre-IPO investors.
The problem is, pre-IPO investors are just a small group of people that aren’t really relevant to the long term viability of a company or the success of the economy that surrounds that company. Their success doesn’t really impact anyone else outside that small group of people. They have figured out a system for personal profit that doesn’t rely on building a viable company at the most basic level (and, at least, Uber eventually became viable, but the new wave of AI companies doesn’t look to be in the same financial realm).
The end result is a wealth transfer to the pre-IPO investors from post-IPO investors, employees, customers, etc.
When I say “inflate away” what I mean is that SpaceX leadership has pulled unusual levers in the IPO system itself to manufacture a high valuation to maximize wealth transfer from post-IPO investors to pre-IPO investors, and as a result the long-term best-case scenario is probably that the valuation will come back to earth slowly over time via below-market returns, with the worst case being a huge correction. If the stock was more fairly valued at IPO, there would be more actual investment potential for post-IPO investors. Instead, that potential is being captured almost entirely by pre-IPO investors, and not in the usual and more sensible way (higher risk = higher reward).
In other words, the usual formula is inverted: pre-IPO investors are shouldering the least risk for the greatest returns.
Tesla has been able to sidestep this dead economy theory by at least shipping a lot of cars and being a reasonably profitable automaker. They at least ran a real business. There wasn’t any pressing reason to sell your shares. Fast vehicle shipment growth at a profit was able to at least give Tesla some level of justification for their valuation.