The Hook
The newest ad from InvestorPlace’s Innovation Investor opens with a countdown to a rumor: “Rumors of a SpaceX and Tesla merger are heating up, and ONE little-known Florida company is at the center of it all. Discover why this historic convergence could send it 1,000% higher in the months ahead.”
The presenter’s word for this prospective combination is “XPANSE,” and the pitch frames it as the next chapter of the Elon Musk story: a stock-for-stock merger between Tesla and SpaceX that would, in the words of venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, “instantly create the Berkshire Hathaway of the modern century.” This is the same territory we covered in our full review of the XPanse campaign. The subscription costs $129 for the first year (renewing at $199), with a 90-day refund, which is a reasonable entry price for a newsletter that has been around a long time.
The pitch argues there are three ways to play this. Two of them are the focus here; the third, a solar-array company, we have already covered at length on this site.
The Big Claim
The core promise is “as much as 1,000% gains” from a “three-step plan” to capitalize on Musk’s ambitions. The mechanism is that every piece of Musk’s vision, whether it is robots, orbital data centers, or semiconductors, needs rare earth metals, magnets, and the lithography tooling that etches chips onto silicon. China supplies nearly all the world’s heavy rare earths and about 90% of the magnets made from them, so the argument goes, and a merger would accelerate a reshoring trend that is already underway.
The concrete numbers in the ad are specific enough to check. One pick “secured a $1.6 billion funding package from the U.S. government.” Another is the rare American pure-play in a niche corner of semiconductor manufacturing. Those clues are what Stock Gumshoe used to identify the picks, and they check out against public records.
The Mechanism
Pick one: Photronics (PLAB), the photomask niche. The “Terafab Project” clue points at the company that makes photomasks, the precision quartz templates used inside ASML-style lithography machines to imprint a circuit design onto a wafer. Every leading-edge chip, and every legacy chip, needs a mask. Photronics is one of the few American pure-plays in this business, having grown since the 1980s by rolling up the photomask operations of Motorola, Analog Devices, and other U.S. manufacturers, with additional capacity in Korea, Taiwan, and elsewhere in Asia.
The logic is sound on its face: if Musk builds chip fabs for his AI and robotics ambitions, someone has to make the masks. What the ad skips is that Photronics’ customers are the world’s mask shops and foundries, not a single marquee buyer, and there is no public evidence of a SpaceX or Tesla contract. Photronics trades at roughly $29 a share with a market cap near $1.7 billion.
Pick two: USA Rare Earth (USAR), the “rare earth kingpin.” The “$1.6 billion government package” clue resolves to USA Rare Earth, which has a U.S. Department of Energy and Pentagon-backed program to develop the Round Top mine in Texas, plus a magnet factory in Oklahoma. The ad claims full capacity of 10,000 metric tons of magnets per year, and notes the mine sits about 70 miles from Musk’s Terafab project. USA Rare Earth trades near $16.78 with a market cap of about $6.3 billion.
The geological and strategic story here is real: Round Top is one of the few large, permitted heavy-rare-earth deposits outside China, and the U.S. government has put real money behind it. It is the same reshoring thesis we walked through in our rare-earth supply-chain coverage. The stretch is the Musk-specific framing. There is no announced offtake agreement with Tesla or SpaceX, and rare earth prices have been volatile precisely because the demand side is still forming.
The macro backdrop matters here. The global rare-earth magnet market is on the order of $20 billion a year and growing with electric vehicles, wind turbines, and robotics, but it is still a market where a single $6 billion company is already a large incumbent, which means USA Rare Earth is being asked to grow into a market that has not yet fully materialized. The photomask market is smaller still, roughly $5 billion a year, and it is dominated by the Japanese giants Toppan and Dai Nippon Printing. Photronics’ durable edge is that it is the American alternative, a distinction that matters more for supply-chain geopolitics than for near-term earnings, and one that would take years for a competitor to replicate.
The Real Pick
| Ticker | Company | Current Price | Tease Price | Change Since Tease | Market Cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USAR | USA Rare Earth, Inc. | $16.78 | $15.37 | +9.17% | ~$6.30B |
| PLAB | Photronics Inc. | $29.34 | $29.11 | +0.79% | ~$1.73B |
Prices as of the September 21, 2026 close via Polygon. The tease prices are the ad’s reference points; the “1,000%” is a forward-looking promise, not a realized return.
Does the Math Check Out?
A “1,000% higher” move means a 10x from here. For USA Rare Earth, that is a $63 billion company; for Photronics, a $17 billion company. Neither is impossible over a decade if the rare-earth and reshoring theses fully play out, but both are priced as if a lot of good news is already known. USA Rare Earth’s $6.3 billion market cap is already rich relative to the revenue it generates today, which is modest: Round Top is still ramping, and the magnet plant is newly in commercial production. Photronics is cheaper on a price-to-earnings basis, but its photomask business is mature and its growth is tied to overall semiconductor unit volumes, not to a single customer’s ambitions.
The merger itself is the weakest link in the argument. A Tesla-SpaceX combination is legally complex, involves a private-to-public valuation negotiation that would make any investment bank blanch, and would be years in the making even if both boards wanted it tomorrow. The ad’s own language, “this isn’t a matter of if, it’s a matter of when,” is conviction dressed up as a calendar, and it quietly moves the responsibility for timing onto the reader.
For a new reader deciding today, the entry-point question is the honest one. USA Rare Earth has already run from a much lower base this year as government funding headlines piled up, so a buyer at $16.78 is not buying the undiscovered story the ad describes; they are buying the second derivative of a story the market has already noticed. Photronics has moved far less precisely because its catalyst, a Musk chip-fab buildout, has not been announced at all.
What They Got Right
- The rare-earth bottleneck is real. China does control most heavy-rare-earth supply and roughly 90% of magnet production, and the U.S. is genuinely trying to build a domestic alternative.
- USA Rare Earth’s $1.6 billion government package is a matter of public record, and it is one of the most substantive government commitments to a single rare-earth developer.
- Photronics really is a rare U.S. pure-play in photomasks, a niche most investors have never considered and which is structurally necessary for any chip ambition.
- The observation that Musk tends toward vertical integration is accurate, and it cuts both ways: it explains why he might buy from domestic suppliers, and why he might just build his own.
What They Got Wrong
- The “1,000%” figure is attached to a speculative merger, not to a contract, an offtake, or a product win at either company.
- The ad recycles a stale credential. The “America’s #1 Stock Picker” TipRanks title was earned in 2020, and by the same methodology the presenter now ranks near the bottom third of tracked experts, around number 21,411 of 34,762. It is the same recycled-credential playbook we dissected in the “Next Nvidia” promo.
- Invoking Chamath Palihapitiya’s “Berkshire of the modern century” line borrows credibility from an investor whose own SPAC track record, including Opendoor and Metromile, has been poor.
- Framing the merger as “a matter of when, not if” presents speculation as certainty and offloads the timing risk onto the subscriber.
The Verdict
These are two legitimate, investable companies in genuinely strategic niches, and the macro case for reshoring rare earths and semiconductor tooling is real. But the “1,000%” number is attached to a merger that may never happen, and neither company has a confirmed Musk contract. If you want rare-earth exposure, USA Rare Earth is a credible, government-backed way to get it, but understand you are paying a premium for a story. Photronics is the steadier business and the more defensible valuation. Buy either for the underlying thesis, not for the SpaceX merger that the ad is selling.
This is not financial advice. NewsletterVetter has no position in any stock mentioned. The ad’s own disclaimers, standard across this publisher’s offers, note that past performance and forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future results, which sits awkwardly next to a headline promising “1,000% higher.”