The Hook
Ian King’s Strategic Fortunes newsletter is running a two-for-one pitch built on a very simple idea: buy the companies Elon Musk needs, because the richest man in history just found the one thing his money could not buy outright. The offer is $297 a year with a 30-day refund, or a $49-for-three-months teaser rate that jumps to $99 a quarter at renewal. The headline does the selling: “Elon Musk Just Bet $86 Million on a Tiny Company Most Investors Have Never Heard Of.”
The story underneath the headline is genuinely well told. Musk built xAI’s Colossus data center in Memphis in 122 days, then doubled its size in 92 days. To power it he needed roughly 2 gigawatts, more than Hoover Dam produces in a year. The local utility, Memphis Light Gas and Water, could spare eight megawatts of the 150 he wanted for phase one. So he built his own power plant instead, partnering with a company almost nobody has heard of. King frames the consequence this way:
“For the first time in his life, Elon found something his billions couldn’t buy. And he’s not alone. Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon, they’re all hitting the same limit at the same time.”
The urgency is structural rather than a countdown clock: AI is power-constrained, the grid cannot catch up, and the companies that can deliver electricity in weeks rather than years are the new chokepoint. King calls the primary pick the “Musk Master Key.”
The Big Claim
There are two claims, one per report. The first is the “$86 million” bet, and King is explicit that the payoff has not landed yet:
“This little joint venture hasn’t collected its first dollar of rent. Not one dime of Elon’s deal has appeared in an earnings report. Meanwhile, what started as a 500 megawatt agreement was expanded to roughly 900 megawatts within months.”
The second report, “The Second Key: How One Small Company Could Power Every AI Data Center in Orbit,” ties into SpaceX’s FCC filing for up to a million satellites acting as networked, solar-powered data centers in space. King’s pitch on that one:
“Each satellite will unfurl a set of giant solar wings and soak up free energy around the clock… the whole AI space race… they all run on one key technology, solar wings, massive foldable ultralight arrays.”
The greed lever is familiar: “The last time anything like this happened, investors were able to multiply their money 10 times, 40 times, even 80 times or more… by owning what I call the Musk Master Key.” That framing deserves the same skepticism it always does, but the two companies underneath it are real.
The Mechanism
Pick one, the “Musk Master Key,” is Solaris Energy Infrastructure (SEI). Solaris started life as Solaris Oilfield Infrastructure, providing power to remote drilling locations for roughly a decade, and it morphed into a provider of on-site, behind-the-meter gas turbine power for data center projects. The Musk link is a joint venture called Stateline Power, which Solaris owns at 50.1% with SpaceX holding the other 49.9%. That JV is the entity powering Colossus. Solaris has also signed long-term, gigawatt-scale power supply deals with two other hyperscalers, with those projects coming online over the next few years.
The economics are cleaner than they first look. Solaris largely structures these as fixed equipment-rental style contracts, where the data center customer absorbs the variability in natural gas and electricity prices and Solaris gets paid a fixed rate for the equipment. That is the same playbook they ran with oil companies through the 2015-to-2020 oil downturn, which is why they survived when many oilfield services peers went bankrupt. The bull case is that the fleet more than triples by 2029, more than two gigawatts is already contracted under 10-to-15-year deals, and the company maps a scenario of over a billion dollars in annual cash earnings once it is fully running. We break down that balance sheet in our Solaris Energy stock analysis.
Pick two, the “Second Key,” is Redwire Corporation (RDW). Redwire is a space infrastructure company built as a private-equity rollup in 2020, taken public via SPAC. Its roll-out solar arrays upgraded the International Space Station’s power system, boosting output by up to 30% and helping extend the station’s life into the 2030s, and NASA chose its arrays for the Gateway station planned to orbit the Moon. In March, about a month after Musk’s million-satellite filing hit the FCC, Redwire unveiled a new array line called ELSA. The thesis is that orbital AI data centers, whether from SpaceX, Google’s Project Suncatcher, or NVIDIA-backed startups, will all need foldable, ultralight solar arrays, and Redwire is the incumbent for space power that cannot be allowed to fail. The company has also diversified hard into defense, acquiring drone maker Edge Autonomy, and about half of revenue now comes from defense tech rather than space. We dig into the NASA record and the SpaceX counterfactual in our Redwire stock breakdown.
The Real Pick
| Ticker | Company | Current Price | Market Cap | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEI | Solaris Energy Infrastructure, Inc. | $51.81 | ~$3.4B | “Musk Master Key,” 50.1% owner of Stateline Power JV |
| RDW | Redwire Corporation | $11.27 | ~$2.8B | “Second Key,” roll-out solar arrays for orbital AI |
Prices are the August 26, 2026 close from Polygon, which matches the original teaser tracking (SEI last close $51.81, RDW buy price $11.27). Both are NYSE-listed, liquid, real-revenue companies, not OTC shells.
Does the Math Check Out?
For SEI, the numbers are back-loaded in a way the promo itself concedes. Analysts expect roughly $1.00 in adjusted earnings per share for 2026 and $1.86 for 2027. At $51.81, that is a forward multiple near 70 on this year’s number but only about 25 to 28 times full-year 2027 estimates. The stock peaked near $80 in June, which in retrospect looked like about 43 times the then-higher 2027 estimates, so it has already de-rated as estimates came down. The reason the near-term picture will look rough is the same reason the long-term picture could be strong: the turbines install in waves, the joint venture does not reach full power until 2027, and there is a window of two or three quarters where debt and capital spending ramp up while the power agreements have not yet started throwing off meaningful cash flow. Solaris has built over $2 billion in long-term debt, doubled its share count in two years, and expects close to a billion dollars of its own capital spending just for 2027. It still pays a dividend, 48 cents a year for a yield just under 1%, but has not raised it since 2023, so it could be trimmed to fund growth.
For RDW, the valuation is easier to state than to judge. At roughly $2.8 billion in market cap and something under four times 2026 revenue, it looks like a bargain next to the better-known space names that trade at 40 or 50 times revenue, but it is still unprofitable, working toward cash-flow break-even, and carrying a balance sheet that has needed years of cleanup around old convertible debt and preferreds. The bigger issue is the one the promo does not dwell on: Musk has a strong preference for vertical integration, SpaceX is building its own solar manufacturing facility in Texas, and the original prototypes for the orbital data center satellites did not use Redwire’s large roll-out arrays. So the single most valuable possible outcome, a massive SpaceX solar-array order, is far from assured, even if Redwire’s defense and space backlog keeps growing regardless. We explore the SpaceX AI data center angle in more depth.
The “$86 million” headline also deserves a precise read. It is the capital Musk committed to the Colossus power joint venture, not a personal bet on Solaris shares, and the promo’s own copy admits that none of that deal has appeared in an earnings report yet. That cuts both ways: it is the source of the upside, and it is the reason the earnings are not there to confirm it.
What They Got Right
- The power-constraint thesis is real and well sourced. Colossus genuinely built behind-the-meter gas generation, and the hyperscalers are visibly grid-constrained, which is the actual bottleneck in the AI build-out.
- Solaris is a credible operator. A decade of behind-the-meter power for oilfields, surviving the worst of the oil downturn, is real institutional knowledge now being pointed at data centers.
- The Redwire credentials are accurate and verifiable. The ISS array upgrade and the NASA Gateway selection are real, and Redwire is the incumbent for space power where failure is not an option.
- King’s own answer to “any upside left?” is unusually honest. He concedes the joint venture ramps to 2027 and the earnings are not in the numbers yet, rather than pretending the gains are already banked.
- Both picks are real, liquid, NYSE-listed companies with actual revenue and actual contracts, not penny-stock speculation.
What They Got Wrong
- The “10x, 40x, 80x” language implies a repeat of a past boom without saying which one or why this setup is actually comparable.
- The “$86 million bet” headline conflates Musk’s joint-venture capital with a personal bet on the stock, and the promo’s own copy admits the earnings have not materialized yet.
- The Redwire pitch ignores its biggest counterfactual: SpaceX is building its own solar manufacturing in Texas and the orbital data center prototypes did not use roll-out arrays, so “every player needs Redwire” is far from guaranteed.
- “Shares trade for less than $70” is technically true but SEI sits near $52, so the line gestures at upside without committing to a target.
- Both picks have already had their narrative run, SEI peaking near $80 in June and Redwire more than doubling before round-tripping, so “Wall Street’s short attention span is our opportunity” is really “the easy money may already be gone.”
The Verdict
Two real companies, two legitimate theses, and both are already partly priced in. SEI is the more defensible of the two: a real operator with a decade of behind-the-meter power experience, a contract structure that de-risks commodity exposure, and an earnings ramp that makes the current valuation defensible if the joint venture executes. At 25 to 28 times 2027 earnings with a leveraged balance sheet, it is a “pick your entry” story rather than a screaming bargain, but it is not a broken thesis. RDW is a genuinely interesting space and defense compounder, but the orbital-AI “solar wing monopoly” angle is the weakest part of the pitch, because SpaceX is most likely to build that capability itself. Treat RDW as a speculative way to own the space economy and defense drones, not as a lock on Elon’s satellite order book. Overall this is a legitimate “buy the Elon supply chain” pitch from a credentialed presenter, not a pump, but the 10x, 40x, 80x language is the same greed lever every promo pulls, and both names have already had their first big narrative run.
This is not financial advice. NewsletterVetter has no position in any stock mentioned.