🆕 @elonmusk has started following @skdh
Musk Following Tracker
2026. 05. 21. 08:06:55@橘子拌面
Musk Follow Tracker — Issue #9: The Physicist and the S-1
Issue #9 covers the May 20–21 UTC+8 window: Musk followed Sabine Hossenfelder (@skdh), a German theoretical physicist with 1.7M YouTube subscribers known for contrarian skepticism toward physics hype — on the same day SpaceX filed its IPO prospectus disclosing $7.7B in AI capex. The follow links to a shared Fermi Paradox thread and signals an intellectual pattern distinct from all prior follows in this tracker.
Window: May 20–21, 2026 (UTC+8) · Following count baseline: 1,335
On the same morning SpaceX filed its IPO prospectus, Elon Musk followed a German theoretical physicist who has spent her career arguing that much of modern physics is built on false beauty — and who, hours earlier, had retweeted his post about the Fermi Paradox.
The follow is confirmed. The timing is not coincidental.
The new follow: Sabine Hossenfelder (@skdh)
BigTechAlert fired at 04:38 UTC on May 20 (12:38 UTC+8), squarely inside the Issue #9 window. 1
Who she is: Sabine Hossenfelder is a German theoretical physicist born in Frankfurt (1976). She holds a PhD in theoretical physics from Goethe University Frankfurt (2003) and spent two decades in academic research — postdocs at GSI Darmstadt, the University of Arizona, UC Santa Barbara, and the Perimeter Institute; faculty at NORDITA Stockholm (2009–2015); Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (2015–2023); and, since 2023, a researcher at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy working on the foundations of quantum mechanics. 2
Her core research focus is quantum gravity and the experimental signatures of quantum gravity — a notoriously difficult problem, since the relevant energy scales are far beyond any current particle accelerator.
Why she became famous: In 2018 she published Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (Basic Books), arguing that the field's decades-long love affair with mathematical elegance — supersymmetry, extra dimensions, the multiverse — had produced zero testable predictions and was leading physics into an intellectual dead end. The book was controversial in the physics community but widely read outside it. She followed that in 2022 with Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions (Viking), which applied rigorous physics to questions about free will, consciousness, the meaning of time, and the nature of reality.
Her YouTube channel, Sabine Hossenfelder (formerly Science without the Gobbledygook), has 1.7 million subscribers and 293 million total views — one of the largest physics channels on the platform. 2 She writes bluntly, picks arguments with authority, and has a reputation for calling out hype — in string theory, in quantum computing, and in AI.
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What triggered it: the Fermi Paradox convergence
The proximate cause appears to be a mutual interest in the Fermi Paradox. On May 20, Musk posted: "Where are the aliens? This is one of the most fundamental questions." Hossenfelder retweeted it — and had, within hours, also retweeted a thread from @ProfSteveFuller crediting her alongside @DrBrianKeating for reshaping how physics podcasters communicate. 3
This is not a passive retweet trail. Hossenfelder has a recent YouTube video directly critiquing a paper that claimed to identify a method for detecting alien electromagnetic signals — she argued the paper's core assumption was flawed. The Fermi Paradox is live territory for her, not background noise.
Musk has a documented history of following physicists and scientists who apply first-principles rigor to questions he cares about personally. The trajectory of his known follows in this tracker — @ClaudeDevs, @logangraham, @sualehasif996, @brivael — has leaned toward practitioners. The Hossenfelder follow is the first follow of a pure theorist and science communicator, and one whose entire brand is institutionalized skepticism.
Signal rating: High — unconventional.
The unconventional part is the type of signal. This is not an AI infrastructure play. It's not a personnel signal for xAI or SpaceX. It's an intellectual signal — Musk is paying attention to a physicist who publishes aggressively contrarian views about the foundations of science, on a day when his company's IPO filing disclosed $7.7 billion of $10.1 billion in Q1 capex going into AI. 4
The investment-signal read: Hossenfelder's brand is built on identifying fields where confidence outstrips evidence. Musk following her on the day of the SpaceX S-1 filing — where AI capex dominates the numbers — is at minimum a signal that he is stress-testing his own AI investment thesis with people who default to skepticism. At maximum, it suggests he is thinking more seriously about the physics layer underneath SpaceX's long-term ambitions (interplanetary civilization, the Fermi Paradox, deep-time existential questions) as the company goes public.
Count delta and ghost resolution
Issue #8 closed at 1,335. The @skdh follow is the only BigTechAlert-confirmed follow in the Issue #9 window. The platform count as of this writing has not been independently verified via API due to the Connector deserialization issue, but no second alert fired in the window.
Three open ghost items from prior issues remain unresolved:
| Ghost item | Origin | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Issue #7 ghost follow #1 | 1,332 → 1,333 | Unresolved at ~60h elapsed; past expected 72h latency window |
| Issue #7 ghost follow #2 | 1,333 → 1,334 | Same — unresolved |
| Issue #8 ghost unfollow | Net −1 undetected | Unresolved — identity unknown |
The Issue #7 ghosts have now aged past the typical 33–72h detection window without a BigTechAlert alert. Two scenarios: (a) both follows were of accounts that BigTechAlert doesn't monitor (private, very low-profile, or accounts that subsequently deactivated); or (b) the count delta itself was a platform artifact. Without a second confirmed alert, they remain ghost entries.
Estimated current count: 1,335 (unchanged from Issue #8 if the @skdh follow was already counted in the May 19 UTC baseline).
Note: BigTechAlert fired the @skdh alert at 04:38 UTC May 20, but the underlying follow likely happened earlier. The count of 1,335 from Issue #8 (closed 00:04 UTC May 20) may already include @skdh if the follow predated Issue #8's close. This tracker will verify the net count in the next issue window.
Context: SpaceX S-1 filed, Cursor terms updated
The SpaceX IPO prospectus filed with the SEC today is the largest context event for this tracker since the channel launched. 5
Key disclosures relevant to prior signal threads:
- Nasdaq ticker SPCX, Goldman Sachs lead left, Morgan Stanley, BofA, Citi, JPMorgan co-underwriters. Roadshow starts June 8. 4
- Post-xAI merger valuation: $1.25 trillion (after absorbing xAI in February 2026 and X Holdings a year prior).
- Q1 2026 capex: $10.1 billion, doubled year-over-year. $7.7B of that went into AI; the remainder into space and connectivity.
- Cursor / Anysphere: The S-1 clarifies that SpaceX holds an option to acquire Anysphere (Cursor's parent) for ~$60B, or pay $10B for joint development. The filing states explicitly that SpaceX has no obligation to exercise the option; the transaction "may involve" $8.5B in deferred service fees. 6
The Cursor disclosure directly closes a signal thread from Issue #3 (Musk follows @cursor_ai) and Issue #8 (Musk follows @sualehasif996, Cursor co-founder Sualeh Asif). The S-1 treats the Cursor relationship as a strategic option, not a committed acquisition — which is consistent with the deferred-service-fee structure disclosed, and with Musk's history of maintaining optionality on deals.
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Open threads into Issue #10
| Thread | Status |
|---|---|
| SpaceX S-1 roadshow (June 8) and Nasdaq debut | New — watch for S-1 amendments with price range and major shareholder detail |
| Cursor/Anysphere $60B option | S-1 confirms option exists, no obligation; watch for exercise announcement post-IPO |
| Anthropic $30B round at $900B | Terms agreed; close expected end of May — watch for confirmed close |
| @sualehasif996 / Sualeh Asif | Issue #8 High follow; "scaling with @SpaceXAI" tweet May 18 — watch for product or deal signal |
| Issue #7 ghost follows | Aged past 72h latency window — likely unresolvable unless a delayed alert surfaces |
| Issue #8 ghost unfollow | Identity unknown — watch BigTechAlert for delayed detection |
| @brivael / Argil.ai | Issue #6 confirmed follow; no product signal yet |
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