🆕 @elonmusk has started following @BretWJ
Musk Follow Tracker — Issue #13: The CFO Who Was Already There
Issue #13: Zero new BigTechAlert alerts on May 24 UTC, but Issue #12's unresolved @BretWJ is confirmed as Bret Johnsen — SpaceX's CFO for 15 years. Musk followed his own CFO and PayPal co-founder Max Levchin within 117 minutes of each other on May 23, 16 days before the SpaceX roadshow. With the IPO price range set to publish June 1–5 and listing expected June 12, the May 23 finance-cluster follows now read as pre-roadshow signals.
May 24 UTC brought zero new BigTechAlert alerts. But the day's real signal arrived 24 hours earlier — hiding inside Issue #12's unresolved entry. The handle @BretWJ, flagged last issue as "identity unknown," turns out to be Bret Johnsen, SpaceX's Chief Financial Officer for the past 15 years. Musk followed his own CFO on May 23, the same afternoon he followed PayPal co-founder Max Levchin (@mlevchin) — two follows 8 minutes apart, 16 days before the SpaceX roadshow.
The diff: zero new alerts, one major resolution
No BigTechAlert notifications involving @elonmusk were posted on May 24 UTC. The most recent Musk-related alert remains the @TheBestqueenx follow at 22:54 UTC May 23, which closed Issue #12. The following count holds at approximately 1,343.
| Event | Handle | Timestamp (UTC) | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| No new alerts | — | May 24 (full day) | — |
| [Resolved from Issue #12] @BretWJ identity confirmed | @BretWJ | May 23, 15:47 UTC | High |
The identity was confirmed by multiple community replies after BigTechAlert posted the original alert on May 23: 1
콘텐츠 카드를 불러오는 중…
The ghost unfollow from Issue #8 remains undetected. Given BigTechAlert's 33–72h detection window, belated May 24 alerts could still appear — this issue will flag any if they arrive before publication.
Who is Bret Johnsen
Bret Johnsen joined SpaceX as CFO in May 2011 — the month SpaceX's first Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial vehicle to reach the International Space Station. 2 He has been the company's finance chief through every major inflection: Falcon 9 reusability, Starlink's commercial launch, the Crew Dragon human-spaceflight program, and now the S-1 filing for what is expected to be the largest IPO in U.S. history. 3
His background before SpaceX: CFO at Mindspeed Technologies (semiconductor), VP/Corporate Controller at Broadcom, and auditor at Coopers & Lybrand. In June 2025 he was appointed to USC's Board of Trustees. 4 His X account had roughly 854–1,300 followers when BigTechAlert flagged the follow — low-profile by the standards of any C-suite figure at a $1.75 trillion company. 5
콘텐츠 카드를 불러오는 중…
The 8-minute pairing with Max Levchin
The timing is the most specific thing to hold onto here. BigTechAlert logged @mlevchin (Max Levchin, PayPal co-founder, Affirm CEO) at 13:50 UTC and @BretWJ (Bret Johnsen, SpaceX CFO) at 15:47 UTC on May 23 — roughly 117 minutes apart, on the same afternoon.
These are not similar accounts. Levchin is a public fintech operator with 115K followers who speaks openly about payments infrastructure and AI credit risk. Johnsen is an internally-facing finance executive who has barely posted. The two follows share one property: both represent financial credibility in the context of the SpaceX IPO. Levchin is the PayPal Mafia signal — the original fintech-to-rocket investor cohort. Johnsen is the operational spine of the S-1 itself.
Whether Musk was doing a deliberate sweep of finance-adjacent accounts on May 23 or whether the coincidence is incidental, the visible behavior on that afternoon clusters around one event: a public offering 16 days away.
Why the CFO follow is unusual
Executives following internal colleagues on public social platforms is not unusual. What is unusual is the direction and timing. Musk following Johnsen — not the reverse — suggests either:
- Johnsen's account had been dormant or unknown to Musk's follow-curation process, and the IPO preparation cycle surfaced it; or
- Johnsen recently became more active on X (he received the SpaceX badge and gained ~400 followers in the days after the BigTechAlert post), triggering algorithmic visibility.
The SpaceX badge detail matters. X's platform now awards company-verified badges to employees at participating organizations. Johnsen receiving that badge likely moved his account into Musk's algorithmic follow suggestions — which would mean this particular follow says less about deliberate attention and more about platform mechanics. 6
That said, the grouping with Levchin and the proximity to the roadshow means the badge-mechanics interpretation and the attention-signal interpretation are not mutually exclusive.
IPO context: roadshow in 14 days
As of today (May 25 UTC+8), the SpaceX IPO timeline stands as: 7
- June 1–5: Price range announced
- June 8: Roadshow kicks off
- June 8–10: Bookbuilding and allocation
- June 12: Expected listing (ticker: SPCX on Nasdaq)
The S-1 confirmed Starlink revenue of $11B in 2025, xAI revenue of $3.2B, and Musk retaining roughly 85% of voting power via supervoting shares. 8 CNBC reported on May 24 that SpaceX is most likely to land in the S&P Communication Services sector alongside Alphabet, Meta, and Netflix — driven by Starlink's $11B revenue base rather than its rocket and defense revenues. 9
링크 미리보기를 불러오는 중…
Sector classification determines which index funds must hold SpaceX post-listing. If it enters Communication Services, every S&P 500 Communication Services ETF becomes an automatic buyer at listing — a mechanical demand floor that exists regardless of valuation concerns.
What to watch
The Issue #12 batch — six follows in one day — now reads differently with @BretWJ resolved. Four of the six have clear IPO-adjacent logic:
- @10DowningStreet (UK PM) — UK as potential Starlink/defense partner
- @mlevchin (Max Levchin) — PayPal Mafia financial credibility
- @BretWJ (Bret Johnsen, SpaceX CFO) — internal operational finance, possibly badge-triggered
- @kilocode (Kilo Code) — xAI/Grok distribution through coding tooling
The remaining two (@spencerpratt, @TheBestqueenx) fit no IPO pattern and are consistent with Musk's documented pattern of following figures in his personal orbit regardless of market relevance.
The two open questions heading into the roadshow window: whether Musk begins following institutional investor accounts as bookbuilding opens June 8–10, and whether the Issue #8 ghost unfollow gets resolved before listing.
Follow count: ~1,343 accounts as of Issue #13 close. Issue #8 ghost unfollow: still open.
참고 출처
- 1BigTechAlert: @elonmusk has started following @BretWJ
- 2SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen bio — CNBC
- 3SpaceX IPO filing — Investment News
- 4Finance leader Bret Johnsen joins USC's Board of Trustees
- 5Aaron Burnett tweet confirming Bret Johnsen identity
- 6Jon Edwards tweet on Bret Johnsen SpaceX badge on X
- 7SpaceX IPO Guide — BitMEX
- 8Investor frenzy for SpaceX IPO — Seeking Alpha
- 9Rockets, satellites and Grok: What's the right S&P sector for SpaceX? — CNBC
이 콘텐츠를 둘러싼 관점이나 맥락을 계속 보강해 보세요.