Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, how AI is playing a part. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free ' just click TechCrunch Mobility! I won't spend too much time rehashing the SpaceX IPO ' every media outlet, including TechCrunch, has spilled enormous amounts of digital ink on the company's first day of trading. But there are two important data points to note for anyone who closely watches the 'future of transportation' industry. As of market close Friday, SpaceX has a market cap of $2.1 trillion, rocketing past Musk's other publicly traded company, Tesla. SpaceX is currently the sixth most valuable U.S.-listed company, behind Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon. Tesla's market cap was $1.52 trillion as of market close. These two companies could soon become one. There have been plenty of hints and speculation. Last week, senior reporter Sean O'Kane spotted new language in SpaceX's S-1 document that warns investors of future dilution. The additional sentence reads, 'We may issue a significant amount of equity in connection with future transactions.' This isn't a forecast of some small-scale deal; it likely means Tesla....

On this special bonus episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Senior Reporter Sean O'Kane called up our AI Editor Russell Brandom to help him break down the $2 trillion valuation, Elon Musk becoming the world's first trillionaire, and what it all means for Anthropic and OpenAI still waiting in the wings. Theresa Loconsolo is an audio producer at TechCrunch focusing on Equity, the network's flagship podcast. Before joining TechCrunch in 2022, she was one of 2 producers at a four-station conglomerate where she wrote, recorded, voiced and edited content, and engineered live performances and interviews from guests like lovelytheband. Theresa is based in New Jersey and holds a bachelors degree in Communication from Monmouth University. Sean O'Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane....

Jinhua Zhao MCP '04, SM '04, PhD '09 has been appointed head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), effective July 1. Zhao is the Class of 1941 Professor of Cities and Transportation at MIT. In making the announcement, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning Hashim Sarkis noted that Zhao is a renowned transportation planner, educator, and scholar, and a world leader in imagining and shaping better futures for mobility. 'Jinhua is one of those rare scholars who moves seamlessly between cutting-edge research and real-world policy,' says Sarkis. 'His work with governments and transportation agencies around the world is a model for what MIT's impact can look like beyond our campus.' Zhao succeeds Professor Christopher Zegras, who has served as department head since 2020. Under his leadership, DUSP expanded opportunities for students to engage directly with communities and policymakers around the world and continued to strengthen its long-standing connection between research and practice. 'I want to extend my gratitude to Chris Zegras for his excellent and level-headed leadership, especially in challenging times,' says Sarkis....

Despite incentives being gutted in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Solar Energy Industries Association expects annual installations to exceed 110 GWh per year by 2030, about double what they are today. The skyrocketing energy storage market is being driven higher by the convergence of three trends. The most obvious is the expansion of data centers being built to serve AI. Data center energy demand is expected to nearly triple by the end of the decade. But alongside that growth, entire swathes of the economy, including transportation, manufacturing, and HVAC, are being electrified. It's not just automakers that are diving into energy storage. Startups have been raising large rounds to capture a chunk of the market. Base Power raised a $1 billion Series C in October to expand beyond Texas, while Lunar Energy raised $232 million to sell batteries to homeowners. Others, like Lightship, are pivoting somewhat. The electric RV manufacturer is now selling a mobile battery for job sites and other locations that need temporary power....