Axios

Founders Fund was one of the earliest investors in SpaceX, investing $20 million in 2008. It kept backing the company, with a stake that could be worth more than $60 billion.

• Scott Nolan was an early SpaceX employee who later became a Founders Fund partner. Axios spent some time speaking with him ahead of what's expected to be the largest IPO ever.

What follows is lightly edited for clarity and length.

An increasing share of regular folks in South Korea are going all in on the country's stock market — borrowing money so as not to miss out on the AI-fueled stock boom there.

Why it matters: The entire economy is now hanging on the success of a few chipmakers.

The latest: South Korea's KOSPI index, which crossed 8,000 for the first time on Tuesday, is up 207% from a year ago.

• A few big, newly minted trillionaire chipmakers are behind the surge, including SK Hynix and Samsung.

The big picture: A mania for stocks has swept the country, as Bloomberg reported earlier this year.

Zoom in: And retail traders are borrowing to fuel the buying binge: Margin loans are at a record high, according to reporting earlier this month in the Korea Times.

• Middle-aged and older Koreans are increasingly getting in on this — borrowing money so as not to miss out, "mirroring" younger generations but "often with larger sums at stake."

Threat level: Some of these folks are risking retirement money with leveraged bets — Korea already has a high poverty rate (40%) for older adults.

• If the AI trade falters, the country's entire economy is on the line, writes Ed Yardeni at Yardeni Research.
• "Asia's fourth‑largest economy increasingly resembles a giant leveraged bet on AI."

The bottom line: What could go wrong? See our piece on how American investors are using a record amount of borrowed money to bet on stocks.