[0:00:00] All right, everybody. We have a very special guest. Listen, we love all of you. This is the most amazing room of innovators in America. We love you all. It's a dinner of equals. But there can only be one number one. We're Forbes. We do rank things. And the Forbes 250 innovators, the number one innovator.
[0:00:27] And it wasn't that close, to be honest, was Elon Musk. And we are very honored to have him join us. Elon, are you here? Not yet. Oh, we're glad that you're here. Thank you. There he is. You do like ranking things, it's true. We do. We're good at it. And again, first, congratulations. It was not that close. There were a lot of battles in a lot of places, but number one was not in doubt. But anyway, this is a room of your people.
[0:01:00] Well deserved. There's a room for your people. I will say, they were asking the first question, and we want to get really nerdy about innovation. The first question, though, that everybody was asking is, all right, ask Elon. We had one of the great cases in the world of innovation over the last few weeks. What's Elon's verdict on the verdict today? The case in Oakland, yes. Oh, that good.
[0:01:32] I was like, what are you doing? Yeah, I guess, well, they basically just decided that the statute wouldn't pay things that fast. They did not actually render an opinion on whether, you know, there'd be an unadjusted version or the chat we get to install, which I think is obviously the case. So,
[0:02:05] But I do think it's somewhat of a bivouac situation because, you know, what happened was by degrees. I mean, it wasn't stolen once. It was stolen one piece at a time. And so we have to say, like, well, was there really even a basis for legal action before, you know, the problem was stolen? I don't think there is, actually. So, you know...
[0:02:33] The first step into adding a for-profit thing had a cap for-profit and was at a small scale. And also that all stock would revert to the charity upon the invention of artificial general intelligence. That clause is now very remote. So it will continue to be a for-profit after developing artificial general intelligence.
[0:03:02] That removal was quite recent, just in the last few weeks. So at this point, it is, whatever, an $800 billion full-profit company somehow from a non-profit. And I think this is a dangerous precedent to set, because if it means that someone can take money as a non-profit, convert that to a full-profit when it's successful, it undermines all charitable giving in America.
[0:03:33] And certainly would see a lot of people starting to start nonprofits with a path towards for-profit. Exactly. What do you got to lose? Exactly. You said on X you're appealing, optimistic about the appeal? Yeah, I think we necessarily have to appeal because this will become precedent, which people can actually then essentially loot charities and use this case as a basis for doing so, which I think would be wrong.
[0:04:03] Let's talk innovation. Your title we have up here, I mean, again, you're the CEO of four major companies. Even those companies have major companies within those companies. Was this part of the plan or did it just happen? More or less just happened. I mean, well, let's just say that when I was in college, I wanted to be part of things that would change the world in a significant way.
[0:04:34] I didn't originally think I wanted to be doing things in AI because AI was somewhat of a double-edged sword. But I did want to accelerate the transition to a sustainable energy economy, which is the sort of electric cars, solar, and batteries. And I think some kind of brain-machine interface that can give you cybernetic superpowers I think is probably good. It could help people that,
[0:05:06] Have brain or spine injuries. You know, restore, enable people who've never spoken for years to speak again, which we've done. Give people eyesight who have lost both eyes or the optic nerve, or maybe have never even seen at all, blind from birth. By direct interface to the optical centers in the brain, you can actually restore eyesight or give people eyesight.
[0:05:35] And you can enable people to walk again, which I think is profound. I mean, these are kind of Jesus level things, you know, like I say, like when technologies are hitting like Jesus level miracles, you know, like that's pretty good. How do you, how do you, again, it's asked a lot, but it's fun to ask it to you. How do you prioritize? I mean, because you're right, you've got.
[0:05:57] You've got multiple deities here. If these are Jesus-level solutions, which one do you serve? Okay, that's pretty good. And then SpaceX is about making life multi-planetary, expanding consciousness to the stars. And hopefully we will make a fundamental breakthrough later this year, which is to have the first
[0:06:28] A fully reusable orbital rocket, which is necessary in order to transport enough tonnage to the moon or Mars to create a self-growing city, basically to extend civilization to other planets. I mean, I think probably you need to move a rough order of magnitude of about a million tons.
[0:06:57] To the moon or to Mars to create enough of an industrial base to have the civilization there be self-growing. Meaning like the acid test being if the resupply shifts from Earth stop coming for any reason, does the civilization on the moon or Mars continue to grow or does it die out? And I think that's a fundamental branching point.
[0:07:28] Are we a multi-planet space-faring civilization or are we stuck on one planet forever? And I do want to emphasize that being a multi-planet civilization doesn't mean we leave Earth and go somewhere else because that would just be a single-planet civilization somewhere else. Right. And a lesser place, probably. Yeah. And a tougher place to live than here, by far.
[0:07:56] Earth is extremely easy and comfortable compared to the moon, Mars, or pretty much anywhere else. But, you know, I think at some point we want to be a space-bearing civilization. We want to be out there among the stars and be, yeah. So these are, again, these are huge, huge things that you're dealing with. So when you try to figure out, when you get up every morning,
[0:08:25] Is it just kind of like a buffet or do you have kind of a plan on what you're going to focus on? Because that's something a lot of innovators here have to deal with on a much smaller scale. Well, I guess I don't really get up and say, hey, what shall I innovate today, you know, type of thing. It's really just building the technologies necessary to extend life beyond Earth.
[0:08:55] There's the Starlink internet, which is rebuilding the entire internet in space, but better. I guess that's kind of pretty cool. There's the Optimus robot that we're developing at Tesla, the self-driving cars, solar power at scale. Big stuff. Again, a lot of them are pointing to becoming interplanetary.
[0:09:27] And is there a time when you could see, again, putting these companies together and just running one big company? I mean, in some ways you have a portfolio, but do you envision that? And would that help you in terms of making these things mesh? Well, it'd be difficult for me to sort of comment on that, you know, because, you know, there's publicly traded companies. And one's publicly traded and one's, you know, about to be.
[0:09:58] It would be difficult to... No problem. We'll move on. The reports today that you might follow your SpaceX S1 this week, is that a go? I think I'm not allowed to comment on these things. It's like a quiet period or something to that effect. That is the beauty of going public or being in that quiet period. Do you have a favorite...
[0:10:28] We know you love all your children, all your companies. Is there a favorite among your companies? Well, no. I'm not really going to say that's like what's your favorite kid type of thing. I think you can't really say that. If it's not your favorite company, who's your favorite role model as an innovator historically? Well, I guess I'm obviously a big fan of...
[0:11:02] Nikola Tesla, since we named the company after him. But I also like, you know, I don't know, Edison is great too. Some people don't like Edison, but I think he did some pretty impressive stuff. And like General Electric is like Edison's company. I mean, I certainly admire great scientists, engineers.
[0:11:38] But like anyone, I mean, you know, Ben Franklin, Shakespeare, Newton, Einstein, you know. We surveyed historians, and so you were number one on the 250 living list. We did a 250 historical, and the top three were Edison. You said Franklin and Henry Ford. So you've, you know, we should have had you as a judge.
[0:12:06] It was actually more awesome than people realized because he basically invented mass manufacturing of complex objects. People didn't really know how to do that before Ford. And Ford actually created the automotive industry of Earth, really. Because he pretty much started what became General Motors.
[0:12:36] I don't know, kicked out of that or something and then started Ford Motor Company and really developed mass manufacturer complex objects. It's quite a tricky thing and then everyone just pretty much copied him. What's amazing if you look at the historical list and even the current list is just how much innovation comes out of America and how much of the things that everyone takes for granted came out of America. Do you have a favorite animator?
[0:13:05] Who's living today? Besides, you know, anybody in this room or anybody. Who are some of your favorite entrepreneurs, innovators you admire who are your contemporaries now? Well, I mean, I guess I mean, I don't really think about these things that much, but well, I mean, I guess, you know, Jensen Wong at NVIDIA is like doing pretty great in terms of
[0:13:46] You mentioned Jensen. You were early warning about the dangers of AI, but also you've been somebody who's helping pioneer a lot of great things that come out of AI. Right now, where are you on the scale about being petrified or excited?
[0:14:18] Simultaneously both, honestly. At this point, when I go to sleep, there's some AI breakthrough. When I wake up, there's some AI breakthrough. And by lunchtime, there's another AI breakthrough. It's like a head spinner at this point. It's pretty obvious that we're going to have AI that is vastly smarter than humans.
[0:14:49] In some ways, it already is. It seems like AI unequivocally smarter than humans in every way, including in innovation, is probably not more than a year or two away, it would seem. It's heavy to think about. This is kind of boring. I hope it's nice to us.
[0:15:23] You know, when you look. I'm happy about all the things we've asked it to do. What's something, listen, you have a better position to see this than anybody pretty much. What's going to happen in five years that you're seeing that maybe a lot of people aren't seeing that's going to blow people's minds that will be doable in five years? In five years, we'll have probably, so five years being, say, 2031, I think digital intelligence will exceed the sum of all human intelligence.
[0:15:59] That there will be, in five years, probably, there might be, let's say, at least 100 million humanoid robots, but maybe a billion. Yeah. And I would predict that the economy is probably twice its current size in five, maybe six years. Five to seven years.
[0:16:38] Because you're going to hit a doubling period where the economic output is increasing so fast that plus minus a few years, we'll see giant changes. A couple follow-up questions on that. When do you see the first data center in space? Again, you have a better vision on that than pretty much anybody.
[0:17:02] Again, when we're going to Mars, you're clearly going to be leading the way. When do we get a colony on the moon? When do we get a colony on Mars? Three-pronged question. Data center in space, humans on the moon, humans on Mars. Timeline. Data center in space is much easier than people may think. I mean, SpaceX at this point has 10,000 satellites in orbit right now. And in the future with Starship, we'll be launching
[0:17:33] Over 10,000 communication satellites per year, each one of which is much more capable than our current satellites. So you can expect probably 10 to 100 times more communications capability than currently exists from space. But that will pale in comparison to the tonnage of AI satellites. So, I mean, it's always helpful to use the physics tools of thinking in the limit.
[0:18:05] If you think of the limit, what is the most amount of AI compute you could possibly bring to bear? And the way to access power that's far beyond anything on Earth is in space. So these are some humbling ways to maybe frame the problem and see how tiny we are. Here on Earth, we are like microbes on a dust moat compared to the sun.
[0:18:36] All of human civilization currently uses less than a trillionth of, say, the power emitted by the sun. Much less than a trillionth. All human energy, counted as generously as you could possibly imagine, is much less than a trillionth of the sun's energy. So that means if you were to increase energy harnessed by a million,
[0:19:06] Yeah. Yeah.
[0:19:37] All mass data is not the sun. The amount of energy produced by the sun would still round out to 100% of the energy produced in the solar system. And then if you teleported two more Jupiters from other, somehow teleported two more Jupiters into our solar system and burnt them too, the sun would still be 100% of power rounding out. So really, everything is just extremely tiny compared to the sun. Therefore, when you go to space, if you want to...
[0:20:05] Climb the Kardashev scale in any meaningful way whatsoever. You have to go to space. And our rough estimate is that you could probably do a terawatt a year of solar-powered AI satellites launched from Earth. That would require, let's say, something like 10 million tons a year of payload to orbit at 100 kilowatts per ton.
[0:20:34] And that would be a terawatt per year. The average power usage in the United States is half a terawatt. That would mean you'd be launching twice the amount of AI power than the entire electricity consumption in the United States per year. Yeah, yeah. We're not breaking any physics here. This is all achievable. Now, if you want to take that up several more orders of magnitude,
[0:21:05] The thing to do is to build a base on the moon and construct a mass driver and build the solar panels and radiators on the moon. Chips you could probably bring from Earth, but build those on the moon too. And that would enable you to do about a petawatt per year of solar-powered AI. I'm not sure how much AI we need at the end of the day, but that's a lot. That is a lot.
[0:21:35] It would be vastly greater than the Earth's economy. Earth's economy would be really inconsequential by comparison with that. No, that's a vision of abundance for sure. I know you've had quite a busy day and you always have a busy day, so we don't want to be mindful of your time. So I just have two last questions. One, there must be, I mean, again, you keep on coming up with these big ideas and you keep executing them.
[0:22:04] What's a big idea in your head that you haven't deployed yet that you'd like to? Well, I did say for the longest time that people ought to build tunnels, and then everyone thought I was joking. And I was like, fine, well, let's just create a company, a boring company, to build tunnels. Because this is an obvious way to reduce traffic to zero by going 3D with your transport system. Just as we go 3D with the buildings, it's obviously illogical to expect that you...
[0:22:37] And everyone tries to go in and out of the 3D building at the same time. But if you have a transport network that is three-dimensional with tunnels going all over the place, then you can address any arbitrary level of traffic. Now, I encourage other people to start tunneling companies because the boring company is the only one, as far as I can tell, that's taking this seriously. It's boring to be the only boring company, right? Yeah.
[0:23:07] Honestly, there's a lot of opportunity in tunnels. There really is. And it's quite hard work building these things. So I hope other people do it too. I guess there's probably a lot of opportunity in synthetic medicine. These days you can basically create custom RNA.
[0:23:36] We're going from a situation where medicine has been analog, where we just find drugs by accident most of the time, like finding sticks in the forest that seem like a useful club type of thing. It's quite primitive how we've found medication in the past. Since we can now construct synthetic RNA, you can effectively...
[0:24:05] Think of medicine, the future of medicine as being digital. So if you just know what to program into that synthetic RNA strand, you can basically, I think, cure almost anything. All right. The challenge to the room, digital medicine and 3D transportation. Let's go. Let's give Elon some competition. All right, last question. Electric aircraft are probably an opportunity there. I think there's some startups in that field. What kind of aircraft? Electric aircraft. Electric aircraft. I'm sure that's coming.
[0:24:35] When we get together, and hopefully, who knows what the way technology is going, some of us will be here, in another 250 years for the Forbes 500 celebration innovation, what would you want? Again, you're still building it, but when you think about your legacy, and I know it's early, but what would make you feel good when people look back the way you talked about Edison and Franklin? What would you like people to say about you?
[0:25:09] You played a useful role in the advancement of civilization. Great way to end. And I think, by the way, again, this is the most incredible room in America today. I think that's true for all of us. So let's take inspiration. You all are great, but he's number one.
[0:25:29] Elon Musk, thank you for joining us here at this. Thank you again. Thank you for your time and all that. And thank you. Now we're going to let you go and we're going to bring the other award winners up. But Elon Musk, again, thank you for your time and all your good thoughts.