Thank you all for sticking around this afternoon. We had some great conversations and
we're hoping to have another great one. It is my pleasure and an honor
of privilege, really to have this conversation about the future with two gentlemen who
know probably more about it than most. The fellow all the way to my
right to your left does not need any introduction. Elon Musk. You all
know from Tesla and SpaceX, of course from Solar City, Sam All and
I would say you don't need too much introduction either, but I'm going to
give it to you just in case you don't. He runs why Comminator.
Why Comminator has investments in over one thousand companies at this point. They're investing
in about two hundred fifty companies every single year. Those companies collectively are worth
about sixty five billion dollars in total. That's with a B. And to
give you just a sort of a sense of the kind of names you're talking
about, we're talking about Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, Zenefitz, Instacart,
etc. So both both folks with an amazing pedigree and an amazing sense of
what's going on. Here's I want to start the conversation with both of you,
and I think we're going to probably go to outer space very quickly,
but we're going to try to keep it on Earth at least for the moment.
When you think about innovation and you think about where we are going to
be ten, fifteen, twenty years and what to invest in, what to
make I'm going to make it hard for you, Elan. If you took
Tesla out of it, took Solar City out of it, took SpaceX out
of it, and you said I could go start a new company tomorrow,
it would be what it would be in? What area? Where would you
start thinking about? Well, I think I think there's some pairy like there's
a fairly obvious opportunity in electric aircraft because all transport will electrify over time,
with the exception of rockets ironically, And you know, but there's I mean
that there's I think there's there's two areas which I mean they're fraught with issues,
but you know, it's one of those things where if you if you
don't do something, maybe not doing something is worse, like on the AI
front or on genetics, you know, so like like the those are the
two things I think besides sustainable transport, the Internet and making like multiplanetary rewriting,
genetics, uh, and AI. But the latter two are the ones
that can most change destiny of humanity. But but they're they're really dodgy.
So I mean, maybe I'd try to do something in one of those two
areas, but they're yeah, fraught with difficulty. Elizabeth Holmes was here earlier
spoke during the lunch hour. Do you think about genetics and longevity and trying
to sort of know what your your friend Larry Page is investing in a business
hoping to end death. I don't, I mean the I mean, I'm
not actually a huge proponent of longevity. I mean I do think that having
a good life for longer is better. Like you'd want to address the you
know, the things that that happened to you when when you're older, like
dementia and so forth, that those are pretty important. But I'm not I'm
not sure it's sort of actually you want to do that. I want to
get into the genetict thing, but it is something that's going to fundamentally change
humanity and a lot along with AI. So you don't want to live forever
so that you can get to Mars. I definitely don't want to live forever.
How many years do you want to live? I don't know. One
hundred good ones, one hundred good ones or a hundred more good ones.
You're forty four, I mean one hundred good ones in total, I think
is probably fine and maybe a bit longer. Sam. Where where would you
put your money? You're you're the investor here. Well, I mean we
try to invest in a very broad range of technology. So we funded an
electric airplane, or fund an electric airplane company. We've done a companies we've
done. How are you listed? Is the electric airplane? By the way,
I think it should work. I mean I think it's like it makes
it makes sense. Yeah, the math should work, I think I actually
I no huge surprise, but I'll agree with Elan on those two areas.
I think if you could pick two things that I'm not already working really hard
on AI, having AI go in the positive direction, which I really think
it can, and I think thinking about sort of genetic technology. Genetic technology.
I made it unfair for you because I said, we had to take
solar City out and we had to take the cars out, so we didn't
get to really talk about energy, but I imagine how big, how big,
how big a thing do you think energy all in and when you think
about both of your investments in what you're doing, is something that is one
of the things that you need to tackle. Well. I think sustainable energy
is the most important problem that we face the century. That's like a known
difficult thing that we have to solve. Like if we if we continue to
rely on burning hydrocobbins, the future is going to be quite bad. And
the vast majority of the scientific establishment believes that. And the evidence I think
is well, I mean, anyone with a scientific background is unequivocal. So
we've got to solve sustainable energy. I'm a big kind of solar because we
got this big few usion ball in the sky called the Sun and it turns
up every day. So if we can use solar energy plush batteries, we
can actually have a complete solution for sustainable energy generation. And then we need
to use in a sustainable way, which is you know where you need the
electric transport. Yeah, So the thing I would ad I think getting the
cost of sustainable energy down super low is probably you know, short of friendly
AI, Like the most important thing we can do for sort of quality of
life of the poorest half of the world. I think that, you know,
every time I look into this, it's really amazing how much the cost
of energy and the quality of life correlate. What about nuclear energy, You
have some investments in nuclear energy. Yeah, I mean, what I've always
said is I think the end state of the world is a combination of nuclear
and solar, probably eighty twenty one way or the other, sort of terrestrial
based nuclear. I think fusion is likely to work at some point in the
next couple of decades, and that's a really big deal. I think that
it's good to have a backup op. It's good to have two sources.
But you know, like it's all sort of fusion when you think about it.
Yeah, I mean, I'm a big I mean, I think fusion.
I think it's definitely possible to make fusion work. But I think at
the and I used to be a big fan of of like having of that
as the long term energy source, but I'm inclined to think like indirect fusion
from the sun. Essentially it's going to be the primary source, and then
to some degree there will be fusion reactors for you know, maybe if you're
really far north or which are south? What about the risks of nuclear energy
A fusion, A fusion, I assume there's some risk. There's no risk,
not really zero. I'm an idiot. I don't know, no,
No. With fusion, the difficulty is keeping it going not you know,
with with with fission that you have some melt down risk, although there's you
know, there's new technology on the fission front that makes the melt down risk
extremely low. But with fusion, the great difficulty is keeping the reaction from
is keeping it from the fire from going out. It's quite hard to sustain
a fusion reaction unless you have something very big like the Sun, and you
have the Sun has gravitational confinement of fusion reaction. So since you you can't
do gravitational confinement on Earth, you have to do some sort of electromagnetic confinement
with one form or another, or or a kinetic confinement by slamming things into
each other. So it's it's quite tricky to prevent a fusion explosion from not
immediately extinguishing God. So fusion is like, uh, I mean probably what
you do is just repeat it every second or whatever. So I mean,
just just a sort of. You know, fusion is like when you when
you take two hydrogen atoms or or or two hydrogenal isotopes technically and slam them
together and form helium. That's that's fusion. And then fission is like when
you've got like a heavy atom that is decaying at a you know, relatively
like a noticeable rate, like uranium or plutonium, and decays into smaller atoms.
Then that's that's that's fission. I didn't do so well in science,
so we're going to try to move along. But you recently said that you
wanted to nuke Mars. I mean I didn't know then you guys in the
back were doing some science talk about how nuking Mars would work. Yeah,
yeah, so so nu king Wars. I sort of was a little flippant
about that. I think it's a really decent idea. Thank you, thank
you. So yeah, the what I was really getting at, But it's
hard to you know, convey that in like at thirty seconds, you know,
on on the Lake Show, SI in Colvera was was that the sun
is a nuclear explosion, a fusion explosion. That's what the sun is.
It's an ongoing fusion explosion. So if you wanted to add energy to Mars,
like warm up Mars. The really the source of almost all energy in
the universe is fusion, you know, even fission is originally there was fusion
and then that that that then later resulted in fission. But what I was
really doing about is creating two little suns, two pulsing suns above the north
and south pole of Mars that would warm the pulse up enough so that the
frozen CO two would would gasify and densify the atmosphere. Some of the water
would also heat up, and you'd have sort of water, more water,
water, vapor, and CO two in the in the Martian atmosphere, which
in that case is good because the CO two ends up warming, warming Mars
up, and so you get a positive sort of reaction, like it's a
puzz stive cycle of warming on Mars. Like you want to warm Mars up.
You don't want to warm Earth up, you know, So why would
you ever want to live on Mars? It looks like a great adventure to
me. Beyond the adventure, do you actually both of you you you're investing
in stuff that hopefully one day we'll go to Mars nothing from Mars. But
excuse nothing from Mars. But I but I hope elong goes. I think
that would be cool. But is that just for one person? What's gonna
happen? No? Really, I want to well, I mean the Mars
thing is is really like if you say, what is going to be really
important to the preservation of of civilization or life as we know it more than
just you know, humanity, because of course we would bring life as we
know it to Mars and that there's no life that we can detect on the
surface of Mars to maybe some subterranean bacterial life, but there's not it's on
the surface there there isn't anything. So this would be the extension of life
to another planet, or life as we know it to another planet, and
I think would be make a huge difference to the probable a lifespan of human
civilization and life as we know it. So it's sort of like an insurance
policy, a life insurance policy of life collectively. And you know, so
it's yeah, probable because you because you think global warming, what do you
what do you think is going to happen here? That's I do want to
be clear, it's this is this is a. I mean, I think
it's important that we become a multiplanet species, not a single planet species,
but on another planet. So this is if we it's like, really,
it's like, what kind of future do you want to have? Do you
want to have a future where we are forever confined to one planet or one
where we are out there exploring the stars and and on on many planets.
And I think the latter one is far more exciting and inspiring because the former
is basically waiting around until some extinction event. So because eventually there will be
one and it might be quite far in the future, but it also might
not be far in the future. So there's so there's the there's really two
main reasons I think to make life multiplanetarian to establish a self sustaining civilization of
Mars. One is the defensive reason, to ensure that the light of consciousness
as we know it is not extinguished or lasts much longer. And the second
is that it would be an amazing adventure that we could all enjoy vicariously,
if not personally. I think it's really important to establish multiplanetary life. I
agree with that. I think my concern is that the I think the AI
question is likely to become pressing and important to deal with before we can establish
a full colony on Mars. That's true. I think even if not,
then the AI can like go to Mars on a laser beam. The AI
goes here. It's very hard that, I mean, it's like just gives
itself there. Yeah, I mean it's very hard to like a programing through
space. But the AI is going to go like twenty minutes, you know,
on a laser beam, It's easy. Do you guys believe in life
forms outside of Earth? Do you think there are? I mean, I
think there's there's quite a high chance of microbial life. That's there's a much
that then as you get more advanced in life, that that there's less and
less likelihood of of like sophisticated life. But you do you think there's Do
you think there are aliens out there that we can talk to? You mean
as opposed to like bacteria. Yeah. Yeah, there's a great Onion article
recently about like, you know, uh, like like NASA should only hold
a press conference if they find aliens that we can talk to. But but
I think it's a I mean, it's it's an interesting confluence of events.
Like it's not just that there has to be life, intelligent life that evolves
somewhere, but that that life has to last for a long time for us
to be for us to exist at the same time as that. So what
it suggests there's this great questions called the like sort of the Fermi paradox,
like where are the aliens? Like, if there's so many planets out there
and the universe is almost fourteen billion years old, why aren't the aliens everywhere?
And this is one of the most perplexing questions because you know, you
could basically bicycle to Alpha Centauri in a few hundred thousand years, like I
meaning at that's at bicycle speed. So it's sort of like, you know,
in one hundred billion years, like even at a very slow speed,
you could completely blanket the galaxy. So why why not? Where are they?
It's very hard for me to get over there right now. Well,
we were talking in the back and we've had this conversation before. You please
weigh in on this, and I think it's a thought experiment that you have
suggested that we are all collectively right now living in a simulation. What does
that mean? Yeah, it's a probabilistic thing. So they really if you
look at say the advancement of video games from say forty years ago, when
we started out with Pong and you just had like rectangles batting a rectangle to
each other. And now we've got photorealistic three D simulations with millions of people
playing simultaneously, or three D games with millions of people playing simultaneously that are
just getting better. Now we've got virtual reality headsets, so you can just
put it on and it feels like you're right there. You'll have haptic feedback,
meaning four speedback sticks so you can actually pick up something and feel like
you're picking up something, like have haptic gloves. And if you extrapolate that
advancement at any rate at all, like if you say, okay, let's
say it's it slows down by a factor of one hundred starting right now,
Okay, so then then then I mean the video games will be distinguishable from
reality. And let's say you know, two hundred years instead of twenty years
or something like that. But you don't think that we're in a game right
now. Okay, Well, but that's this is this like that we are
all somebody has a joystick somewhere else in some other you know, where I'm
certainly doesn't feel like that. I mean, I don't, I don't.
I don't think I'm being played by somebody in a video game. But then
people in video games don't generally think that. I certainly think if you talk
to people who use the latest virtual reality equipment in sort of a big space
where they sort of map like benches in the space to benches in the game
and the environment, you know, they have this experience when they do that
for the first time and they take it off and then they just freeze for
ten seconds and you can and then you talk to them, and it's clear
that like they their belief that this is actual reality has been shaken because they
were so convinced in virtual reality that that was real. And so if I
can take this off, like, why aren't there other layers? I also
think it ties interestingly back to the Fermi paradox. Yeah, exactly. You
know, if it is a simulation sort of that would be a pretty good
answer for why they're an all aliens. How far are we away from sort
of virtual reality being a thing that all of us sort of live in to
some degree? We would go to this com real close. We would go
to this conference from our VR sets. I mean, I don't think it's
there's still something to actually really being there in person that we probably won't lose
for for a long time, hopefully never. But I mean with what Oculus
and Velove are coming out with, and I believe some of that, like
the first br headsets are due out really next year, yeah, like in
the next several months. And the demo is that that I've seen and I
think Sam's probably seen too, are incredibly compelling. And there is that strange
feeling because because you put the headset on in like a very nondescript Bland room
and you put the headset on and suddenly you're in anywhere like you could be.
Yeah, you know, I got this demo where they would like blow
air on you when you like got near a cliff edge, and when you
walk near a fire, they would turn on the heater and you didn't see
any of this because you're just wearing it and then you and it's really quite
quite compelling. I want to talk about something else that's compelling, which is
Tesla. It's really nuck about the X. It's an suv. It's an
suv. But here's where I was going to say, one hundred and thirty
two thousand dollars, how many people are really going to buy this thing?
Yeah, So the the first cars that are produced off fully the sort of
fully optioned version, so it's not like a base price of you know,
one hundred and thirty two thousand. It's and we'll have a version that's still
expensive on the expensive side, but before any incentives would be about seventy five
K next year, and you know, with incentives and whatnot, it's you
know, maybe sixty five So it's it's still expensive, but it's not as
crazy as one hundred and thirty two the and then in a couple of years
we should have the Model three and that'll be starting price of thirty five thousand
dollars. So it's a smaller car, but it's you know a lot more
affordable. Okay, So for the Tesla sort of real efficionados who follow you
on Twitter, you need you need to answer one thing, which is last
week somebody tweeted at you, I think about the X, and then you
put out a tweet that mentioned the Y and the three and then you deleted
the tweet. Yes, everybody wants to know why you deleted the tweet and
what the tweet actually said. I know, I think I think it was.
It just said something like the be the Muddle three and the moddel why
and that one of them will have like a felcing door, which is like
pretty obviously the moddel why so the but I deleted that, and like,
I don't know it does know the tweets because I just thought I had like
kind of a rambling Twitter history, but it was had no significance. That
lead has no significance, Like I don't think deleting a tweet like makes it
go away from the Internet or something, So why why delete tweet? I
just didn't like what the way my Twitter history looked. It was. It
was like two rambling. You've invested in Twitter, IM in Twitter, in
Tesla. You own a Tesla, make the case for those who are out
there, make it harder because he has to do it. Now, why
what is this going to become in your mind? You sure you don't have
to answer, Yeah, we know what you're going to say. Look,
I mean I think as most people who own one think it's the best car
like out there. I had a Roadster before I test the Roaster, which
was not the best car, but the model Assue really is like it's just
it's the best car on the market. And I think that people think of
this like existing car companies, but actually this is like a software company with
a car attached to it, and it's you know, you just like you
sort of point and click, you like point the wheel somewhere, you push
the thing down and it just kind of gets there. It doesn't make noise.
It's like it's very reliable. The software actually works. It's the only
car with good software, So I think people really like it. Now.
Yeah, it's like really expensive still, but I think, well, I'm
confident that a mass market test sole will do very well. And I also
think the other electric cars I've driven feel like many years behind. Right,
you talked about this being a software company. Do you think of your self
as a software company. I think we're software and a hardware company, But
the software component does become increasingly important. So you've got to get both right,
because it's it's a holistic product experience, but its software is increasingly the
you know, an increasing proportion of the problem tool as you get to autonomy,
and yeah, so there is a view. I don't know if it's
a conspiracy theory that you are building autonomous functionality and other driver lests like functionality
into the car without advertising that it's in there, and that one day you
were going to flip a switch and the car is going to start just driving.
Well, uh no, not quite like that. But we are going
to upload new software soon. And this is not actually a secret or anything.
We have version seven of our software which turns on highway autopilot, so
the car will be able to steer by itself on highways or any kind of
any kind of road that doesn't have really steep, sharp curves on it.
And then also it'll steer quite well in traffic. So those the two scenarios
where it's going to be quite good at steering. And well that that's in
public beta right now. So we have I don't know, six or seven
hundred Tesla drivers owners that are testing the order to steer software, and yeah,
go ahead. I think full self driving cars, I'm not Tesling specifically,
just in general, are likely to get here much more quickly than people
realize. Yeah, I think you ask most people, they would still say
it's ten to twenty years away, and I actually think we'll have sort of
like full point to point autonomous driving in a few years. It won't be
yeah, a few years, like two or three years, three or four
maybe better. I agree. I think that's something on the on the two
to three year timeframe is likely for it to be technologically, I mean,
you'll be able to demonstrate it, but it won't you won't be able to
go to fully autonomous until get regulator regulatory approval. So there's there's a there's
a time of difference between when it is technologically possible in a general sense,
you know, so that you know, not not just like in a very
tightly mapped situation like say mountain view of Palo Alto, right, but in
the general sense of like you know, can can do point to point virtually
anywhere. Right. I think that's that's only you know, two to three
years away. But but then approval of from regulators of having a few autonomous
is anywhere from I don't know, one to five years after that, depending
upon the location, because the regulars regulators have to be convinced that it is
substantially I think they'll they'll want you to see that it's significantly more Uh,
the signific significantly safer than than cars that are driven by people. I want
to open it up in about five minutes, so I just have a couple
more questions to get to you. And so if you guys have questions in
the audience, get your shot on goal. And in just a second,
I want to talk about an entrepreneurship because both of you are entrepreneurs. You
invest in them. You are one, and you think about this a lot.
Your old pal, Peter Thiel likes to say that he would not invest
in somebody who's over the age of thirty years old, that that it should
be the cutoff. You're forty four. Now he's invested in you. Yeah,
I guess it makes excepse. But you may be the exception to the
rule as somebody who invests in companies every day. Do you think there's a
cutoff, But there's a lot of people out here who are over the age
of thirty. Are we done? I mean we've said this before, but
when we've looked at our data, the mean age of entrepreneurs we fund is
just around twenty nine to thirty. So there's obviously lots of over thirty entrepreneurs
that we fund. Someone which are gone on to create multi billion dollar companies.
So I think certainly you can't say it's impossible for people over at thirty
to create companies. That's ridiculous, and we plan to continue to invest in
people of all ages. The correlation that we've noticed is that if you look
at the really successful companies we've had, the multi billion dollar companies, the
average for those average age for those founders does skew significantly younger. But the
success rate of founders of you know, this binary is the company's success are
not excuse older than thirty. So, you know, younger entrepreneurs, I
think tend to take bigger risks. Maybe they're willing to work on these very
long time horizon projects. But that's the only correlation we see. I think
it would be a crazy strategy to say I'm never going to invest in anyone
over thirty. Yeah. No, I mean I think I think it's I
don't think Peter meant that either. Yeah, I mean, you can definitely
start a company at any age and be successful. I mean it's really just
a question of like do you you know, do you have a good idea,
are you working really hard? Are you able to attract a great team
and motivate the team, and that I mean that that's sort of really what
matters. But you've had multiple ideas. And there's another view, by the
way, which is that you can only really have one great idea, right
that everybody sort of has maybe maybe one grade. I started really the idea,
you know what I mean, Like there's adult saying it's one percent inspiration.
I think in nine nine per perspiration I think is generally true. I
mean a lot of times companies start out with with with an idea that's actually
wrong, but they adapt quickly enough to get it to something that that's right
right, And I can say like at the beginning of Tela, we started
out with we started the company with two false premises like that would turn out
to be like really dumb. One was that we'd be able to license the
drivetrain technology from a company called AC Propulsion in southern California and that it would
just work. That didn't That totally didn't work. And then we also thought
we'd be able to adapt the Lotus else chassis at low cost and be able
to essentially put the AC Propulsion drivetrain technology in a Lotus lease chassis and then
just build that quickly and and sell it, and that it would that that
would be okay. But but like I said, the AC propulsion technology did
not lend itself to any any kind of cost effective, reliable car. It
was okay for like a small prototype, but not not for a commercial product.
And and the and then the lotus e lease that that ended up being
worse than if we had designed a car from from the beginning, because we
ended up changing like ninety six percent of the components in the car and invalidating
all of the crash results and all the safety stuff. The car ended up
being thirty percent heavier, had to be longer, and it ended up being
like like if you if you want, if you had a house in mind,
and instead of actually building a house from scratch, you got some existing
house and ended up knocking everything except one wall in the basement out, and
and it would have been better to just build a house from the beginning,
the house you wanted. So so it basically Teesla was started on the basis
of two dumb ideas, and we managed to you know, it was a
tough one to overcome those two issues, but we managed to get get past
them. That's so, that's I think the more important thing is like start
somewhere and then you know, really be prepared to question your assumptions, fix
what you did wrong, and adapt to reality. How did you run two
companies at the same time? Jack Dorsey is about to take this on in
a meaningful way? What is that? What is a day in the life
of Elon Muscar actually look like? Yeah, I wouldn't recommend running two companies.
It really it decreases your freedom quite a lot. So and and I'll
tell you what, So, my day is probably a bit different than people
think it is. Most of my time is actually spent on engineering in design,
so that's probably I don't know, like seventy percent of my time.
Like propressed stuff like this is maybe two or three percent of my time.
It's really really tiny, and I'm going to reduce it even further. It's
probably like one percent of my time. So