Speaker 1: Latest interview of Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: Elon, Welcome to JP Morgan's headquarters. You're on the fifty
first floor, which is about the equivalent of the nowhere
near where you go generally in space, but as high
as we can get in New York City. But before
we get started with you and Jamie, we had a
very special guest that wanted to welcome you here this afternoon,
and so your mother, May Musk, is here to welcome you.
May please stand up.
Speaker 3: I don't think you can see me or everybody here.
Speaker 2: They can see you, yes, he can.
Speaker 3: This is your part.
Speaker 1: I actually can't see my mom, but I can hear
her certainly.
Speaker 4: Okay, how you are.
Speaker 3: What I'd like to say is when you were three
years old and I told people I have a genius son,
they would roll their eyes.
Speaker 4: And then.
Speaker 3: I'm you, And then we said you wanted to start
with rockets.
Speaker 4: Then I rolled my eyes.
Speaker 3: And then you did it. And so this is just
a great party here and we're celebrating you.
Speaker 4: Love you so much.
Speaker 2: One please.
Speaker 5: So let me Elon welcome you. It's a really privileged
to have you here on this momentous occasion. It is
new for us, but it's an important thing the trajectory
of American innovation. We're here live thirty five hundred people
of our top individual investors around the world in one
hundred branches.
Speaker 6: There are three hundred and fifty people here.
Speaker 5: Three thousand, five hundred around the country. This is a
very unique thing, by the way, because Elon has spoken
to me about democratizing finance. This is part of it.
Treating individual investors the same way institutions are treated, and
hedge funds and all those things. My view is it's
a wonderful thing to do. Elon very brave, by the way,
because I would never let my mother.
Speaker 6: Speak publicly when I was in there group. God knows
what she would have said.
Speaker 5: Actually, Elon is the Edison of our time. I remember
visiting Elon in Tesla like fifteen years ago, a whole
new way of building cars, vertical integration, which had not
been anything remote what our car comers are doing.
Speaker 6: Now. You have SpaceX.
Speaker 5: I visited the SpaceX factory in California, and it's exceptional
to have more than six hundred and fifty rockets. And
you told me one today putting in the sales in
space you have nine thousand or almost ten thousand Starlight
Darlink sales up there. Starlink three is coming, which the
whole new generation was hopefully will place some of these
undersea cables. It's been an extraordinary twenty four years with
watching Elon grow over time and now making a massive
leap into the future. So welcome and coming here, Elon.
I have ten questions for you, so I want to
make sure I get to each one. Someone came from
folks here. They're all important, but one just to start
is why SpaceX public now? Because you had choices, you
didn't have to why now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've been asked for many years about taking.
Speaker 1: Space public, so it's probably been almost ten years that
people have been suggesting to me that I should take
SpaceX public. We've been positive cash flow for quite a
long time, I think since around twenty fourteen twenty fifteen,
and we've been self funding in fact in our private
equity rounds, so they actually have not been fundraising rounds.
They've been liquidity rounds for investors and employees because we
give everyone at the company's stock, and SpaceX has actually bought.
Speaker 4: Backstock in most of our sort of funding events.
Speaker 1: So what's different about now is that it's a number
of things, but we are embarking on a significant growth phase,
like a capital growth phase, where we're we are going
to put in orbit probably one hundred thousand satellites, probably
over one hundred thousand satellites just for communications, and these
will be the Version three and beyond versus Version two
and Version.
Speaker 4: One that are currently in.
Speaker 1: Version three is depending on how you count it, ten
to twenty times more capable than the Version two satellite.
And there were three chips that the SpaceX chip design
team taped out that are specific to this that are
far beyond state of the art, which means it's one
hundred times more bandwidth than the SpaceX stalling system currently offers,
and also half the latency because the altitude will be
about half altitude. I think it will actually be the
highest bandwidth, the lowest latency means of communicating, and the
future with AI and robots is actually going to require
a lot more bandwidth than we currently use. Because you
can imagine what's the bandwidth of a human. It's peak
band with a human is a few hundred bits per second.
Bandwidth of a computer it can be a trillion fits
a second. So the appetite for bandwidth of AI, AI
and robots is going to be enormous. And then we're
also doing the AI data centers in space, which is
another massive capital endeavor, but I think it would be
the primary means by which AI can be expanded. It's
increasingly difficult to build power plants on the ground that
there are very few people who want a power plant
in their backyard. So if we want to say, double
the electricity usage of the United States, which is on
average about five hundred gigawates, we would have to build
about twice as many power plants, which I don't think
people are most communities are not super excited about that.
But actually, if we go to space, we can go
far beyond the electricity generation of Earth. In fact, this
is going to sound crazy, but you could actually increase
harnessed energy by a factor of a million and still
be using much less than a millionth of the Sun's energy.
So current human civilization uses much less than a trillionth
of the Sun's energy output.
Speaker 4: It's just humbling to think about.
Speaker 1: We're really a tiny when you see the true size
of Earth relatives to the Sun, We're a tiny dust
mode in a vast darkness, and the Sun is enormous.
That the Sun is ninety nine point eight percent of
old mass the Solar system, and most of the remaining
zero point two percent is Jupiter. Sometimes people ask me,
maybe going a little wide ranging in the sensor, But
because you just asked me, why you're hearing aboulic now,
I'm like talking about the Sun's out power output.
Speaker 4: I'm a bit of a long winded answer. If I
was an AI, you might tell me, you know, okay,
But also it is important.
Speaker 1: Some of these things are I'm important because fuel stares
wondering what's the future of energy generation?
Speaker 4: And I can say that it.
Speaker 1: Is absolutely solo power, or maybe the better word for
solar power is star power.
Speaker 4: It's the power of a star.
Speaker 1: And the crazy thing is that burnt all mass in
the Solar system that was not the Sun, the amount
of energy produced by the Sun would still round up
to one hundred percent, because the Sun is ninety.
Speaker 4: Nine point eight percent with the mass of the Solar system.
Speaker 1: Even if you teleported two more jupiters from another somehow
teleport too more jupiters from another solar system and burnt
them too, the Sun would round up two hundred percent.
It's so it's very much the sun, and you can
you can scale to a million times both economy and
space in terms of harness power, which is a good
proxy economic output, and still be much less than a
month of the Sun's energy, which is humbly really to
think about how tiny we are and this is just
one star among men.
Speaker 4: So I guess it's just the tale. It would be.
Speaker 1: We're embarking on a massive new growth phase and we
need capital for that.
Speaker 6: It's okay, okay. Number two.
Speaker 1: And another thing is that the revenue, like I also
feel pretty good about like the revenue projections. I mean,
like like before, like liber revenue is a little unstable,
but now I feel like the revenue is like much
more predictable.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I learned. I always learned listening to you, I
guarantee certainly. I mean you people hear about multiplanetary species,
travels of space and one of the most exciting ideas
in human history. Can you explain the bridge that you
were you speak about. I heard you talk about from
the Earth Earth to the Moon to Mars.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you don't necessarily have to go through the
Moon to get to Mars. I just think that we
can build a self growing city on the Moon faster
than we could do so on Mars. And there's also
the potential if you say you want to scale far
beyond what you can do from Earth, is that because
the Moon has no atmosphere and about one sixth Earth's gravity,
you can use an electromagnetic accelerator, a railgun or mass driver.
Basically you don't need to use rockets to do AI
data centers into deep space from the Moon. You can
literally just shoot them like a railgun type of thing.
And you can manufacture the solar and the radiators soul
powered radiators on the Moon from Moon materials. That would
allow scaling potentially to beyond one thousand terrawats a year,
which is a truly staggering number.
Speaker 4: Like I think we can do a thousand.
Speaker 1: I think we can do probably somewhere around one terrawat
per year of AI space compute from Earth, but we
can do a thousand terroorids or more from the Moon.
And like I said, we can also make a moon base.
And I think it would be pretty pretty cool if
you could vacation on the Moon. That would be the
most epic vacation. Not everybody wants to go to the Moon,
but I think a lot of people do. I think
we're pretty pretty amazing that obviously, provided you could do
so safely and come back safely and everything. But I
think I think that will be possible in the future.
And then Mars is another step beyond that. That's Mars
is a whole planet and with gravity much closer to
that of Earth's, and it has an atmosphere. I'll beat
with an atmosphere, and if you warm up Mars, you
could one day make Mars like Earth, meaning with liquid
oceans and life and where you could walk outside without
a spacesuit type of thing. So Mars is I call
Mars a fixer upper of the planet, but it's got
a lot of potential.
Speaker 5: I mean, and we go to number three, but I
never ever thought you'd be in the hospitality business.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, we should have Moon hotels anything, but yeah,
Musk hotels like it could be.
Speaker 4: Actually, you think of us more like we're kind of
like the Union Pacific.
Speaker 1: When they built the Union Pacific back in the day,
people thought they were crazy because like, why are you
trying to carry this all this cargo and people to California.
No one's there, but now California is the biggest state
in the country.
Speaker 5: Not for long, but yeah, yeah, no, evitedly it's self defeating. Yes,
so Starship, you're built in unbelievable ship. I think it's
already had twelve flights I read. But obviously technical technically,
it's just hard to do. What was some of the
breaks things you have that people should know about they
don't know about.
Speaker 1: Our webcasts are very good, so I recommend anyone who
wants if they want to learn about smarts Starship SpaceX
website or any of the Starship life.
Speaker 4: Casts are a great way to learn about it.
Speaker 1: But the really the fundamental breakthrough of Starship is that
it will be the first val rocket that is fully reusable.
So this might sound like an obvious thing, but because
in every other mode of transport, whether that's aircraft, cars, bicycles, horses,
you name it, ships, these are all we take it
for granted that they are reusable. An aircraft journey would
be very expensive if you had to throw the plane
away every time, and that's how rockets have.
Speaker 4: Been in the past.
Speaker 1: But it's very difficult from a technology standpoint to achieve
full reusability for a rocket. We've got part of the
way there with Falcon nine, but we'll get all the
way there with Starship, and once you're chief full reusability,
then it's simply a cost.
Speaker 4: It's simply the cost of access.
Speaker 1: To orbit is just the cost of propellant, because now
you can reuse all aspects of the vehicle, and the
propellant we used for Starship is liquid oxygen and liquid
liquid methane, which is the chiefest propellant you could possibly get.
We can just literally get oxygen from the air and
methane from natural gas. So the cost of propellant for
Starship will be less than the cost of jet aviation fuel,
which means that you should be able to actually send
cogo to space for less than the cost of cargo
on an airplane going on a transoceanic trip.
Speaker 5: Starlink another thing that has been amazing Global Communications already
mentioned Ukraine. You had mentioned to me that V three
would maybe be able to replace something cyber cables, which,
by the way, it is a huge security rich for
all of us because some have already been cut in
the Baltic Sea. So which the next view for starlink
both V three and maybe V four.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the V three satellite is ag and you can
look it up on the internet. As I said, it's
ten to twenty times more capable than V two.
Speaker 4: It's a very big satellite.
Speaker 1: In fact, it can only be launched on Starship, so
it's too big to be launched on any other rocket
on Earth. So Starship has a thirty foot diameter cogo bay,
and the V three satellites are let's see, about seven meters,
so about.
Speaker 4: Twenty two or twenty three.
Speaker 1: Feet wide, so very big, like the size of a
small bus essentially. And there's a bunch of technical details
about we have much bigger plas, ray antennas, we've got
more ground links, we've got more of our laser that
our satellites communicate with each other with lasers that we
developed and manufacture. So it's got a lot more lasers
and more advanced lasers. It's also got w VAN and event.
These are technical details, but it's got a lot of
it's trans it's like a crazy orbiting radio station.
Speaker 5: Because it doesn't Starship do twelve of them or fifteen
or once.
Speaker 4: It should be able to do fifty fifty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because Starship B three is aimed at aiming to
do one hundred tons to orbit with full reusability, and
then Starship B four we're aiming for over two hundred
tons permission and then being able to launch every hour.
Speaker 5: Next one's data centers in space you've been talking about.
Other people have mentioned it, but obviously it has different
technical capabilities. There's colder up there, lu's vibration, but you
also got to get the data back to the Earth
by some method. I think you mentioned me lasers in
good weather in bed and so how hard is it
to do now you've looked at.
Speaker 4: It for a while, We don't think this is a
particularly difficult thing to do.
Speaker 1: In fact, we think it's easier than our communication satellites,
quite a bit easier than our communication satellites stallin V three.
Communication satellites is an incredibly complex machine. The AI data
center would be much simpler by comparison, because it's really
just solar power plus radiator, some basic equipment for operating
the satellite, and then the laser links which would connect
to the Starlink communications constellation and then back and then
to the ground, and it would the connection would happen
no matter what the weather is because once you connect
FM violences to the stalling communication constellation, the stalling communicates
the ground with frequencies that are cloud pinder trading, so
that in fact even roof penetrating to some degree, so
you would always be able to close link with the
data centers.
Speaker 6: Excellent.
Speaker 5: Talking about America, one of the big things here, we've
been talking about the reindustrialization of America for a long time.
Bring you back advanced manufacturing. Now you're talking about billion,
the terror fab billionship fabs in New York.
Speaker 6: What compelled you do that? Now with all the other
things you're working on, Well, we.
Speaker 1: Try to so what's the limiting factor, and the limiting
factor what we see is limiting factor is being able
to make chips, both logic memory and packaging. This was
noting that there's not a single high volume computer memory
fab in America right now.
Speaker 4: Zero.
Speaker 1: There's one being built in Idaho by Micron, but that
will not reach volume production until I believe twenty twenty eight.
And there's something built in New York, but they are
I think twenty nine and thirty. And this is a
tiny fraction of the memory that's needed. And in fact,
even if you take the best case assumptions of the
memory makers and the logic makers, it is not enough
to meet the demand that is anticipated, which is why
you're seeing stocks of Micron go to I think one
point two trillion or.
Speaker 4: Some quite high number.
Speaker 1: So there's just clearly a need for AI logic, memory
and packaging AI computers. Essentially, that is far beyond what
even the best case assumptions of the existing fabricators can do,
and that's why we need to do the terrafab Yeah,
it seems like essential advice.
Speaker 4: We will not there will not be enough chips.
Speaker 5: Some going to do one more on some of the
stuff you've building, and then a little bit more on
other issues AI strategy. You've also bought took a crack
inside into SpaceX. How does that fit into this platform
you're building?
Speaker 4: Uh, yeah, there's you know.
Speaker 1: So we do intend with our SpaceX AI satellites to
allow people to put whatever GPU or TPU they want.
So if in Bettio GPUs can be put on it,
Google TPUs can be put on Amazon, TRAINEUS or any
other ships that if you want to put on can
be put on. We will also offer our chips in
the future, and I think We also want to offer
our software.
Speaker 4: Our AI software as well in the future, but it.
Speaker 1: Will be such that you can run anyone's AI hardware
or software on the Tesla AI satellite space as satellites.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Right, So the next three are completely different. I'm gonna
mention each one. I'll each ask you each one. But
one's about his view of patriotism and service to this country.
One's about culture and bench how do you actually build
these wonderful companies because a lot of people here have
that those issues, and then kind of leadership about I
have a very specific question about that, But first I'll
start patriots. We've served this country. I know you're a patriot,
We've spoken about it. How did you brew your role
of being an American patriot helping the United States?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm incredibly pro American and I it always have been.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: Yeah, SpaceX does do a lot of work for the
BARD used to call the Department of Defense the Department
of For these days, we have a division called star Shield,
which provides military communications and there's some other stuff that's
kind of classified, can't be can't talk about that, but
we are helping the Department.
Speaker 4: Award and instel part of the vital element of that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I was just super pro America always happened.
Speaker 5: Thank you Culture a bench, Brett. When have been with
you for fifteen twenty years? I know you've built a
huge bench in SpaceX. How do you keep it going?
Which important to you? How do you make sure you
keep the best talent?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: When was I think around the seventh person to join
the company, and that was two thousand and two to
swing like twenty four years and general generally the senior
executives at the company you have for a very long tenure.
I think Brent Johnson's been CFO for fifteen years, and.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like we I think because people really believe in
the mission.
Speaker 1: I think they want to stay and they want to
keep building it. Like we want to make humanity a
space frank civilization. We want to take commanity to Mars
and the Moon and ultimately beyond. We want to make
it's like science fiction, make it real. So go to
places that have never been explored before. Make Star Trek real.
Speaker 6: That was one of my favorite shows.
Speaker 5: Yeah, excellent, And then last one, you've built multiple companies.
Speaker 6: How have you changed from maybe twenty years ago?
Speaker 5: I should maybe I should ask you, guys, how have
you changed from like when you started to today lessons
you've learned, how you changed both as a leader as
a person.
Speaker 1: I think I'm probably more chill than I used to be,
so for a little and way more laid back than
I used to be, which I'm still not that laid back,
but more than I used to be for sure. And
one of the things that I found over time, and
I've mentioned this before, is that in terms of recruiting
people to the company and having people work with.
Speaker 4: The company, their individual abilities and their intellectual.
Speaker 1: Capabilities to matter a lot. But also it also matters
if they have a good heart. It's not just about
whether somebody has so niqu or whatever, but it's just
out there a good person that matters a lot.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess I've learnt a lot, although I feel like
I still have a lot to learn and just make
a lot of mistakes. But I think maybe the future
AI will say not bad for a human.
Speaker 5: Listen, I before we thank Elon for coming, I just
want to thank him just watching him build companies, and
I can't wait to watch the next ten or fifteen
years about what you accomplish and what you dream of
and getting to Mars and building new businesses and being creative.
So Elon, I want to thank you for having everybody,
for coming here, sharing your ideas. There are brochures out
there about the whole space X thing, but Elon, thank you,
thank you.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me. I will say.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. To see you in the next episode.