From: punditster@gmail.com   
      
   On 2/23/2026 11:49 AM, Julian wrote:   
   > LAST week Elon Musk announced that within 30 months Space X would be   
   > launching orbital AI data centres in space. Within a decade he plans to   
   > send starships every two days to a city he will build on the moon. A few   
   > years ago predictions such as these would have been laughed out of   
   > court. Not any longer. After a string of outlandish business successes   
   > across a raft of technologies from electric cars to spaceships, today   
   > the world’s biggest investors are prepared to back almost any new idea   
   > that comes out of Musk’s hyperactive brain. The result is that Musk is   
   > singlehandedly building companies that will change the very nature of   
   > human existence.   
   >   
   It is just amazing! In fact, all those tech bros are just brilliant.   
      
   Take that Zuckerberg. Writing a program that copies girl student faces   
   off college yearbooks and comparing their facial features and calling it   
   The Facebook.   
      
   You can't make this stuff up!   
      
   Then there's Jeff and MacKenzie. Started a book store in their garage.   
      
   Now Elon want to send rockets to Mars. Is there no stopping them from   
   innovating?   
      
   "Call me, if you hire and promoted based on who has the best ideas."   
   - Dude   
    > > Musk’s ambitions for humanity are seemingly limitless. For Tesla, the   
   > world’s first and only profitable mass market EV company, the aim is ‘to   
   > accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy’. Space X has   
   > ‘the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets’; X   
   > Corp’s (formerly Twitter) mission ‘is to be the town square of the   
   > internet’. For xAI, his 2023 startup, the aim is to ‘understand the true   
   > nature of the universe’. Neuralink, Musk’s bioelectronics company, is   
   > creating a generalised brain interface ‘to restore autonomy to those   
   > with unmet medical needs today and unlock human potential tomorrow’; and   
   > the Boring Company, whose Prufrock 4 can tunnel at one mile per week,   
   > aims ‘to solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic’.   
   >   
   > So, what are Musk’s overarching goals in life? First, he believes that   
   > planet Earth faces existential risks. Transport needs to move away from   
   > fossil fuels. But he is not a swivel-eyed fanatic. He rejects the idea   
   > that there is an imminent climate catastrophe. Of much greater concern   
   > to Musk is global ‘de-population’ as the world falls below replacement   
   > fertility levels. Musk seems to be single-handedly trying to solve the   
   > problem. As hyperactive in his private life as business life, he has had   
   > an estimated 14 children by four women.   
   >   
   > In the short term, Musk believes that both fossil fuels and nuclear   
   > power have a role to play in Earth’s insatiable need for energy, but   
   > ‘once you understand the Kardashev Scale (the measure of human usage of   
   > available solar energy) it becomes utterly obvious that essentially all   
   > energy generation will be solar’. Apart from EVs, his main contribution   
   > to global energy is solving the problem of solar energy’s intermittency.   
   > Over the last three years, Tesla has become the world’s largest supplier   
   > of utility-scale batteries systems for renewable energy storage.   
   >   
   > Second, Musk wants to avert civilisational collapse. In a recent   
   > conversation at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he opined that ‘we   
   > need to do everything possible to ensure that the light of consciousness   
   > is not extinguished’. If Earth fails, his colonies on the moon and Mars   
   > will keep the flicker of human consciousness alive.   
   >   
   > Third, Musk believes that, through technological advance, particularly   
   > in AI and robotics, the world can achieve ‘superabundance’. In a recent   
   > Moonshots podcast interview with Peter Diamandis, Musk advised: ‘Don’t   
   > worry about squirrelling away for retirement in ten or 20 years. It   
   > won’t matter . . . [there will be a] universal you-can-have-whatever-   
   > you-want income.’   
   >   
   > In the fields of AI and robotics, most technology experts, including   
   > Jensen Huang of Nvidia, believe that Musk is the market leader. The fact   
   > that institutional investors are willing to hold Tesla stock, which is   
   > on a forward P/E ratio of over 200 compared to an average of 25-35 for   
   > the other ‘Magnificent Seven’ US tech stocks (such as Apple and Amazon),   
   > suggests high confidence that Musk’s robots, four-wheeled and humanoid,   
   > both driven by vision-only neural network training, will be fabulously   
   > profitable.   
   >   
   > Tesla’s Freemont, California, factory is being converted to produce   
   > humanoids at a rate of 500,000 per annum by 2027 and 10million per annum   
   > by 2030; meanwhile Tesla’s Gigafactory in Texas is expected to hit a   
   > similar run rate of Musk’s ground-breaking two-seater robotic cybercars   
   > over the next 18 months. Robotic Full Self Driving (FSD), operating in   
   > Tesla taxis in Austen and San Francisco, is now ‘a solved problem’.   
   >   
   > These are ambitious targets. But he proved doubters wrong with EVs and   
   > the market is betting that he will prove his critics wrong again. As   
   > Huang has observed: ‘Elon is singular in his understanding of   
   > engineering and construction and large systems and marshalling   
   > resources. It’s just unbelievable.’   
   >   
   > In 2024, xAI, using 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs (graphics processing   
   > units), built the world’s largest supercomputer, Colossus, for   
   > development of its Large Language Model (LLM) Grok in just 122 days – a   
   > task that would have taken other companies two or three years. Recently   
   > xAI launched Grokipedia to compete with the increasingly ‘woke’   
   > Wikipedia. (Two years ago, Wikipedia removed my own entry). Colossus II,   
   > using a million of Nvidia’s latest B200 GPUs, started operation on   
   > January 17.   
   >   
   > xAI, which in March 2025 merged with X Corp, the social media platform   
   > whose fortunes Musk resuscitated, has now been acquired by Space X. The   
   > merged company is expected to go public later this year at a valuation   
   > of $1.5billion (£1.1billion) – about the same as Tesla’s current market   
   > capitalisation. Will Tesla and Space X merge to create a broadly based   
   > technological behemoth? Maybe.   
   >   
   > Space X dominates its industry, operating 70 per cent of all satellites   
   > in low earth orbit. Last year the company accounted for 85 per cent of   
   > all tonnage launched into space. Later this year its Starship, the   
   > largest spacecraft ever built and reusable to boot, is expected to go   
   > into commercial operation. The Gigabay spaceship factory, built at   
   > Musk’s newly established city of Starbase in southern Texas, will have   
      
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