Topic
50 facts from 20 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
1990s
Elon Musk said Mike Moritz, a board member at X.com, advised him not to invest nearly everything he had in the startup.
“Mike Moritz joined the company board. He told me, dude, you should not invest basically everything except your house and car in your startup.”
2002
On the Russia trip, Elon Musk offered $8 million for two rockets, and the Russians countered with $8 million each.
“he's calculated. He's willing to offer the meeting with one group. This is the last group they meet with. I think has either two or three rockets. He offers them 8 million for, for the two of them.”
2002
On the flight home from Moscow, Musk showed colleagues a spreadsheet of the costs and materials needed to build a rocket.
“Elon has this spreadsheet on his laptop. This is, I don't know if it was like, it must've been Excel.”
2015
Elon Musk and Sam Altman, then president of Y Combinator, convened the 2015 dinner that led to the founding of OpenAI.
“So of course, those two shadowy figures are Elon Musk and Sam Altman, who at the time was president of Y Combinator.”
2018
Elon Musk left OpenAI in 2018, according to the host, who describes him as frustrated.
“So in 2018, Elon gets super frustrated by all this, basically throws a hissy fit and quits and pieces out of open AI.”
2019
The host says that as of May 2019, Elon Musk owned about 54% of SpaceX.
“as of may 2019 elon owned 54 of spacex”
2022
Ben Gilbert noted that Elon Musk's takeover offer for Twitter was priced at $54.20 per share.
“if you think that Elon is actually going to close this deal and pay out every single Twitter shareholder at $54.20 per share.”
2022
Host Steven Bartlett says Elon Musk bought Twitter with a stated mandate of free speech.
“Elon Musk bought Twitter, and his real mandate has been this idea of free speech.”
2022
Nathan says Twitter had about 7,500 employees when Elon Musk took over and that headcount fell to roughly 1,000 to 1,500 at its lowest.
“it's something like 7,500 employees was what they had when he took over. He took that down to something like a thousand”
2024
Sam Altman says Grok, from Musk's xAI, had not been open sourced until people pointed out the hypocrisy.
“Grok had not open sourced anything until people pointed out it was a little bit hypocritical”
2024
Elon Musk said the second Neuralink implant had on the order of 400 electrodes providing signals.
“we've got, um, I think, on the order of 400 electrodes that are are providing signals.”
2024
Elon Musk said Neuralink hoped to implant ten people in total by the end of the year, subject to regulatory approval.
“so we're hoping to do ten by the end of this year, total of ten, so eight more.”
2024
Elon Musk said Tesla would earn over $100 billion in revenue that year, about $2 billion a week.
“Tesla this year will do over 100 billion in revenue, so that's $2 billion a week.”
2024
Elon Musk said xAI's Memphis supercomputer cluster was not yet working at the time of recording because of power fluctuation problems.
“it's not working yet, so I don't wanna pop the champagne corks. Um, in fact, I have a I have a a call in a few hours with the Memphis team.”
2024
Elon Musk described the Memphis training cluster as connecting any GPU to any other among 100,000.
“So it's the the any GPU can talk to any GPU out of 100,000.”
2024
Elon Musk estimated global vehicle production capacity at about 100 million a year.
“global capacity for vehicles, um, is about 100 million a year, and, uh, it could, it could be higher.”
2024
Donald Trump said he took part in an X Spaces audio event with Elon Musk that drew audience numbers he said were unprecedented.
“I did spaces with Elon, and they got numbers like nobody's ever heard before.”
2026
Todd McKinnon said Elon Musk is on trial over his statements about bots on Twitter, now X.
“Elon Musk is is on on trial for talking about bots and how many bots there were.”
2026
Dan Pfeiffer said Elon Musk spent about $200 million in Texas alone trying to help Ken Paxton win the Senate race.
“He spent $200 million in Texas alone.”
Undated
Eric Ries says Elon Musk runs SpaceX with regularly scheduled company-driven auctions where people can buy or sell shares.
“There's a regularly scheduled company driven auction where people can buy in or sell.”
Undated
Jason Calacanis says he raced his Corvette against Elon Musk's prototype Tesla Roadster along Sunset Boulevard and the Tesla won all five times.
“we did it like five times and five out of five times the tesla just destroyed the corvette”
Undated
Sam Altman says Elon Musk wanted to make OpenAI a for-profit company under his control or merge it with Tesla.
“He wanted to make OpenAI into a for profit company that he could have control of or have it merge with Tesla.”
Undated
Elon Musk dated civilization to the invention of writing by the Sumerians, about 5,000 years ago, against an Earth about 4.5 billion years old.
“So I I think of civilization as being about 5,000 years old. Um, and Earth is, um, if physics is correct, 4.5 billion years old”
Undated
Elon Musk claimed that South Korea would lose roughly 60% of its population if its already low birth rate did not fall further.
“I think if the birth rate doesn't decline further, uh, South Korea will lose roughly 60% of its population.”
Undated
Jordan Peterson says Elon Musk resolved a teenage existential crisis by concluding that the quest is the source of meaning.
“and he resolved that by recognizing that the quest is the source of meaning.”
Undated
Jordan Peterson says Elon Musk told him he had an existential crisis around age thirteen and resolved it by pursuing truth and understanding.
“He had a terrible existential crisis when he was, like, thirteen, you know, and he reconciled that essentially with a quest.”
Undated
Geoffrey Hinton credits Elon Musk with giving Ukrainians communication, via Starlink, during the war with Russia.
“giving the Ukrainians communication during the war with Russia.”
Undated
Rana El Kaliouby says Elon Musk announced a company called MacroHard that aims to compete directly with Microsoft.
“So Elon Musk recently announced MacroHard, a company trying to compete directly with with Microsoft.”
Undated
Lex Fridman says Elon Musk's xAI built the Colossus supercomputer in Memphis in about four months, and that it had reached 200,000 GPUs.
“Colossus supercomputer, probably in record time, in just 4 months. It's now at 200,000 GPUs and growing very quickly.”
Undated
Elon Musk said an early nationwide survey asked whether people would ever buy a television and that around 96% of respondents said no.
“When they first started making TVs, they did a famous nationwide survey. Will you ever buy a TV? And around 96% of respondents said no.”
Undated
Elon Musk said people assumed electric vehicle batteries would always cost $600 per kilowatt hour.
“People assumed batteries for electric vehicles would always cost $600 per kilowatt hour.”
Undated
Elon Musk said that pricing battery raw materials on the London Metal Exchange gave a cost of only about $80 per kilowatt hour.
“Okay, what if we bought that amount of material on the London Metal Exchange? What would each of those things cost? Oh, geez, it's only eighty per kilowatt hour.”
Undated
Elon Musk uses an 'idiot index', the ratio of a finished product's cost to the cost of its materials, to find parts that could be made more cheaply.
“I call this the idiot index. How much more does a finished product cost than the cost of its materials?”
Undated
Elon Musk's five-step engineering process, which he calls the algorithm, is to question requirements, delete, simplify or optimize, accelerate, then automate.
“Number one, make your requirements less dumb. Number two, try very hard to delete the part or process. Number three, simplify or optimize. Number four, accelerate. Number five, automate.”
Undated
Elon Musk said that if you never have to put back about 10% of the things you delete, you are not deleting enough.
“If you're not adding deleted things back in 10% of the time, you're not deleting enough.”
Undated
Elon Musk said Tesla had to remove hundreds of expensive robots from its production line after trying to automate every step.
“To fix that, we had to tear hundreds of expensive robots out of the production line.”
Undated
Elon Musk cited the SR-71 Blackbird as a plane that relied on speed for defense, saying over 3,000 missiles were fired at it and none hit.
“Over 3,000 missiles were shot at the SR seventy one Blackbird, and none hit.”
Undated
Elon Musk said early SpaceX was burning through about $100,000 a day, and he framed every decision around that burn rate.
“In early SpaceX, I told the team everything we did was a function of our burn rate. We were burning through 100,000 a day.”
Undated
Elon Musk said that when Tesla asked about casting a car as a single piece, five of six major casting machine suppliers said no and the sixth said maybe.
“There were six major casting machine suppliers in the world. Five of them said no, and the sixth said maybe.”
Undated
Elon Musk said he gave an early Tesla prototype test ride to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who later made a small investment.
“I remember in the early days giving a test ride to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google.”
Undated
Elon Musk said the only American car companies that have not gone bankrupt are Ford and Tesla.
“The number of American car companies that haven't gone bankrupt is a grand total of two, Ford and Tesla.”
Undated
Elon Musk said he lived in Tesla's factories for three years to fix the Model 3 production line.
“I lived in the factories for three years fixing that production line, running around like a maniac through every part of the factory, living with the team.”
Undated
Elon Musk said Tesla makes its own battery pack, power electronics and drivetrain because the legacy supply chain moved too slowly.
“There's a lot of vertical integration to Tesla. We make the battery pack, the power electronics, and the drivetrain ourselves.”
Undated
The host said Elon Musk started SpaceX about twenty-four years before this episode, at age thirty, and was mocked as a software guy playing with expensive toys.
“the fact that Elon started it twenty four years ago. He was thirty years old. And everybody made fun of him.”
Undated
Elon Musk said big aerospace companies outsource through layers of subcontractors, and that you must go four or five layers down to find who is doing the actual work.
“You have to go four or five layers down to find somebody actually doing the real work, somebody cutting the metal or shaping the atoms.”
Undated
After three failed launch attempts, Elon Musk emailed the SpaceX team saying there was no question the company would reach orbit, and that the next step was flight four.
“There should be absolutely zero question that SpaceX will prevail in reaching orbit and demonstrating reliable space transport.”
Undated
Elon Musk said early versions of Starship had no doors because doors were unnecessary complexity for the goal of reaching orbit.
“Early versions of Starship didn't even have doors. We didn't need doors. We did need to be super focused on getting to orbit.”
Undated
Elon Musk said SpaceX removed landing legs from its rocket and chose to catch it with mechanical arms on the launch tower, because legs add mass.
“Why not just have it land on the arms of the tower it launches from?”
Undated
The host says Elon Musk founded SpaceX when he was thirty years old.
“Elon founded that company when he was just thirty years old.”
Undated
Jeetu Patel said Elon Musk had suggested that AI models test one another for safety and security, with results published and testing harnesses open sourced.
“have each one of these models test the other model for safety and security and then make sure that you publish the results and have the harnesses be open sourced.”
Episodes