About Elon Musk
Elon Musk recently oversaw SpaceX’s public listing on the Nasdaq on June 12, 2026, which he said was the largest initial public offering in the history of capital markets. During the event, Musk stated that he had originally given SpaceX “less than a 10% chance of succeeding at all” and recalled telling people, “Look, we’re probably going to fail, but you know, we should give it a try because if we don’t… we will never be a truly spacefaring civilization.” He described SpaceX’s mission as “to take the fiction out of science fiction” and said the company aims to make humanity multi-planetary, adding, “We want to be able to take anyone who wants to go to the moon, anyone who wants to go to Mars… not just a few astronauts.” The IPO was widely reported to have made Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
In addition to the IPO, Musk discussed SpaceX’s plans to build AI satellites and space-based data centers. In an interview with SpaceX employees in Bastrop, Texas, he said that the company’s AI satellite is “actually much simpler than a Starlink satellite” and noted that the current reference design calls for Nvidia Rubin chips. He also spoke about a “terrafab” facility that he said would be approximately 100 million square feet, roughly 10 times the size of Tesla’s Gigafactory Texas, and discussed using a mass driver on the moon to launch materials into deep space. Separately, Musk oversaw the final delivery of Tesla’s Model S and Model X vehicles, which he called a “bittersweet moment,” emphasizing that those cars “showed that an electric car could actually be the best car of any period.”
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Elon Musk's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Reporter0:00
When Musk introduced it last summer, the Model 3 was built as the company's first mid-price, mass-produced electric car, accessible to middle-class customers, not just the super-wealthy. You said to your team, everybody get ready to meet the demand, we're going to be in production hell. Yes, but you didn't expect this kind of production hell, or did you?
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Elon Musk0:23
It's worse than I thought.
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Reporter0:25
Why is that? Why is it harder? What happened?
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Elon Musk0:27
We got complacent about some of the things that we felt were our core technology. We put too much new technology into the Model 3 all at once. This should have been staged.
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Reporter0:39
High-tech goes in the cars, but it also builds them. This is widely regarded as one of the most robotics-driven auto assembly lines on the planet. Elon, one of the things I heard about the Model 3 is there's too many robots. Do you agree? Do you think so? Maybe you need more people in here working?
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Elon Musk0:56
We do. In some cases, the robots actually slowed the production. Yes, there was this crazy complex network of conveyor belts and it was not working, so we got rid of that whole thing.
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Reporter1:07
That's cool. Realizing it needed an overhaul, Musk personally took over the Model 3 production line at the beginning of April, training for really extreme levels of precision, more than the world. He says he has resorted to pulling all-nighters at the plant.
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Elon Musk1:24
I think it's really intense. I don't have time to go home and shower and change. I sleep here.
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Reporter1:30
I wanted to see where you sleep. It's pretty boring. It's actually cold in here too.
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Elon Musk1:38
Yeah, I like it cool.
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Reporter1:41
So you never... you like it cold, I see. So you're just laying here on the couch?
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Elon Musk1:44
Yeah, couch. Last time I actually slept on the floor because the couch is too narrow.
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Reporter1:49
I was going to say, Elon, it's not even a comfortable couch either.
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Elon Musk1:53
No, it's terrible. It's not a good couch.
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Reporter1:55
What do the numbers say for the last seven days? What is the number?
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Reporter2:00
Please? With that? For the time being?
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Reporter2:04
Musk feels like all the overtime is paying off, and now he says the Model 3 line is back on track.
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Elon Musk2:10
We were able to unlock some of the critical things that were holding us back from reaching 2,000 cars a week. But since then, we've continued to do 2,000 cars a week.
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Reporter2:19
Do you think that this is sustainable?
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Elon Musk2:21
This pace is sustainable. Yeah, we'll probably have a three or four fold increase in Model 3 output in the second quarter.
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Reporter2:31
But Musk's critics have heard predictions like those before. A future the automaker has yet to reach. Elon, you may be one of the few people to see it, because a lot of people looking at you don't see it.
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Elon Musk2:42
There are probably people who have a lot of analysts that can look in the rearview mirror instead of looking at the front windscreen.
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Reporter2:48
What do you mean by that?
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Elon Musk2:50
This is very frequently why people have underestimated Tesla. They would look at what Tesla has done in the past and use that as a proxy for what we were able to do in the future.
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Reporter3:04
On April Fool's Day, Musk mixed his optimism with dark humor on social media in the midst of widespread concerns Tesla might collapse. He tweeted, 'We are sad to report that Tesla has gone completely and totally bankrupt, so bankrupt you can't believe it.' You know people are nervous and they're worried. You are aware of that. So knowing that, why would you do an April Fool's joke like that?
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Elon Musk3:25
Because there were media articles saying that Tesla's going bankrupt. Yes, so I thought, well, I'll just do an April Fool's joke that we did go bankrupt.
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Reporter3:35
That's not funny when people are nervous.
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Elon Musk3:37
I mean, it's April Fool's. People should lighten up. It should be pretty obvious, I think, that I'm not going to joke about bankruptcy if I think it's remotely real. I'm feeling pretty optimistic about what Tesla is at this point. I have a clear understanding of the path out of hell, and I did not until recently have a clear understanding.
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Reporter4:03
Musk says anyone who pre-ordered the Model 3 when it was unveiled last July should be getting their car in about three to six months. That is about six to nine months later than they were promised. Coming up in our next hour...
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Elon Musk4:01
I know some of those folks.
