Larry FinkThat was not a large applause. Start again. [applause and cheering] That's better. Thank you. Yeah, we're going to make this interesting. How many quotes are you going to want that are going to be after this session?
Elon MuskUh, I don't know. I mean, five.
Larry FinkOkay. [laughter] So, good afternoon everyone. It's great to see everybody here. It's been an amazing week here in Davos. Hopefully everybody saw that we are having conversations here. Hopefully everybody agrees there are some conversations that we may have disagreed, there's many conversations we may have agreed, but through those conversations — and I think today's result with a peace agreement earlier today — the World Economic Forum is here to have those conversations, to have understandings and also resolution. So it's an important component of who and what we are, and I'm thrilled to have Elon Musk here. He came all the way from California to be here to see all of you. So thank you, Elon.
Elon MuskUh, you're most welcome. I heard about the formation of the peace summit and I was like, is that uh "piece"? You know, little piece of Greenland, a little piece of Venezuela. [laughter] We got one.
Larry FinkAll we want is peace. Okay. As I said, I'm a pretty proud CEO of BlackRock since we went public. The compounding return of BlackRock to our shareholders is 21%. Since Elon took Tesla public, his compounded return is 43%. This is just another advertisement for everybody, especially for Europeans. This is why more citizens should be investing with growth, investing with their countries. Imagine if a lot of pension funds invested with Elon when Tesla went public, and how much return would all the pension funds that invested side by side with Elon and the growth — so, a spectacular return. There's very few companies — well, I don't think there's any other company as large as Tesla today that has that compounded return. So congratulations. It's a good measurement.
Elon MuskWell, we have an incredible team at Tesla and that's the reason.
Larry FinkSo I want to get into the dirt, the meaningful component about technology, the possibilities. I want to talk about AI and robotics, energy, space, and the progress ultimately coming down to engineering — engineering discipline, scale, execution. Few people, if anyone, has the experience and the fortitude to confront these issues head-on. Not just the ideas but the execution across so many different technologies, Elon, and that's why I thought it was important for us to have this dialogue here in Davos. So you're presently building on AI, on robotics, on space, on energy, all at the same time. When you look across those efforts, what do they have in common from an engineering standpoint?
Elon MuskUh, well, they're all very difficult technology challenges. But the overall goal of my companies is to maximize the future of civilization — basically maximize the probability that civilization has a great future — and to expand consciousness beyond Earth. So take SpaceX, for example. SpaceX is about advancing rocket technology to the point where we can extend life and consciousness beyond Earth, to the moon, to Mars, eventually to other star systems.
Elon MuskAnd I think we should always view consciousness, life as we know it, as precarious and delicate. Because to the best of our knowledge, we don't know of life anywhere else. You know, I'm often asked, are there aliens among us? And I'll say that I am one. But —
Larry FinkOr you're from the future. They don't believe me. Okay.
Elon MuskI think if anyone would know if there are aliens among us, it would be me. We have 9,000 satellites up there, and not once have we had to maneuver around an alien spaceship. So I'm like, I don't know. Bottom line is, I think we need to assume that life and consciousness is extremely rare, and it might only be us. And if that's the case, then we need to do everything possible to ensure that the light of consciousness is not extinguished.
Elon MuskBecause we're effectively — the way I view it, the image in my mind is of a tiny candle in a vast darkness, a tiny candle of consciousness that could easily go out. And that's why it's important to make life multiplanetary, such that if there is a natural disaster or a man-made disaster on Earth, that consciousness continues. That's the purpose of SpaceX.
Elon MuskTesla is obviously about sustainable technology, and also at this point we've sort of added to our mission sustainable abundance. So with robotics and AI, this is really the path to abundance for all. People often talk about solving global poverty, or essentially how do we give everyone a very high standard of living? I think the only way to do this is AI and robotics.
Elon MuskWhich doesn't mean that it is without its issues. I mean, we need to be very careful with AI, we need to be very careful with robotics. We don't want to find ourselves in a James Cameron movie — you know, Terminator. He's got great movies, love his movies, but we don't want to be in Terminator, obviously. But if you have ubiquitous AI that is essentially free or close to it, and ubiquitous robotics, then you will have an explosion in the global economy, an expansion in the global economy that is truly beyond all precedent.
Larry FinkElon, can that expansion be broad, or is it narrow? And how can that be created? How can it broaden the global economy?
Elon MuskYeah, I mean a way to think of it is that if you have a large number of humanoid robots, the economic output is the average productivity per robot times the number of robots, right? And actually my prediction is, in the benign scenario of the future, that we will actually make so many robots and AI that they will saturate all human needs — meaning you won't be able to even think of something to ask the robot for at a certain point. There will be such an abundance of goods and services, because my prediction is there'll be more robots than people.
Larry FinkBut how do you then have human purpose in that scenario?
Elon MuskYeah, I mean, you know, nothing's perfect, but [laughter] it is a necessary — like, you can't have both. You can't have work that has to be done and amazing abundance for all. Because if it's work that has to be done, then — and only some people can do it — then you can't have abundance.
Larry FinkThen it's narrow.
Elon MuskIt's narrow, exactly. So if you have billions of humanoid robots — and I think there will be — then I think everyone on Earth is going to have one and going to want one. Because who wouldn't want a robot to, you know, assuming it's very safe, watch over your kids, take care of your pet. If you have elderly parents — a lot of friends of mine say they have elderly parents, it's very difficult to take care of them.
Larry FinkExpensive.
Elon MuskYeah, it's expensive, and there just aren't enough people to take care of them. There aren't enough young people to take care of the old people, right? So if you had a robot that could take care of and protect an elderly parent, I think that would be great. That would be an amazing thing to have, and I think we will have those things.
Elon MuskSo overall, I'm very optimistic about the future. I think we're headed for a future of amazing abundance, which is very cool. And definitely we are in the most interesting time in history. I don't think there's a more interesting time in history.
Larry FinkCan you and I reverse aging in this new history, or are we going to see it?
Elon MuskYou know, I haven't put much time into the aging stuff. I do think it is a very solvable problem. I think when we figure out what causes aging, I think we'll find it's incredibly obvious. It's not a subtle thing. The reason I say it's not a subtle thing is because all the cells in your body pretty much age at the same rate. I've never seen someone with an old left arm and a young right arm, ever in my life. So why is that? That means there must be a clock, a synchronizing clock, that is synchronizing across 35 trillion cells in your body.
Elon MuskYou know, but there is some benefit to death, by the way. There's a reason why we don't actually have a longer lifespan. Because if people do live forever, for a very long time, I think there's some risk of an ossification of society, of things just getting kind of locked in place. It just may become stultifying, just lacking vibrancy. But that said, do I think we'll figure out ways to extend life and maybe even reverse aging? I think that's highly likely.
Larry FinkI'm looking forward to that. Yeah. So in the future that you talk about — AI models, autonomous machines, rockets — it depends on massive increases of compute, massive increases in energy, expensive energy, manufacturing scale. What are the bottlenecks to get there? And then once again, with all that expenditure, how can we make sure that it's broadened, not narrow?
Elon MuskUm, I just think the natural thing is it's going to be very broad, because AI companies will seek as many customers as they possibly can, and the cost of AI is already very low and it's plummeting every year. I mean, the cost of AI is almost meaningfully changing on a month-to-month basis.
Larry FinkThere's open models now everywhere. Yeah.
Elon MuskYes, there's open models, and the open models only lag — they're maybe a year behind the sort of closed models. So I think the AI companies will seek as many customers as possible, which means they'll provide AI to the world.
Larry FinkBut the cost of getting there — the compute, the chips, the fab, the powering of that — to me, what are those? You know, those are huge. The limiting factor.
Elon MuskYeah, I think the limiting factor for AI deployment is fundamentally electrical power. It's just energy. We're seeing the rate of AI chip production increase exponentially, but the rate of electricity being brought online is 3%, 4% a year max.
Larry FinkYeah, it's clear that very soon, maybe even later this year, we'll be producing more chips than we can turn on.
Elon MuskExcept for China. China's growth in electricity is tremendous. They're building 100 gigawatts of nuclear as we speak. Actually, solar is the biggest thing in China. So I believe China's production capacity on solar is 1,500 gigawatts a year, and they're deploying over 1,000 gigawatts a year of solar.
Elon MuskNow, for continuous solar load you divide that by roughly — I don't know, four or five — call it that's around 250 gigawatts of steady-state power paired with batteries. And that's a very big number. That's half of the average power usage in the US.
Larry FinkRight.
Elon MuskSo US power usage on average is 500 gigawatts. China just in solar — like just in solar — can provide steady-state power, and batteries can do half of the US electricity output per year, just with solar. Solar is by far the biggest source of energy. And actually when you look beyond Earth — even on Earth, but certainly beyond Earth — the sun rounds up to 100% of all energy. This is an important thing to consider. The sun is 99.8% of the mass of the solar system. Jupiter is about 0.1%, and everything else is miscellaneous.
Elon MuskNow, even if you were to burn Jupiter in a thermonuclear reactor, the amount of energy produced by the sun would still round up to 100%, because Jupiter is only 0.1%. If you teleported three more Jupiters into our solar system and burnt three more Jupiters and everything else in the solar system, the sun's energy would still round up to 100%. So it's really all about the sun.
Elon MuskAnd that's why one of the things we'll be doing with SpaceX within a few years is launching solar-powered AI satellites, right? Because space is really the source of immense power, and then you don't need to take up any room on Earth. There's so much room in space, and you can scale to enormous — I mean, you can scale to, I think ultimately, hundreds of terawatts a year.
Larry FinkYou and I have had these conversations before, but why don't you tell the audience what would it take for the United States — what type of geography would it take to have that solar field to electrify the United States? And then let me ask a question: why aren't we doing it?
Elon MuskYeah. So a rough way to think about it is, 100 miles by 100 miles — we'll call it 160 km by 160 km — of solar is enough to power the entire United States. So the 100 mile by 100 mile area — I mean, you could take basically a small corner of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico. Obviously you wouldn't want it all in one place, but it is a very small percentage of the area of the US to generate all of the electricity that the US uses.
Elon MuskAnd the same is true for Europe. You could take relatively unpopulated areas of, say, Spain and Sicily and generate all of the electricity power that Europe needs.
Larry FinkSo why don't you think that there's a movement towards that here and in the United States?
Elon MuskUh, well, there is —
Larry FinkAs it is in China.
Elon MuskWell, unfortunately in the US the tariff barriers for solar panels are extremely high. And that makes the economics of deploying solar artificially high, because China makes almost all the solar.
Larry FinkAnd what would it take for Europe or the US to build it commercially if it's that scale?
Elon MuskYeah, I can tell you what we're going to do. You know, SpaceX and Tesla — we're building up large-scale solar, right? So the SpaceX and Tesla teams both separately are working to build to 100 gigawatts a year of solar power in the US, of manufactured solar power. And that'll probably take us, I don't know, about three years or something. But these are pretty big numbers.
Larry FinkMhm.
Elon MuskAnd I'd encourage others to do the same. We obviously don't control US tariff policy, but for other countries, I would — you know, China makes solar cells that are incredibly low cost, and I think it would be worth doing large-scale solar.
Larry FinkSo, I know you're going to be having a couple of big announcements on robotics and what it can do. I mean, when I went to the factory, you showed me those robots.
Elon MuskYeah.
Larry FinkHow quickly — you talked about the billions of robots, but how quickly can they be deployed in a manufacturing setting? How quickly can they be utilized and be functional and create that abundance that you talked about?
Elon MuskWell, humanoid robotics will advance very quickly. We do have some of the Tesla Optimus robots doing simple tasks in the factory. Probably later this year, by the end of this year, I think they'll be doing more complex tasks, but still deployed in an industrial environment. And probably sometime next year — I'd say by the end of next year — I think we'd be selling humanoid robots to the public. That's when we are confident that it's very high reliability, very high safety, and the range of functionality is also very high. You can basically ask it to do anything you'd like.
Larry FinkYou're already seeing that in Tesla cars — the software changes that you're doing. What is it, every quarter now, a software change that upgrades the ability of the robot within the car?
Elon MuskUh, yes. The Tesla full self-driving software, we update it sometimes once a week. And recently some of the insurance companies have said that it is actually so safe — where Tesla full self-driving is so safe — that they're offering customers half-price insurance if they use Tesla full self-driving in their car.
Larry FinkAnd that could be monitored by the insurance company. Is that part of the agreement then?
Elon MuskYeah. But I think self-driving cars is essentially a solved problem at this point, right? And Tesla's rolled out a sort of robotaxi service in a few cities, and we'll be very widespread by the end of this year within the US. And then we hope to get supervised full self-driving approval in Europe, hopefully next month.
Larry FinkReally, that quickly?
Elon MuskYeah. And then maybe a similar timing for China, hopefully.
Larry FinkI want to move to space, because historically space is very capital intensive. It's historically been done by governments. Obviously SpaceX changed the whole model, but we've seen it slow to scale, and now I'm starting to see it ramping up — what you're doing and other things. Talk to us about the automation and AI, how it's changing the economics in building and preparing for us operating in space.
Elon MuskUh, sure. Well, the key breakthrough — that's the major breakthrough that SpaceX is hoping to achieve this year — is full reusability. So no one has ever achieved full reusability of a rocket, which is very important for the cost of access to space. We've achieved partial reusability with Falcon 9 by landing the boost stage. We've now landed the boost stage over 500 times. But we have to throw away the upper stage. The upper stage burns up on re-entry for Falcon 9, and the cost of that is equivalent to a small to medium-sized jet.
Elon MuskBut with Starship, which is a giant rocket — it's the largest flying machine ever made —
Larry FinkThat's the rocket that you're using for the idea of going to Mars, right?
Elon MuskYeah, Mars and the moon, as well as for high-volume satellite stuff. So Starship — hopefully this year we should prove full reusability for Starship, which will be a profound invention, because the cost of access to space will drop by a factor of 100 when you achieve full reusability.
Elon MuskIt's the same sort of economic difference that you would expect between, say, a reusable aircraft and a non-reusable aircraft. Like, if you have to throw your aircraft away after every flight, that would be a very expensive flight. But if you only have to refuel, then it's the cost of the fuel. And so that's really the fundamental breakthrough that gets the cost of access to space — we think — below the cost of freight on aircraft. So under $100 a pound type of thing, easily.
Elon MuskSo it makes putting large satellites into space very low, very cheap. And then when you have solar in space, you get five times more effectiveness, maybe even more than that, than solar on the ground, because it's always sunny.
Larry FinkIt's cold.
Elon MuskYeah, it's always — well, it's always sunny, so you don't have a day-night cycle or seasonality, right, or weather. And you get about 30% more power in space because you don't have atmospheric attenuation of the power. The net effect is solar is five times more — any given solar panel will do five times more energy in space than on the ground.
Larry FinkIs there any capacity in doing that and then taking that power and bringing it back to Earth? Is there any way of doing that? Or are you just taking that power and utilizing it for the needs, like building AI data centers in space?
Elon MuskI think the case — it's a no-brainer for building solar-powered AI data centers in space. Because, as you mentioned, it's also very cold in space. If you're in the shadow, then it's very cold in space, just 3 degrees Kelvin. So you just have solar panels facing the sun, and then a radiator that's pointed away from the sun. So it has no sun incident, and then it's just cooling. It's a very efficient cooling system.
Elon MuskNet net effect is that the lowest-cost place to put AI will be space, and that'll be true within two years, maybe three at the latest.
Larry FinkWow. So looking 10 or 20 years out, how would you describe success with AI or space technology, and where do you see it? Are you more certain what's going to happen in the next three years, or five or 10?
Elon MuskI don't know what's going to happen in 10 years, but the rate at which AI is progressing — I think we're going to have AI that is smarter than any human by the end of this year, and I would say no later than next year.
Larry FinkWow.
Elon MuskAnd then probably by 2030 or 2031, call it five years from now, AI will be smarter than all of humanity collectively.
Larry FinkWe only have a number of minutes left, but I want to humanize you for a second, so there's no speculation that you're talking about peace. Right. [laughter] I mean, I would frame this question by — you are the most successful entrepreneur, industrialist, in the 21st century, maybe beyond. So I want to really get this: what inspired you, who's inspired you, what was the foundation of your curiosity, and importantly, was there an aha moment, an epiphany, at any time in your life and career?
Elon MuskWell, I mean, as a kid I read a lot of science fiction, sci-fi, fantasy books —
Larry FinkYep, we talked about —
Elon MuskAnd comic books. And I always liked technology. I didn't expect to be where I am today. This seems incredibly implausible. But yeah, I was inspired by reading books about the future, about science fiction. And I guess I want to make science fiction not fiction — forever at some point turn science fiction to science fact. You know, we want to have like Starfleet and Star Trek really for real, like where we actually have giant spaceships traveling through space, going to other planets, traveling to other star systems.
Larry FinkBe beamed up to go back to New York. You know, I'd like to just be beamed back to New York instead of flying. [laughter] Talk about Star Trek.
Elon MuskNo, I guess my central — I have what I would call the philosophy of curiosity. I'd like to understand the meaning of life, you know. Is the standard model of physics correct, regarding the beginning of life, beginning of existence, and the end of the universe? What questions do we not know to ask that we should ask? And AI will help us with these things. So I'm just trying to understand: how do we get here? What's going on? What's real? Are there aliens? Maybe they are.
Elon MuskAnd if we've got spaceships that are traveling to other star systems, we may encounter aliens, or we may find many long-dead alien civilizations. But I just want to know what's going on. I'm kind of curious about the universe, and that's my philosophy.
Larry FinkDo you see yourself ever going to Mars in your lifetime?
Elon MuskUh, yeah, I mean, I would say — like, you know, that's a long commitment.
Larry FinkI've been asked — isn't that three years each way?
Elon MuskUh, it's six months.
Larry FinkSix months. That's all it is?
Elon MuskYeah, six months. But the planets only align every two years. Okay, so — yeah, I've been asked a few times like, do I want to die on Mars? And I'm like, yes, but just not on impact. [laughter]
Larry FinkThat's a good answer. Anyway, we're out of time. Hopefully everybody enjoyed this. I mean, there's so many myths around Elon Musk. I could tell you he's a great friend and I constantly learn so much from him. I'm totally inspired by what he has done. I've been inspired by who he is, and I'm totally inspired by his vision of the future. And I don't think it's such a bad future, and I agree with his optimism. So Elon, thank you. Any last words?
Elon MuskUm, well, I think generally my last words would be: I would encourage everyone to be optimistic and excited about the future.
Larry FinkGood.
Elon MuskAnd generally I think, for quality of life, it is actually better to err on the side of being an optimist and wrong rather than a pessimist and right.
Larry FinkOn that note — you know, I think it...