Elon Musk: Digital Superintelligence, Multiplanetary Life, How to Be Useful

A fireside with Elon Musk on June 16, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco.

Before rockets and robots, Elon Musk was drilling holes through his office floor to borrow internet. In this candid talk, he walks through the early days of Zip2, the Falcon 1 launches that nearly ended SpaceX, and the “miracle” of Tesla surviving 2008.

He shares the thinking that guided him—building from first principles, doing useful things, and the belief that we’re in the middle of an intelligence big bang.

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Chapters:
00:00 – Intro
01:25 – His origin story
02:00 – Dream to help build the internet
04:40 – Zip2 and lessons learned
08:00 – PayPal
14:30 – Origin of SpaceX
18:30 – Building rockets from first principles
23:50 – Lessons in leadership
27:10 – Building up xAI
39:00 – Super intelligence and synthetic data
39:30 – Multi-planetary future
43:00 – Neuralink, AI safety and the singularity
48:10 – Message for the Next Generation of Builders