July 29, 2025 • 32 mins
The growing blowback from years of spreading conspiracy theories, embracing far-right political causes and attempting to dismantle the US government (with calamitous results for millions) might have finally taken its toll on Elon Musk and his companies. Or perhaps not.
Last week’s Tesla earnings call ended on a somber note, with world’s richest man declaring his struggling and divisive electric car company could have “a few rough quarters” ahead. With revenue down 12% and the political climate for electric vehicles darkening courtesy of his former boss in the White House, who can blame him?
But nothing is ever absolute when it comes to the world’s most famous living native of South Africa. Mere days later, Tesla announced a new $16.5 billion chip deal with Samsung, and over the weekend a now-jolly Musk proclaimed in his usual hyperbolic manner that Tesla might rake in $30 trillion per year from sales of its humanoid robot (yes, with a T). Oh, and on July 21, Tesla opened its first diner in the heart of Hollywood. Alongside a $9 grilled cheese sandwich and a contentious, four-story movie screen, protests immediately followed.
On this week’s episode Max Chafkin discusses all the latest Tesla news with Bloomberg’s Elon Musk reporter, Dana Hull. The duo also welcome Bloomberg health reporter Ike Swetlitz to hear about the latest from Neuralink, Musk’s brain implant company. In the spirit of Musk’s dreams of robot trillions, that company proclaimed it expects $1 billion in annual revenue by 2031, with chips inserted into 20,000 brains annually. Currently, the number is nine. But maybe a bionic eye will prompt second looks.
Also, Chafkin and Hull take a look at the latest news from Musk’s tunnel company Boring, which just scored a deal to drill a passage in red state Tennessee, from downtown Nashville to the city’s airport. If history is any guide, there might be a hiccup or two.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Let me tell you we have a new star. A
star is born Eylon pumped up on Mars Jusan Kennemy.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
I feel for the guy.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
But those two percent that are nasty, they are I'll
be in full pos.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
We are meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds us of that.
Speaker 5 (00:35):
I'm very disappointed in Elon. I've helped Elon a lot.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Welcome to Elon Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Tuesday, July twenty ninth. I'm Max Chafkin. David Papadopolis
will be back next week, I've been assured. But we've
got one more week together, and this week we're gonna
take a little break from our Jealousy series, where we've
been interviewing some of the authors of stories that we've
really admired, because we've had a slew of Elon news
(01:09):
that starts with Tesla. Last week, we had an Earnings call,
and it was let's just say it was a bit
of a downer. Sales are plumbing, and Elon admitted during
the call that the company is in a really tough spot.
Speaker 6 (01:20):
I mean, does that mean like we could have a
few rough quarters. Yeah, we probably could have a few
rough quarters. I'm not saying it well, but we could.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
But you can't disregard that musk magic, as we'll talk
about later in the show. And we discussed the progress
at Neuralink, a big announcement with the boring company, as
well as a bunch of sort of news around Tesla
that is kind of pointing up. We had the X
Takeover event. This is essentially a fan event in San Francisco.
We're a much more upbeat version of Elon called in
(01:54):
to talk all about the bright future ahead for Optimus.
Speaker 6 (01:58):
Hypothetically, Tesla was making a billion of these here at scale,
and at scale of the cost gets lower and lower,
so maybe like on the order thousand dollars, I'm just
guessing he's put trillion in revenue.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Insane.
Speaker 6 (02:14):
You know, that's a long way to go between here
and making a billion provots here.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And so to puzzle through those signals, some positive, some negative.
I'm sitting here with Bloomberg Law Musk reporter Dana Hall. Dana,
how are you.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
I'm doing great, Max, Great to be.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Here, Danna. You and I were live blogging the Tesla
earnings as we like to do. Tell our listeners how
it went for Elon on Wednesday. We're recording this on
Tuesday of the following week.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Well, you know, it's interesting whenever there's a Tesla earnings call,
so much of it is really about Elon's mood and
what he says. And you and I, because we work
at Bloomberg and we have a terminal, we can like
watch the stock trading in real time as he's speaking.
And what I noticed is that, like the earnings were
coming along, it was like sort of a bad quarter,
but everyone kind of expected it in terms of the
(03:00):
sales being down and blah blah blah. But like as
soon as Elon was like, could we be in for
a few bad quarters? Yeah we could that you like
so to solve the SOCCA and like his whole narrative thesis,
which is that like the future is all about autonomous
and robotaxis, Like he didn't really say anything new about expansion.
That God investors excited, and then I think more and
(03:22):
more investors are starting to realize that the core automotive
market is just in a world of trouble because of
major policy shifts in Washington, you know, President Trump and
his administration. Like, there's three things that are really hitting
the company in a bad way. The seventy five hundred
dollars tax credit for electric vehicles, and September thirtieth, the
cafe standards, which are kind of underpin our whole effort
(03:45):
towards electrification, is being completely upended. And then like the
EPA is going after California's clean Air waiver. So like
all of the things, like the regulatory credits that Tesla
has relied on for profits for many quarters, or that
has really underpinned their profits is up in the air
or going away.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Dana, The thing for me about this call was that
like Musk in the last few quarters has been talking
a lot about robotaxis, this time he barely talked about
the actual Austin ROBOTAXI, this thing that we've been talking
about on the show for the last few weeks, and
mostly used it as a reason to argue that the
(04:24):
you know ADAS system, the assisted driving technology that you
get when you buy a normal Tesla is good, and
it felt like almost an acknowledgment that that robotaxi thing
in Austin was kind of what we thought. It was
like a you know, a demo, a stunt, but like
so far from being a real business.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Yes, the call was a little hard to listen to,
like the sound quality is always so bad. But I
think one analyst asked them how many miles they've driven
in Austin, and it was something like seven thousand miles,
which is not a lot. I mean it means that
they still have a fleet of what are we thinking,
like twelve to twenty cars. And then the other thing
is that this weekend we sort of expected that they
(05:05):
would soft launch or launch their their Bay Area service,
but that hasn't quite happened yet either, like it could
happen any minute, So I don't want to say no.
But like in California, like you need to jump through
a lot more hoops from a regulatory perspective before you
actually get a permit to do fully autonomous driving, and
Tesla doesn't have that permit.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Okay, one last thing I want to bring up before
we move on to the confab this weekend, which is
that you know, we've had a sort of long running
discussion on this show about this so called low cost model.
Remember this was the model too that many people, especially
many investors, were really excited about, and there was this
vague thing that happened, was it, Dana, Like about a
(05:46):
year ago when Reuters reported that Elon had canceled this model,
Elon said he hadn't. We have believed and this is
partly based on reporting you and Ed Ludlow had done,
you know back when this happened, that there was not
really going to be a model too, that there was
going to be a cheaper version of the model. Why
And it's been basically months since then. We finally got confirmation.
(06:07):
On this podcast. We had a analyst say, hey, what's
the low cost model going to look like? And you
had I think it was a CFO said hey, that's
that's not an appropriate question or started to say that,
and Elon just jumped in and said, so I guess
that mystery is solved.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yeah, And like fans are still pushing back, like if
that's not exactly what he said, you're taking what he
said out of context. But yeah, I mean like This
is by all accounts, including what Elon said on the call,
like some kind of decontented, cheaper, more affordable model. Why
how do they make it more affordable? I don't know,
Like do they strip down the interior? Does it not
(06:47):
have a roof? Is the sound system worse?
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Like?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Are the seats crappier?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Don't you know? I don't know.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
There are a lot of ways to make a car
more affordable. Maybe it's more affordable and better in some ways,
but it's not like a new model. It's not like
Franz has some like brand new spanking design that he's
been molding in clay in Hawthorne. Like, so I think
that people just really need to disabuse themselves of this
notionha that this is a brand new car. I mean,
Elon is tired of making cars like the future is
(07:15):
autonomy and optimists. Like in the future, you won't even
buy a car, You'll just like hire one.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Okay, let's talk about the future. Because we heard the
clip at the top Elon Musk talking about the gazillion
units of Optimists he's expecting to sell. We've seen a
lot of sort of crazy predictions around this stuff floating around,
but Danna talk about this event that happened over the weekend,
the X Takeover.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, so this is an event that's put on every
year by the Tesla Owner's Club of Silicon Valley. This
year it was in San Mateo, which is in Silicon Valley,
so it was easy for me to get to. It
was on a Saturday, and I went and it was
like a lovely event, and it was really a reminder
that for all that we've written and talked about how
there's this incredible consumer backlash against Musk and people can
(08:00):
Alifornia now hate him and all the bumper stickers, like,
this company still has throngs of adoring fans and they
go to every event. And so like I'm walking around,
there's all these cyber trucks. People are wearing T shirts
that say don't bet against Elon, and they're wearing T
shirts from like previous product launches. And it was almost
like a reunion because a lot of the Tesla influencers
(08:21):
were there.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah, Boomer Mama was there, friend of the show.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Boomer Mama was there. People were standing in line to
get like selfies with her, like she was you know,
I could barely talk to her because she was getting
thronged by all these people thanking her for her work.
And then there were a lot of panel discussions and
you know the reason why I went was because Larar's Maravi,
who is Tesla's VP of vehicle Engineering, was speaking and
he doesn't speak publicly very often. And you know, it
(08:45):
was like a day long event. There were things for
the kids to do. It was like a very positive,
very pro Elon Protesla event.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
And then of course what did the kids do?
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Oh well, here I'll show you. I've got a little thing.
There was a three D printed cyber truck that you
could cool said. They were giving out cyber trucks and
crayons and a lot of kids were coloring them. There
was like face painting. There was there was a balloon guy.
You know a lot of people were there with their
families and employees were there with their families, and you know,
you could like walk around. There were a lot of
(09:14):
booths from like aftermarket guys selling accessories to your vehicle.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Got it? Got it? So? And what was the mood?
I mean, like, where are among the sort of Tesla
Elon musk faithful, What are they most excited about?
Speaker 3 (09:30):
I think they're all in on the Robotaxi and Optimists.
And there was a forthcoming cybercab, which is the car
that has no steering wheel on display.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Right, this was that kind of gold car that he
unveiled Elon unveiled on a sound stage at the end
of last year.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Yes, surrounded by ropes, so I like couldn't sit in it.
But like the cyber cab was there, surrounded by velvet ropes,
and like Optimists was there, and like there was a
throng of people like taking pictures of both. And what's
super interesting about you know, all all these people is
that like some of them owned a Tesla car and
then they became investors in the company. Some of them
(10:05):
were investors in the company and then they bought their
car and like Tesla Boom or Mama, I mean, I
don't think she was. She didn't become an investor till
like March of twenty twenty. So some of them are
like long time. Some of them got involved in the
company around the pandemic, but they are all in and
a lot of them they have like their life savings
in this company.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
What you just said. It's so interesting though, because this
is as you said earlier this the heritage of this
event is a Tesla Owners Club event. It is not
a Elon Musk memestock trader event. And yet it really
sounds like, even more than owning the cars, owning the
stock is the thing that unifies this group.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
I think it's both. It's just a question of like
which one came first, did you buy the car first
or the stock first? But most people are in both.
And it's a community. I mean, it's a real community,
and you know, we can laugh about it, but it
is a real community. And that you get the sense
that these are people who maybe met online and now
have deep friendship. Maybe they saw each other at a
product launch, They go on road trips, people meet each
(11:04):
other at superchargers, and you know, like people were talking
about like let's go on a road trip to see
the new Tesla diner, you know, like that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
All right, you've brought up the Tesla diner. Yeah, And
we got to jump to that because amid all this
kind of somewhat dire earnings news, the you know, car
sales declining. The stock dropped the following day, although it's
regained some of that ground. You know, Elon Musk did
something spectacular. He unveiled a new line of business, the
(11:33):
Tesla Diner. It opened in Hollywood, Dana. There was a
lot of excitement among the influencer crowd over this. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
No, to be clear, I have not been there, but
I actually think it's a brilliant idea because I drove
by it when it was under construction and it's in
this kind of older part of Hollywood en Route sixty six.
It was like this empty lot. They built this diner.
It has like two stories. You can you can sit,
you can order food, but you can also sit in
your car and watch a movie. It's got like eighty
(12:02):
supercharger stations that are like version four of the superchargers.
It's a mob scene. Like people are super into it.
It's gonna be a tourist attraction. It's a great way
to like market the company. Tesla doesn't just sell you
the cars, they sell you the whole fueling experience. And
like Root sixty six, Like really is this like iconic
road trip you know thing? And like the fact that
(12:25):
if you drive across the country you end at Root
sixty six at this Tesla Diner. I think it's gonna
usher in like a whole new wave of people, and
it's been very crowded. There's like lines around the block
of people to get into it.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, I mean I was watching or I saw a
clip of a KTLA anchor kind of making fun of
the food. You know, there have been some negative reviews.
Let's let's give a quick lesson.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
I went inside with the full intension of ordering even
these tacos, but it didn't look very advercharging. Okay, and
if I'm gonna have like a good breakfast, I wanted
a good Chris This is have you guys, unbiased, honest.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Brito.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
So that's how KTLA. You know, a network morning show
was covering it. Dan, I watched that and I thought, ooh,
this really shows you what the backlash has done, because
I don't think TV networks would have covered it this
way five years ago. Right Like, like you said, the
design is gorgeous. It's it is. It is really cool
looking when you when you see the shots of it,
(13:30):
and yet you know they're kind of making fun of
the food, like you do wonder if maybe they're you know,
just a few years late launching this thing.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Yeah, it'll be and it'll be interesting to see, like
once the initial hype about it dies down, if it
remains this like packed tourist attraction or not. I mean
the protesters are out there in front, you know, with
an inflatable Elon doing the awkward gesture, so I mean,
like it's definitely gonna be like a magnet. But I
think the other reason why people go is because they
think that they might run into executives there, Like Fan Hoolshausen,
(14:01):
the Tesla's chief designer, He's been there. Lara's mentioned that
he was there the other night. So like if you
leave in La, or you're visiting La and you want
to like hobnob with executives and engineers, like the diner
is like kind of a good spot to try to go,
at least in these early days. And so that's I
think another reason why people are stopping by.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
It would be so amazing if Elon just takes all
of his meals at the Tesla Diner. He's only eating
the tallow fried French fries and the fried chicken and
waffle or whatever. I have to say my reaction. A
lot of people have talked about the prices on this menu, right,
like it's kind of expensive the hot dog costs thirteen dollars.
(14:39):
That's a lot for a hot dog, I guess, although
is it a lot for a hot dog in Los Angeles? Like,
I'm not really sure, but I my beef was like,
this is not a diner. Diners have table service. This
is a fast food restaurant with very expensive food.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Right, Like there's no waiters or waitresses right in my mind,
like a diner, I thought. I thought it was gonna
be more like you're sitting in your car watching a movie,
and like the diner brings the food to you while
you're in your car.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
I think there is some of that that's an option,
or you can walk in in order at the counter
and get it on a tray. I have to say
that the Hamburger boxes look like little cyber trucks. Apparently
that's cute. That goes along with a theme of the show.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
And Optimist is serving popcorn or something.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Not well, though, did you watch the video of Optimists
serving the popcorn spilling? There's a lot of spillage I
saw though. You got to say, hey, look, Elon has
been trying to find things for Optimists to do, and
here here they have one. This this seemed good. Last
thing I want to hit and we'll move on. Bloomberg
reported initially that Samsung has a almost seventeen billion dollar
(15:40):
deal with Tesla to manufactured chips in its new factory
in Texas. Elon confirmed the report. How big a deal
do we think that? I mean, this is obviously a
big deal for Samsung. Is does this matter that much
for Tesla?
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (15:53):
I think so. And Elon posted something about how he
was going to be personally walking the line and like
making shit that quality was up to snuff, and they
were gonna be very involved. Like they really pitched it
as like a partnership. And I think it just means that,
like chips are a big part of the future, both
for autonomy and the robotaxi and for optimists, and like
Elon isn't just it's not like they're just buying off
(16:16):
the shelf chips, like Elon wants to sounds like he
wants to sort of co design these and be very involved.
And yeah, they're gonna need compute to do everything that
they want to do.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, he's gonna be He's gonna be walking the line,
probably sleeping on the line, if history is any guide,
And There's of course also a political element here because
these would be made in the US chips. That, of
course is probably good for Trump and his efforts to
onshore you know, manufacturing.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Made in Texas chips.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Right, So maybe you know where I'm on. As you know, Dan,
I'm on the lookout for any sign of the moot,
and I feel like this is the tiniest little flicker
of a spark. Although there have been some Epstein tweets,
Elon has not stopped tweeting about Epstein. So so I
don't know, you give and you take. I suppose. All right,
(17:05):
let's move on beyond Tesla to Neuralink. This is the
brain implant company. It's been really mysterious, although tons of
Promise have talked about this company a bunch of times
on the podcast and their early patients that they've put
implants into. July twenty first announced, we got announcement from
(17:26):
Neuralink that had done two more surgeries. These are patients
eight and nine, So starting to get up there. And
then probably even more significant thing is that Bloomberg reporter
Ike Sweatlets, who joining us now, broke a story with
a bunch of detail about the business and about where
Neuralink thinks it's going. He's here joining us, Ike, how
(17:46):
are you good?
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Good?
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
So I this company has been kind of a mystery,
at least to me, maybe not to you, beyond the
fact that they were doing some really cool experiments. These
trials that I think we're just are technically just to
show safety, although based on like the social media clips,
you're seeing some impressive stuff. Patients who were not able
to use their hands able to essentially play video games
(18:12):
by controlling a cursor with their brains. You report a
bunch of business plans. The idea, I guess is twenty
thousand implants by twenty thirty one, a billion dollars in
annual revenue. These are our plans, and I think we're
part of an investor presentation. How are they going to
get to that place? On its face, it seems like
one of those crazy Elon Musk predictions. That's a little
(18:34):
bit hard to evaluate.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yeah, so they sort of have a ramp up plan
that they were presenting here right now. You know, they
just have announced nine patients who've gotten these devices. These
are not like FDA approved for general commercial use, so
these are all in clinical research trials right now.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
These are safety trials, I believe, so not even designed
to show effectiveness, just that it's safe to do them,
to have them in somebody's head.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
And they're hoping to get regulatory approval for sort of
the first version of that device by twenty twenty nine,
and then ramp it up to two thousand, you know,
two thousand people a year, two thousand sergers a year,
then ten thousand a year by twenty thirty and then
and then twenty thousand year by twenty thirty one. So
those numbers too, that's not the total number of patients,
(19:22):
that's like how many they plan each year, So like
several tens of thousands of people they hope will have
these devices by twenty thirty one.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Can you rebind me?
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Like?
Speaker 3 (19:32):
What are the different products called? Like I've kind of
gotten them confused in my mind. There's several different names
now for different.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Things, right So the one that they're testing right now
in humans is called telepathy, which they're using to allow
humans to manipulate electronic devices just using their brain, without
without using their hands. So if someone's paralyzed or has
severe nerve damage, you know, they can interact with a computer.
People have been making videos, playing games you know, able
(20:01):
to like you know, type and text and things like that,
just using the brain instead of us in the hands.
And this is you know, this is these kind of
technologies are are a big improvement over sort of older,
older versions of things with eye tracking or controlling sort
of a device with maybe a tiny amount of muscle
movement that you have. So that's the telepathy implant. They're
also working on this implant called blind Sight, which they've said,
(20:24):
you know, aims to give vision to you know, people
who are blind and eventually superhuman vision, so you know,
vision beyond the normal visible like spectrum maybe maybe infrared,
maybe ulgrabiolet, things like that, you know, other other animals
can see in you know, different wave lengths.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Wait is the idea that people who are totally blind
now would have superhuman vision or they would just get
regular vision, and that people who can see would be
upgraded to superhuman.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
From what they've they've said, I think like it looks
like they want superhuman vision to be available generally. But
the idea of these things in general, so that you know,
you can increase sort of people's abilities if you're trying
to cure some disease or bring people up to you know,
sort of quote unquote normal, but you could also go
beyond that. And that blind site implant neuralink has been
(21:11):
testing in monkeys. One of the engineers made a presentation
recently about some of the progress with that. Patients are
not like enrolled in those in those human trials yet.
And then they are also working on this device for
Parkinson's and tremors, which is also interesting because that's an
area that you know, many other large medical device companies
have treatments for this deep brain stimulation things like that.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
I the information that you're reporting, these these investor presentations,
these predictions or projections. Why are these documents circulating now?
My assumption is always like when you see something like this,
the suggestion is they're trying to raise money, right, Like
they're circulating these documents because they want to raise money
or why like, where is this kind of coming from?
Do you have any sense? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (21:54):
So they did just raise money. It was announced in
May a six hundred and fifty million dollar Series E
funding round, So there was you know, recent fundraising. In
terms of upcoming fundraising. If anyone's heard anything, I'd give
me a call, but they have been raising money recently.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Got it, Danna Really? Until Ike said the words super
human Vision, I was thinking to myself, like, this is
like such a weird company for Elon Musk because like
you're talking about long FDA approval, it's kind of a
ways away from what we normally think of as an
Elon company, Like these are not really consumer products Elon
(22:34):
likes to make consumer Like like, how do you see
this fitting in his larger program? Do we need the
brain computers for to go in the tunnels in Mars?
Or like how how does this fit into the grand
the master plan?
Speaker 6 (22:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Or like is it part of it? I always wonder
like is there some kind of fertility play here? Like
does this all come back to, like, you know, extending
the light of consciousness and making sure that people reproduce
and how do you reproduce on Mars? And is there
some kind of neuralink thing that will stimulate fertility. I
don't know, because I feel like everything always comes back
(23:05):
to Mars in some way. But I think that, like
you know, Elon is a man of a million ideas,
like he thinks of companies like all the time, like
he you know, he's doing five now, but he's probably
got you know, twenty like thought of twenty five for breakfast.
Like his mind is just voracious like that. And I
actually don't think it's that big of a departure for
him to be doing something that's like a machine brain interface.
(23:29):
And it's kind of remarkable that he's got these patients
who are like talking publicly about how life changing it's been,
and you know there's nine now that we know of.
But I don't think it's a departure for him. I mean,
Elon does not like to be a spectator. He wants
to be in the arena whatever is at the forefront
and like we are on the cusp of like you know,
for so many years, the brain was like this black box,
(23:50):
and there have been major advances in our understanding of
the brain in the past couple of decades, and he
wants to be a part of that.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
You know, going to one of the questions sort of
you had brought up before. Neuralin Executive have talked before
about how this is a product that you know, everyone
might get. I mean the President DJSAO, you know, said
on this very long and comprehensive podcast with Lex Friedman
that there's a very real possibility that you could see
eight billion people walking around with neuralink. Something that I'm
(24:16):
curious about is sort of there's the neuralink implant and
then these different sort of versions of it. You know,
they've also talked about, you know, maybe you you might
have multiple, you might have one, you might have two,
you might have three. Like there's sort of you know,
different different sort of configurations of this that you can
that you can put in that you'd put the you
sort of put them in different parts of the brain.
So it's this this sort of kind of technology that
then could be could be used for a lot of
different things in theory.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
If we're not comfortable with like red number four or whatever.
It's it's hard to imagine the FDA kind of moving
super quickly on on a brain implant, particularly given that
we've had and this has come up on the show
before you know they're one of the I believe the
first patient there were some setbacks. The little wires, I
forget what they're called, but they're little very thin fibers
(24:59):
kind of we're slipping out or or or some of
the fibers were becoming dislodged, Like we don't really know
what the long term outlook is for for these implants.
Is the twenty twenty nine Is that is that timeline
that's laid out in these UH documents that you reported on,
Is that seen as realistic within the industry? Does anybody
like how how I guess and more broadly, like how
(25:21):
realistic are the other other people in this field, other
investors taking this?
Speaker 1 (25:26):
That's a good question, I you know, I mean they're
getting investment, clearly. I'm not sure what people think about
sort of how realistic that that timeline is. I mean,
the FDA has approved you know, brain implants. I mean,
like you know, deep brain stimulation, other other sorts of
things like that. Like it's the idea of putting something
in the brain, is is not? That's something that has
been done many times, So that that concept, you know,
(25:50):
for for many people might be you know, sort of stranger,
foreign or whatnot, but it's not something that is sort
of completely new to the FDA. I think it's interesting
we we have haven't seen any peer reviewed publications about
the results from these these trials yet, right, which is
I've written a lot about other pharmaceutical companies or where
you sort of have a trial and then you have
(26:11):
a publication, and then the publication is submitted to the
you know, that's sort of the data that submitted to
the FDA. So I think that's sort of one of
my main questions is Neuralink has been publishing information online sometimes,
but I think that's seeing more sort of peer reviewed
published data would help people evaluate that too.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah. Yeah, and of course peer that's been that's like
often a complaint about this kind of like venture backed
healthcare company, especially with somebody like Musk who who loves
to kind of paint a futuristic picture. There's there's the picture,
and then there's what the scientific establishment is willing to accept. Ike,
will we'll let you go, you gotta, You're gonna have
(26:47):
to come back and let us know what the enhancements
are going to be as well as, you know, any
further developments with this company.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Thanks a lot for being here, Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Okay, Dana, stick around one more segment for you. The
boring company. This is like the forgotten Elon Musk venture,
the perpetually forgotten, you know, youngest child that no one
can quite remember even exists. It does exist, and they
have a deal to drill a tunnel in Nashville, apparently
ten or so miles going from the airport to downtown.
(27:26):
There was a big event or an event in Nashville yesterday.
This is Tennessee Governor Bill Ye announcing the move.
Speaker 5 (27:33):
The boring company is set to transform the airport to
downtown travel experience. And for those that live here, it
means that they'll be less congestion on our roads, there
will be less wear and tear on our highways. And
the best port of it all is one hundred percent
(27:54):
privately funded. There will be no cost to Tennessee taxpayers.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Dan, I can't remember have you been to the Vegas Loop,
the version of this in Las Vegas. I have not
had the honor max the Vegas Loop. Dan, you'll know this,
but maybe some listeners won't. It's pretty underwhelming. It's basically
a couple of miles of very narrow tunnels that primarily
go between different ends of the Las Vegas Convention Center, which,
(28:20):
to be fair, is a very large convention center. But
you go in a regular car. It doesn't go very fast,
It has a regular driver. The only thing that's really
futuristic about it is the color scheme inside of the tunnel,
it's kind of like a little bit lame. On the
other hand, Boring has been doing this for a very
long time and it's the only thing that they've really
(28:43):
managed to get built. Of any substance, this would be
a second one. So I guess in that sense, you
got to look at this as a win, even if
it's just an announcement and there are lots of approvals
and so on that would be necessary to make this happen.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Yeah, I mean, I think I guess it's a win
in that. You know, Yet people kind of forget about
the Boring company, Like what are they doing in this
tunnel thing? Is it really just about tunneling in Mars?
And the fact that they're still apparently getting these contracts
at approvals and having governors of states sort of announce
them means that they're going forward. I think to me,
what's sort of interesting is that, like Elon has really
(29:16):
got a thing for Tennessee now because XAI has this
massive data center in Memphis that you've got this what
is it? What are they calling it? Like the music
City loop?
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Yeah, music city with Nashville being the music city.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Music City loop you know, apparently in Nashville they're having
like a hiring event. So his empire is continuing to
expand into this very interesting kind of red state that
is the center of a lot of logistics I mean
a lot of logistics companies kind of use Nashville as
their as their base of operating. So I just think
when we think of Elon writ large and like if
you think about congressional districts and where he has installations,
(29:52):
now Tennessee is a really big part of his empire.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Yeah, absolutely, And Nashville's kind of an it's an Elon
sort of town, right like La It's got a big
music industry. Of course, it's a big tourist attraction obviously,
so you could kind of see the affinity. I will
say it's very early. And although on one hand you
look at this and you say, wow, for the feud
with Trump and all the ways that Elon Musk has
been divisive, he's still able to command the respect of
(30:18):
the governor of a state. We don't really know how
this plays out. In Las Vegas. A lot of local
officials were not thrilled with the loop. A couple of
years ago, actually interviewed the mayor of Las Vegas, and
she voted for to approve the loop, but she did
not like it. She thought it was basically modest tourist attraction,
and she basically just felt she couldn't vote against it
(30:41):
because the taxpayers are not paying for it is paid
for by the boring company and the Las Vegas Convention
Center Association. Kind of a similar thing here. We don't
know exactly who's paying for this, but we do know,
according to Governor Lee, that the taxpayers are not paying
for it. Also, Nashville has a democratic mayor. He was
not at the event, kind of conspicuously. Often when you
(31:04):
have big events like this, the mayor wants to take
credit because this means jobs. So again, I think we
will see just how far Elon Musk's political capital will
take him. But who knows.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
Dan.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
You know, maybe in a couple of years, you and
I can fly down to Nashville and take that express car,
take a little Tesla maybe thirty five forty miles an
hour straight from the airport to downtown.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Well, that sounds great. I think we need to do
our Group sixty six road trip first.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
We're going to the diner before then, of course, this
episode was produced by Stacy Wong and edited by Anna Mazarakus.
Blake Maples handles engineering, and Dave Purcell fact checks. Our
supervising producer is Magnus Henrickson. Welcome Back, Magnus. The Elining
(31:54):
theme is written and performed by Taka Yazuzawa and Alex Sagiera.
Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big
thanks to our supporters Joel Weber and Brad Stone. I'm
Max Chafkin. If you have a minute, rate and review
our show, it'll help other listeners find us and we'll
see you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Let me tell you we have a new star. A
star is born Eylon pumped up on Mars Jusan Kennemy.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
I feel for the guy.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
But those two percent that are nasty, they are I'll
be in full pos.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
We are meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds us of that.
Speaker 5 (00:35):
I'm very disappointed in Elon. I've helped Elon a lot.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Welcome to Elon Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Tuesday, July twenty ninth. I'm Max Chafkin. David Papadopolis
will be back next week, I've been assured. But we've
got one more week together, and this week we're gonna
take a little break from our Jealousy series, where we've
been interviewing some of the authors of stories that we've
really admired, because we've had a slew of Elon news
(01:09):
that starts with Tesla. Last week, we had an Earnings call,
and it was let's just say it was a bit
of a downer. Sales are plumbing, and Elon admitted during
the call that the company is in a really tough spot.
Speaker 6 (01:20):
I mean, does that mean like we could have a
few rough quarters. Yeah, we probably could have a few
rough quarters. I'm not saying it well, but we could.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
But you can't disregard that musk magic, as we'll talk
about later in the show. And we discussed the progress
at Neuralink, a big announcement with the boring company, as
well as a bunch of sort of news around Tesla
that is kind of pointing up. We had the X
Takeover event. This is essentially a fan event in San Francisco.
We're a much more upbeat version of Elon called in
(01:54):
to talk all about the bright future ahead for Optimus.
Speaker 6 (01:58):
Hypothetically, Tesla was making a billion of these here at scale,
and at scale of the cost gets lower and lower,
so maybe like on the order thousand dollars, I'm just
guessing he's put trillion in revenue.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Insane.
Speaker 6 (02:14):
You know, that's a long way to go between here
and making a billion provots here.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And so to puzzle through those signals, some positive, some negative.
I'm sitting here with Bloomberg Law Musk reporter Dana Hall. Dana,
how are you.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
I'm doing great, Max, Great to be.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Here, Danna. You and I were live blogging the Tesla
earnings as we like to do. Tell our listeners how
it went for Elon on Wednesday. We're recording this on
Tuesday of the following week.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Well, you know, it's interesting whenever there's a Tesla earnings call,
so much of it is really about Elon's mood and
what he says. And you and I, because we work
at Bloomberg and we have a terminal, we can like
watch the stock trading in real time as he's speaking.
And what I noticed is that, like the earnings were
coming along, it was like sort of a bad quarter,
but everyone kind of expected it in terms of the
(03:00):
sales being down and blah blah blah. But like as
soon as Elon was like, could we be in for
a few bad quarters? Yeah we could that you like
so to solve the SOCCA and like his whole narrative thesis,
which is that like the future is all about autonomous
and robotaxis, Like he didn't really say anything new about expansion.
That God investors excited, and then I think more and
(03:22):
more investors are starting to realize that the core automotive
market is just in a world of trouble because of
major policy shifts in Washington, you know, President Trump and
his administration. Like, there's three things that are really hitting
the company in a bad way. The seventy five hundred
dollars tax credit for electric vehicles, and September thirtieth, the
cafe standards, which are kind of underpin our whole effort
(03:45):
towards electrification, is being completely upended. And then like the
EPA is going after California's clean Air waiver. So like
all of the things, like the regulatory credits that Tesla
has relied on for profits for many quarters, or that
has really underpinned their profits is up in the air
or going away.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Dana, The thing for me about this call was that
like Musk in the last few quarters has been talking
a lot about robotaxis, this time he barely talked about
the actual Austin ROBOTAXI, this thing that we've been talking
about on the show for the last few weeks, and
mostly used it as a reason to argue that the
(04:24):
you know ADAS system, the assisted driving technology that you
get when you buy a normal Tesla is good, and
it felt like almost an acknowledgment that that robotaxi thing
in Austin was kind of what we thought. It was
like a you know, a demo, a stunt, but like
so far from being a real business.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Yes, the call was a little hard to listen to,
like the sound quality is always so bad. But I
think one analyst asked them how many miles they've driven
in Austin, and it was something like seven thousand miles,
which is not a lot. I mean it means that
they still have a fleet of what are we thinking,
like twelve to twenty cars. And then the other thing
is that this weekend we sort of expected that they
(05:05):
would soft launch or launch their their Bay Area service,
but that hasn't quite happened yet either, like it could
happen any minute, So I don't want to say no.
But like in California, like you need to jump through
a lot more hoops from a regulatory perspective before you
actually get a permit to do fully autonomous driving, and
Tesla doesn't have that permit.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Okay, one last thing I want to bring up before
we move on to the confab this weekend, which is
that you know, we've had a sort of long running
discussion on this show about this so called low cost model.
Remember this was the model too that many people, especially
many investors, were really excited about, and there was this
vague thing that happened, was it, Dana, Like about a
(05:46):
year ago when Reuters reported that Elon had canceled this model,
Elon said he hadn't. We have believed and this is
partly based on reporting you and Ed Ludlow had done,
you know back when this happened, that there was not
really going to be a model too, that there was
going to be a cheaper version of the model. Why
And it's been basically months since then. We finally got confirmation.
(06:07):
On this podcast. We had a analyst say, hey, what's
the low cost model going to look like? And you
had I think it was a CFO said hey, that's
that's not an appropriate question or started to say that,
and Elon just jumped in and said, so I guess
that mystery is solved.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yeah, And like fans are still pushing back, like if
that's not exactly what he said, you're taking what he
said out of context. But yeah, I mean like This
is by all accounts, including what Elon said on the call,
like some kind of decontented, cheaper, more affordable model. Why
how do they make it more affordable? I don't know,
Like do they strip down the interior? Does it not
(06:47):
have a roof? Is the sound system worse?
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Like?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Are the seats crappier?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Don't you know? I don't know.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
There are a lot of ways to make a car
more affordable. Maybe it's more affordable and better in some ways,
but it's not like a new model. It's not like
Franz has some like brand new spanking design that he's
been molding in clay in Hawthorne. Like, so I think
that people just really need to disabuse themselves of this
notionha that this is a brand new car. I mean,
Elon is tired of making cars like the future is
(07:15):
autonomy and optimists. Like in the future, you won't even
buy a car, You'll just like hire one.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Okay, let's talk about the future. Because we heard the
clip at the top Elon Musk talking about the gazillion
units of Optimists he's expecting to sell. We've seen a
lot of sort of crazy predictions around this stuff floating around,
but Danna talk about this event that happened over the weekend,
the X Takeover.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, so this is an event that's put on every
year by the Tesla Owner's Club of Silicon Valley. This
year it was in San Mateo, which is in Silicon Valley,
so it was easy for me to get to. It
was on a Saturday, and I went and it was
like a lovely event, and it was really a reminder
that for all that we've written and talked about how
there's this incredible consumer backlash against Musk and people can
(08:00):
Alifornia now hate him and all the bumper stickers, like,
this company still has throngs of adoring fans and they
go to every event. And so like I'm walking around,
there's all these cyber trucks. People are wearing T shirts
that say don't bet against Elon, and they're wearing T
shirts from like previous product launches. And it was almost
like a reunion because a lot of the Tesla influencers
(08:21):
were there.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah, Boomer Mama was there, friend of the show.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Boomer Mama was there. People were standing in line to
get like selfies with her, like she was you know,
I could barely talk to her because she was getting
thronged by all these people thanking her for her work.
And then there were a lot of panel discussions and
you know the reason why I went was because Larar's Maravi,
who is Tesla's VP of vehicle Engineering, was speaking and
he doesn't speak publicly very often. And you know, it
(08:45):
was like a day long event. There were things for
the kids to do. It was like a very positive,
very pro Elon Protesla event.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
And then of course what did the kids do?
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Oh well, here I'll show you. I've got a little thing.
There was a three D printed cyber truck that you
could cool said. They were giving out cyber trucks and
crayons and a lot of kids were coloring them. There
was like face painting. There was there was a balloon guy.
You know a lot of people were there with their
families and employees were there with their families, and you know,
you could like walk around. There were a lot of
(09:14):
booths from like aftermarket guys selling accessories to your vehicle.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Got it? Got it? So? And what was the mood?
I mean, like, where are among the sort of Tesla
Elon musk faithful, What are they most excited about?
Speaker 3 (09:30):
I think they're all in on the Robotaxi and Optimists.
And there was a forthcoming cybercab, which is the car
that has no steering wheel on display.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Right, this was that kind of gold car that he
unveiled Elon unveiled on a sound stage at the end
of last year.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Yes, surrounded by ropes, so I like couldn't sit in it.
But like the cyber cab was there, surrounded by velvet ropes,
and like Optimists was there, and like there was a
throng of people like taking pictures of both. And what's
super interesting about you know, all all these people is
that like some of them owned a Tesla car and
then they became investors in the company. Some of them
(10:05):
were investors in the company and then they bought their
car and like Tesla Boom or Mama, I mean, I
don't think she was. She didn't become an investor till
like March of twenty twenty. So some of them are
like long time. Some of them got involved in the
company around the pandemic, but they are all in and
a lot of them they have like their life savings
in this company.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
What you just said. It's so interesting though, because this
is as you said earlier this the heritage of this
event is a Tesla Owners Club event. It is not
a Elon Musk memestock trader event. And yet it really
sounds like, even more than owning the cars, owning the
stock is the thing that unifies this group.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
I think it's both. It's just a question of like
which one came first, did you buy the car first
or the stock first? But most people are in both.
And it's a community. I mean, it's a real community,
and you know, we can laugh about it, but it
is a real community. And that you get the sense
that these are people who maybe met online and now
have deep friendship. Maybe they saw each other at a
product launch, They go on road trips, people meet each
(11:04):
other at superchargers, and you know, like people were talking
about like let's go on a road trip to see
the new Tesla diner, you know, like that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
All right, you've brought up the Tesla diner. Yeah, And
we got to jump to that because amid all this
kind of somewhat dire earnings news, the you know, car
sales declining. The stock dropped the following day, although it's
regained some of that ground. You know, Elon Musk did
something spectacular. He unveiled a new line of business, the
(11:33):
Tesla Diner. It opened in Hollywood, Dana. There was a
lot of excitement among the influencer crowd over this. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
No, to be clear, I have not been there, but
I actually think it's a brilliant idea because I drove
by it when it was under construction and it's in
this kind of older part of Hollywood en Route sixty six.
It was like this empty lot. They built this diner.
It has like two stories. You can you can sit,
you can order food, but you can also sit in
your car and watch a movie. It's got like eighty
(12:02):
supercharger stations that are like version four of the superchargers.
It's a mob scene. Like people are super into it.
It's gonna be a tourist attraction. It's a great way
to like market the company. Tesla doesn't just sell you
the cars, they sell you the whole fueling experience. And
like Root sixty six, Like really is this like iconic
road trip you know thing? And like the fact that
(12:25):
if you drive across the country you end at Root
sixty six at this Tesla Diner. I think it's gonna
usher in like a whole new wave of people, and
it's been very crowded. There's like lines around the block
of people to get into it.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, I mean I was watching or I saw a
clip of a KTLA anchor kind of making fun of
the food. You know, there have been some negative reviews.
Let's let's give a quick lesson.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
I went inside with the full intension of ordering even
these tacos, but it didn't look very advercharging. Okay, and
if I'm gonna have like a good breakfast, I wanted
a good Chris This is have you guys, unbiased, honest.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Brito.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
So that's how KTLA. You know, a network morning show
was covering it. Dan, I watched that and I thought, ooh,
this really shows you what the backlash has done, because
I don't think TV networks would have covered it this
way five years ago. Right Like, like you said, the
design is gorgeous. It's it is. It is really cool
looking when you when you see the shots of it,
(13:30):
and yet you know they're kind of making fun of
the food, like you do wonder if maybe they're you know,
just a few years late launching this thing.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Yeah, it'll be and it'll be interesting to see, like
once the initial hype about it dies down, if it
remains this like packed tourist attraction or not. I mean
the protesters are out there in front, you know, with
an inflatable Elon doing the awkward gesture, so I mean,
like it's definitely gonna be like a magnet. But I
think the other reason why people go is because they
think that they might run into executives there, Like Fan Hoolshausen,
(14:01):
the Tesla's chief designer, He's been there. Lara's mentioned that
he was there the other night. So like if you
leave in La, or you're visiting La and you want
to like hobnob with executives and engineers, like the diner
is like kind of a good spot to try to go,
at least in these early days. And so that's I
think another reason why people are stopping by.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
It would be so amazing if Elon just takes all
of his meals at the Tesla Diner. He's only eating
the tallow fried French fries and the fried chicken and
waffle or whatever. I have to say my reaction. A
lot of people have talked about the prices on this menu, right,
like it's kind of expensive the hot dog costs thirteen dollars.
(14:39):
That's a lot for a hot dog, I guess, although
is it a lot for a hot dog in Los Angeles? Like,
I'm not really sure, but I my beef was like,
this is not a diner. Diners have table service. This
is a fast food restaurant with very expensive food.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Right, Like there's no waiters or waitresses right in my mind,
like a diner, I thought. I thought it was gonna
be more like you're sitting in your car watching a movie,
and like the diner brings the food to you while
you're in your car.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
I think there is some of that that's an option,
or you can walk in in order at the counter
and get it on a tray. I have to say
that the Hamburger boxes look like little cyber trucks. Apparently
that's cute. That goes along with a theme of the show.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
And Optimist is serving popcorn or something.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Not well, though, did you watch the video of Optimists
serving the popcorn spilling? There's a lot of spillage I
saw though. You got to say, hey, look, Elon has
been trying to find things for Optimists to do, and
here here they have one. This this seemed good. Last
thing I want to hit and we'll move on. Bloomberg
reported initially that Samsung has a almost seventeen billion dollar
(15:40):
deal with Tesla to manufactured chips in its new factory
in Texas. Elon confirmed the report. How big a deal
do we think that? I mean, this is obviously a
big deal for Samsung. Is does this matter that much
for Tesla?
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (15:53):
I think so. And Elon posted something about how he
was going to be personally walking the line and like
making shit that quality was up to snuff, and they
were gonna be very involved. Like they really pitched it
as like a partnership. And I think it just means that,
like chips are a big part of the future, both
for autonomy and the robotaxi and for optimists, and like
Elon isn't just it's not like they're just buying off
(16:16):
the shelf chips, like Elon wants to sounds like he
wants to sort of co design these and be very involved.
And yeah, they're gonna need compute to do everything that
they want to do.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, he's gonna be He's gonna be walking the line,
probably sleeping on the line, if history is any guide,
And There's of course also a political element here because
these would be made in the US chips. That, of
course is probably good for Trump and his efforts to
onshore you know, manufacturing.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Made in Texas chips.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Right, So maybe you know where I'm on. As you know, Dan,
I'm on the lookout for any sign of the moot,
and I feel like this is the tiniest little flicker
of a spark. Although there have been some Epstein tweets,
Elon has not stopped tweeting about Epstein. So so I
don't know, you give and you take. I suppose. All right,
(17:05):
let's move on beyond Tesla to Neuralink. This is the
brain implant company. It's been really mysterious, although tons of
Promise have talked about this company a bunch of times
on the podcast and their early patients that they've put
implants into. July twenty first announced, we got announcement from
(17:26):
Neuralink that had done two more surgeries. These are patients
eight and nine, So starting to get up there. And
then probably even more significant thing is that Bloomberg reporter
Ike Sweatlets, who joining us now, broke a story with
a bunch of detail about the business and about where
Neuralink thinks it's going. He's here joining us, Ike, how
(17:46):
are you good?
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Good?
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
So I this company has been kind of a mystery,
at least to me, maybe not to you, beyond the
fact that they were doing some really cool experiments. These
trials that I think we're just are technically just to
show safety, although based on like the social media clips,
you're seeing some impressive stuff. Patients who were not able
to use their hands able to essentially play video games
(18:12):
by controlling a cursor with their brains. You report a
bunch of business plans. The idea, I guess is twenty
thousand implants by twenty thirty one, a billion dollars in
annual revenue. These are our plans, and I think we're
part of an investor presentation. How are they going to
get to that place? On its face, it seems like
one of those crazy Elon Musk predictions. That's a little
(18:34):
bit hard to evaluate.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yeah, so they sort of have a ramp up plan
that they were presenting here right now. You know, they
just have announced nine patients who've gotten these devices. These
are not like FDA approved for general commercial use, so
these are all in clinical research trials right now.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
These are safety trials, I believe, so not even designed
to show effectiveness, just that it's safe to do them,
to have them in somebody's head.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
And they're hoping to get regulatory approval for sort of
the first version of that device by twenty twenty nine,
and then ramp it up to two thousand, you know,
two thousand people a year, two thousand sergers a year,
then ten thousand a year by twenty thirty and then
and then twenty thousand year by twenty thirty one. So
those numbers too, that's not the total number of patients,
(19:22):
that's like how many they plan each year, So like
several tens of thousands of people they hope will have
these devices by twenty thirty one.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Can you rebind me?
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Like?
Speaker 3 (19:32):
What are the different products called? Like I've kind of
gotten them confused in my mind. There's several different names
now for different.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Things, right So the one that they're testing right now
in humans is called telepathy, which they're using to allow
humans to manipulate electronic devices just using their brain, without
without using their hands. So if someone's paralyzed or has
severe nerve damage, you know, they can interact with a computer.
People have been making videos, playing games you know, able
(20:01):
to like you know, type and text and things like that,
just using the brain instead of us in the hands.
And this is you know, this is these kind of
technologies are are a big improvement over sort of older,
older versions of things with eye tracking or controlling sort
of a device with maybe a tiny amount of muscle
movement that you have. So that's the telepathy implant. They're
also working on this implant called blind Sight, which they've said,
(20:24):
you know, aims to give vision to you know, people
who are blind and eventually superhuman vision, so you know,
vision beyond the normal visible like spectrum maybe maybe infrared,
maybe ulgrabiolet, things like that, you know, other other animals
can see in you know, different wave lengths.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Wait is the idea that people who are totally blind
now would have superhuman vision or they would just get
regular vision, and that people who can see would be
upgraded to superhuman.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
From what they've they've said, I think like it looks
like they want superhuman vision to be available generally. But
the idea of these things in general, so that you know,
you can increase sort of people's abilities if you're trying
to cure some disease or bring people up to you know,
sort of quote unquote normal, but you could also go
beyond that. And that blind site implant neuralink has been
(21:11):
testing in monkeys. One of the engineers made a presentation
recently about some of the progress with that. Patients are
not like enrolled in those in those human trials yet.
And then they are also working on this device for
Parkinson's and tremors, which is also interesting because that's an
area that you know, many other large medical device companies
have treatments for this deep brain stimulation things like that.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
I the information that you're reporting, these these investor presentations,
these predictions or projections. Why are these documents circulating now?
My assumption is always like when you see something like this,
the suggestion is they're trying to raise money, right, Like
they're circulating these documents because they want to raise money
or why like, where is this kind of coming from?
Do you have any sense? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (21:54):
So they did just raise money. It was announced in
May a six hundred and fifty million dollar Series E
funding round, So there was you know, recent fundraising. In
terms of upcoming fundraising. If anyone's heard anything, I'd give
me a call, but they have been raising money recently.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Got it, Danna Really? Until Ike said the words super
human Vision, I was thinking to myself, like, this is
like such a weird company for Elon Musk because like
you're talking about long FDA approval, it's kind of a
ways away from what we normally think of as an
Elon company, Like these are not really consumer products Elon
(22:34):
likes to make consumer Like like, how do you see
this fitting in his larger program? Do we need the
brain computers for to go in the tunnels in Mars?
Or like how how does this fit into the grand
the master plan?
Speaker 6 (22:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Or like is it part of it? I always wonder
like is there some kind of fertility play here? Like
does this all come back to, like, you know, extending
the light of consciousness and making sure that people reproduce
and how do you reproduce on Mars? And is there
some kind of neuralink thing that will stimulate fertility. I
don't know, because I feel like everything always comes back
(23:05):
to Mars in some way. But I think that, like
you know, Elon is a man of a million ideas,
like he thinks of companies like all the time, like
he you know, he's doing five now, but he's probably
got you know, twenty like thought of twenty five for breakfast.
Like his mind is just voracious like that. And I
actually don't think it's that big of a departure for
him to be doing something that's like a machine brain interface.
(23:29):
And it's kind of remarkable that he's got these patients
who are like talking publicly about how life changing it's been,
and you know there's nine now that we know of.
But I don't think it's a departure for him. I mean,
Elon does not like to be a spectator. He wants
to be in the arena whatever is at the forefront
and like we are on the cusp of like you know,
for so many years, the brain was like this black box,
(23:50):
and there have been major advances in our understanding of
the brain in the past couple of decades, and he
wants to be a part of that.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
You know, going to one of the questions sort of
you had brought up before. Neuralin Executive have talked before
about how this is a product that you know, everyone
might get. I mean the President DJSAO, you know, said
on this very long and comprehensive podcast with Lex Friedman
that there's a very real possibility that you could see
eight billion people walking around with neuralink. Something that I'm
(24:16):
curious about is sort of there's the neuralink implant and
then these different sort of versions of it. You know,
they've also talked about, you know, maybe you you might
have multiple, you might have one, you might have two,
you might have three. Like there's sort of you know,
different different sort of configurations of this that you can
that you can put in that you'd put the you
sort of put them in different parts of the brain.
So it's this this sort of kind of technology that
then could be could be used for a lot of
different things in theory.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
If we're not comfortable with like red number four or whatever.
It's it's hard to imagine the FDA kind of moving
super quickly on on a brain implant, particularly given that
we've had and this has come up on the show
before you know they're one of the I believe the
first patient there were some setbacks. The little wires, I
forget what they're called, but they're little very thin fibers
(24:59):
kind of we're slipping out or or or some of
the fibers were becoming dislodged, Like we don't really know
what the long term outlook is for for these implants.
Is the twenty twenty nine Is that is that timeline
that's laid out in these UH documents that you reported on,
Is that seen as realistic within the industry? Does anybody
like how how I guess and more broadly, like how
(25:21):
realistic are the other other people in this field, other
investors taking this?
Speaker 1 (25:26):
That's a good question, I you know, I mean they're
getting investment, clearly. I'm not sure what people think about
sort of how realistic that that timeline is. I mean,
the FDA has approved you know, brain implants. I mean,
like you know, deep brain stimulation, other other sorts of
things like that. Like it's the idea of putting something
in the brain, is is not? That's something that has
been done many times, So that that concept, you know,
(25:50):
for for many people might be you know, sort of stranger,
foreign or whatnot, but it's not something that is sort
of completely new to the FDA. I think it's interesting
we we have haven't seen any peer reviewed publications about
the results from these these trials yet, right, which is
I've written a lot about other pharmaceutical companies or where
you sort of have a trial and then you have
(26:11):
a publication, and then the publication is submitted to the
you know, that's sort of the data that submitted to
the FDA. So I think that's sort of one of
my main questions is Neuralink has been publishing information online sometimes,
but I think that's seeing more sort of peer reviewed
published data would help people evaluate that too.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah. Yeah, and of course peer that's been that's like
often a complaint about this kind of like venture backed
healthcare company, especially with somebody like Musk who who loves
to kind of paint a futuristic picture. There's there's the picture,
and then there's what the scientific establishment is willing to accept. Ike,
will we'll let you go, you gotta, You're gonna have
(26:47):
to come back and let us know what the enhancements
are going to be as well as, you know, any
further developments with this company.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Thanks a lot for being here, Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Okay, Dana, stick around one more segment for you. The
boring company. This is like the forgotten Elon Musk venture,
the perpetually forgotten, you know, youngest child that no one
can quite remember even exists. It does exist, and they
have a deal to drill a tunnel in Nashville, apparently
ten or so miles going from the airport to downtown.
(27:26):
There was a big event or an event in Nashville yesterday.
This is Tennessee Governor Bill Ye announcing the move.
Speaker 5 (27:33):
The boring company is set to transform the airport to
downtown travel experience. And for those that live here, it
means that they'll be less congestion on our roads, there
will be less wear and tear on our highways. And
the best port of it all is one hundred percent
(27:54):
privately funded. There will be no cost to Tennessee taxpayers.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Dan, I can't remember have you been to the Vegas Loop,
the version of this in Las Vegas. I have not
had the honor max the Vegas Loop. Dan, you'll know this,
but maybe some listeners won't. It's pretty underwhelming. It's basically
a couple of miles of very narrow tunnels that primarily
go between different ends of the Las Vegas Convention Center, which,
(28:20):
to be fair, is a very large convention center. But
you go in a regular car. It doesn't go very fast,
It has a regular driver. The only thing that's really
futuristic about it is the color scheme inside of the tunnel,
it's kind of like a little bit lame. On the
other hand, Boring has been doing this for a very
long time and it's the only thing that they've really
(28:43):
managed to get built. Of any substance, this would be
a second one. So I guess in that sense, you
got to look at this as a win, even if
it's just an announcement and there are lots of approvals
and so on that would be necessary to make this happen.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Yeah, I mean, I think I guess it's a win
in that. You know, Yet people kind of forget about
the Boring company, Like what are they doing in this
tunnel thing? Is it really just about tunneling in Mars?
And the fact that they're still apparently getting these contracts
at approvals and having governors of states sort of announce
them means that they're going forward. I think to me,
what's sort of interesting is that, like Elon has really
(29:16):
got a thing for Tennessee now because XAI has this
massive data center in Memphis that you've got this what
is it? What are they calling it? Like the music
City loop?
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Yeah, music city with Nashville being the music city.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Music City loop you know, apparently in Nashville they're having
like a hiring event. So his empire is continuing to
expand into this very interesting kind of red state that
is the center of a lot of logistics I mean
a lot of logistics companies kind of use Nashville as
their as their base of operating. So I just think
when we think of Elon writ large and like if
you think about congressional districts and where he has installations,
(29:52):
now Tennessee is a really big part of his empire.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Yeah, absolutely, And Nashville's kind of an it's an Elon
sort of town, right like La It's got a big
music industry. Of course, it's a big tourist attraction obviously,
so you could kind of see the affinity. I will
say it's very early. And although on one hand you
look at this and you say, wow, for the feud
with Trump and all the ways that Elon Musk has
been divisive, he's still able to command the respect of
(30:18):
the governor of a state. We don't really know how
this plays out. In Las Vegas. A lot of local
officials were not thrilled with the loop. A couple of
years ago, actually interviewed the mayor of Las Vegas, and
she voted for to approve the loop, but she did
not like it. She thought it was basically modest tourist attraction,
and she basically just felt she couldn't vote against it
(30:41):
because the taxpayers are not paying for it is paid
for by the boring company and the Las Vegas Convention
Center Association. Kind of a similar thing here. We don't
know exactly who's paying for this, but we do know,
according to Governor Lee, that the taxpayers are not paying
for it. Also, Nashville has a democratic mayor. He was
not at the event, kind of conspicuously. Often when you
(31:04):
have big events like this, the mayor wants to take
credit because this means jobs. So again, I think we
will see just how far Elon Musk's political capital will
take him. But who knows.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
Dan.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
You know, maybe in a couple of years, you and
I can fly down to Nashville and take that express car,
take a little Tesla maybe thirty five forty miles an
hour straight from the airport to downtown.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Well, that sounds great. I think we need to do
our Group sixty six road trip first.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
We're going to the diner before then, of course, this
episode was produced by Stacy Wong and edited by Anna Mazarakus.
Blake Maples handles engineering, and Dave Purcell fact checks. Our
supervising producer is Magnus Henrickson. Welcome Back, Magnus. The Elining
(31:54):
theme is written and performed by Taka Yazuzawa and Alex Sagiera.
Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big
thanks to our supporters Joel Weber and Brad Stone. I'm
Max Chafkin. If you have a minute, rate and review
our show, it'll help other listeners find us and we'll
see you next week.
Host
David Papadopoulos
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.