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. Apply to Y Combinator: https://ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://workatastartup.com 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