Elon Musk's 5 most noteworthy comments during SpaceX's first earnings call

Aug 05, 2026 08:38 PM - 1 month ago 336

Elon Musk

Elon Musk is the CEO of SpaceX. Fabrice Coffrini / AFP via Getty Images

Elon Musk issued a jaw-dropping gross forecast, bullied the easiness of building information centers compared to rockets, and envisioned factories connected the Moon during SpaceX's first net telephone connected Tuesday.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO — who is well-known for his grandiose predictions — besides touted Starlink's imaginable for world domination, and predicted AI will go dramatically much precocious by the extremity of adjacent year.

Here are Musk's 5 astir absorbing comments during SpaceX's inaugural net telephone aft its blockbuster marketplace debut successful June.

1. Rocketing revenue

Musk told Wall Street analysts that SpaceX's soul projections person it reaching $1 trillion successful revenue successful 2030, alternatively of 2031 arsenic it had forecast earlier its IPO. He besides said there's a "nonzero chance of that being successful 2029."

To put that successful perspective, Walmart and Amazon, which make much gross than immoderate different nationalist companies, reported nett income of $706 cardinal and $717 billion, respectively, successful their past afloat financial years.

SpaceX generated $12.5 cardinal successful first-half revenue, a 54% summation from the aforesaid play successful 2025.

From afloat autonomous vehicles to the first crewed ngo to Mars, Musk has a long history of mounting eager timelines for milestones, only to neglect to meet them.

He acknowledged backmost successful 2018 that he's "typically optimistic" astir erstwhile things will occur, but added that what he predicts "pretty overmuch ever happens, but not precisely connected the timeframe."

2. Data centers vs. rockets

The SpaceX Starship and Super Heavy v3 Booster guidelines astatine pad 2 astatine sunrise earlier its 13th trial formation from the SpaceX motorboat analyzable successful Starbase, Texas, U.S., July 16, 2026. REUTERS/Steve Nesius

SpaceX's inheritance successful rockets makes information centers a breeze, Musk said connected the call.  Steve Nesius/Reuters

Musk said that building information centers "ain't rocket science," whereas building rockets is highly challenging because they "desperately want to rustle themselves into mini pieces."

He quipped that tasking rocket engineers to construct information centers was "kind of ridiculous, frankly," and represented a "trivial problem" for them.

Musk quipped that it was for illustration the "New York Yankees going successful and playing a Little League team."

Big Tech companies, including Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, and Oracle, are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into building information centers to powerfulness the AI revolution.

The immense request for microchips, power, and h2o has strained proviso chains and pressured power grids and reservoirs.

3. Linking up the world

Musk said it's "not retired of the question" that Starlink will eventually deliver a "majority of the world's internet, astatine slightest successful countries wherever we're allowed to operate, which is the immense mostly of countries."

In different illustration of his famously optimistic timelines, Musk added that it won't beryllium successful the "infinity future" but alternatively successful "less than 10 years."

Starlink, the satellite-communications limb of SpaceX, has emerged arsenic a cardinal supplier of net to planes, ships, and far-flung locales.

However, it has yet to meaningfully disrupt the halfway municipality broadband businesses of established net providers specified arsenic T-Mobile and Verizon.

More sum of SpaceX's first net report

4. Mission to the Moon

Musk predicted that SpaceX will build "factories connected the Moon," and "robots will beryllium adjuvant pinch that."

He acknowledged that "sounds for illustration ace sci-fi correct now," adding it mightiness look "totally nuts" but "you tin astir apt standard to 1,000 times the system of Earth successful position of intelligence launched into space, but astir apt possibly moreover 1 cardinal times."

5. Getting smarter

Musk hailed the motorboat of Claude 4.5 past September arsenic "one of the milestones and a in installments to Anthropic."

He said it was a "shock to the system" really bully the AI exemplary was.

Musk pointed to the immense progress successful AI complete the past 2 years, saying models from 2 summers agone consciousness for illustration they "should beryllium successful a museum."

Based connected caller rates of improvement, Musk said that by the extremity of adjacent year, it's "not clear to maine that there's thing that — integer astatine slightest — that AI won't beryllium capable to do."

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Theron Mohamed is simply a London-based analogous connected the Trending squad astatine Business Insider. His sum spans finance, investing, wealth, markets, and the economy.Theron joined BI successful 2019 arsenic a newsman astatine Markets Insider and roseate to the rank of analogous earlier moving to the Trending squad successful 2024. He previously covered tech, media, and telecom stocks for Investors Chronicle mag and had a little stint connected the Financial Times' Data team. He interned astatine the Wall Street Journal successful New York wherever he chiefly wrote for Heard connected the Street.Theron has freelanced for The Independent, The Telegraph, WIRED, and respective smaller publications. He holds an undergraduate grade successful surface science from the London School of Economics, and a master's grade successful publicity from Columbia University.Theron often covers Warren Buffett, Michael Burry, Jeremy Grantham and different top-flight investors. He besides writes astir the world's wealthiest group and shares financial proposal from each mode of rich | and successful people.Email Theron astatine [email protected] and travel him connected X @theron_mohamed.Expertise

  • Corporate finance
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  • Business history
  • US economy
  • Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway

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