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