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 hounded up on Mars Juthan Kennemy.
Speaker 3: He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 2: 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 2: But those two percent that are nasty, they I'll pay
Speaker 2: in four.
Speaker 1: Folks, we are meant for great things in the United
Speaker 1: States of America, and Elon reminds.
Speaker 4: Us of that we don't have a fourth branch of
Speaker 4: governments called Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Elon, Inc.
Speaker 4: Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. It's Tuesday, May twenty seventh.
Speaker 4: I'm Max Chafkin, sitting here with Bloomberg's Elon Musk reporter
Speaker 4: Dana Hall. Hey, Dana Hey, Max, and Bloomberg Social media reporter,
Speaker 4: our favorite high school quarterback, Kurt Wagner.
Speaker 2: Kurt, how are you? How is your Memorial Day?
Speaker 1: Hi?
Speaker 2: Max?
Speaker 1: It was wonderful.
Speaker 2: How was yours? It was good? It was good. So
Speaker 2: we have a lot to talk about.
Speaker 4: Even though I'd say Elon has been maybe a little
Speaker 4: bit quieter than usual over the last week. Maybe it
Speaker 4: was the Memorial Day holiday. So today I want to
Speaker 4: unpack some of the things that we talked about on
Speaker 4: our last episode last week. As you'll remember if you
Speaker 4: listen to podcast, David Popadoppolis and I reacted kind of
Speaker 4: in real time to Elon Musk's comments in Qatar to
Speaker 4: Bloomberg's Michal Hussein saying essentially he was going to spend
Speaker 4: less money in political contributions.
Speaker 2: We're getting more indications here.
Speaker 4: We're getting a little bit of news, including some news
Speaker 4: from Elon about what's happening, what he has planned. And
Speaker 4: then the other thing I want to do is I
Speaker 4: want to talk about X money, the big.
Speaker 2: New Twitter X credit card.
Speaker 4: This is the everything app. And we'll get into that
Speaker 4: next from Kurt. But before we do that, so Elon's
Speaker 4: future plans, Dana, I feel like we need a new
Speaker 4: term for this. We need to say, what is this
Speaker 4: a sleeping arrangement update? Because Elon went on X and
Speaker 4: he essentially said that after having spent the last few
Speaker 4: months sleeping on the floors of the White House or whatever,
Speaker 4: he's got a new location that he plans to take
Speaker 4: his rest.
Speaker 3: Well, he said, he's like laser focused on his companies, right,
Speaker 3: and he's I mean today he's in Brownsville, Texas where
Speaker 3: SpaceX is about to launch Starship yet again. But maybe
Speaker 3: I missed this over the long holiday weekend. Did he
Speaker 3: give like a bedroom?
Speaker 2: Yeah? May twenty fourth.
Speaker 4: In response to and we'll get to this with Kurt
Speaker 4: to some news out of X fire at one of
Speaker 4: the data centers, he said, back to spending twenty four
Speaker 4: to seven at work sleeping in conference server factory rooms.
Speaker 4: So apparently sleeping in the server room since it sounds
Speaker 4: kind of loud. But in any case, he said, I
Speaker 4: must be super focused on x XAI and Tesla plus
Speaker 4: Starship launched next week. As we have critical technologies rolling
Speaker 4: out as evidenced by X uptime issues this week, major
Speaker 4: operational improvemcy to be made. Kurt, there was a fire, right,
Speaker 4: that's what prompted this.
Speaker 1: There was so there was a fire at one of
Speaker 1: X's data centers near Portland. There was an outage on
Speaker 1: Saturday for a few hours for a lot of users.
Speaker 1: I didn't personally experience it, but others did. And it's
Speaker 1: not entirely clear if the fire and the outage were linked,
Speaker 1: but the timing is certainly interesting. And then you have,
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, Max, the comments from Elon basically saying, hey, look,
Speaker 1: I need to start spending more time here. There's been
Speaker 1: a lot of technical issues that I have to deal with.
Speaker 1: You said, there should have been like a failure redundancy
Speaker 1: that should have happened. What that means is that when
Speaker 1: one of the data centers went down, the other one
Speaker 1: should have picked up the slack and consumers should not
Speaker 1: have noticed there was an issue. But that didn't work.
Speaker 1: And so the fact that he's sitting here saying, hey,
Speaker 1: look I need to get back to spending twenty four
Speaker 1: to seven on the tech of these companies that I run,
Speaker 1: I think is a signal that, you know, the fire
Speaker 1: or the data centers, all of this stuff are sort
Speaker 1: of intertwined.
Speaker 4: Yeah, was this a particularly bad one, Kurt? I mean
Speaker 4: I did on Friday notice people complaining about it. Maybe
Speaker 4: my ex usage isn't as sort of fanatical as it
Speaker 4: once was, so I actually didn't personally notice this.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was bad enough that people notice for
Speaker 1: extended period of time, which is sort of rare. You know,
Speaker 1: I cover all these big platforms and max as you know,
Speaker 1: and like, it's not uncommon for there to be hey,
Speaker 1: thirty minutes people are having trouble on Instagram or TikTok
Speaker 1: or x or whatever. What it extends beyond an hour
Speaker 1: or two is when you start to scratch your head
Speaker 1: and say, Okay, something meaningful happened here. I think Elon's
Speaker 1: again his responses acknowledging that you know, that backup plan
Speaker 1: that they had in place essentially did not work, I
Speaker 1: think to me as a sign that this was you know,
Speaker 1: it was it was worse than average. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: the X was down for the whole day or something
Speaker 1: like that, but it was a just a blip.
Speaker 4: I would say, yeah, and Dana, there's been a few
Speaker 4: of these data points. I mean, you brought up the
Speaker 4: fact that there's a starship launch. He's going to have
Speaker 4: an event a live stream later today, I believe, noon
Speaker 4: Texas time talking about Mars. He sort of seems to
Speaker 4: be trying to focus publicly on the companies, maybe more
Speaker 4: than the past. Also twenty third, just to point you
Speaker 4: to a couple of other posts, I have come to
Speaker 4: the perhaps obvious conclusion that accelerating GDP growth is essential.
Speaker 4: Doge has and will do great work to postpone the
Speaker 4: day of bankruptcy in America, but the proflicacy of government
Speaker 4: means that only radical improvements in productivity can save the country.
Speaker 2: It almost sounds like he's.
Speaker 4: Declaring what like failure right, Like he's sort of saying,
Speaker 4: you know, it turns out, actually, Doge.
Speaker 2: Didn't do that much. I need to focus on my
Speaker 2: companies for the good of the country.
Speaker 3: I guess I'm very cynical about this messaging because I
Speaker 3: feel like it's a very convenient narrative for a lot
Speaker 3: of reporters in Washington to be like Musk is distancing himself.
Speaker 2: You know, Musk is.
Speaker 3: Giving up and going home and taking his ball and
Speaker 3: like focusing back in his companies, and like everyone is
Speaker 3: parenting the message that Musk himself wants to get out.
Speaker 3: And the reason why he is trying to get this
Speaker 3: message out is because he really wants Tesla's board to
Speaker 3: give him a pay package. And you know, for better
Speaker 3: or worse, Like Musk has that kind of messiah complex
Speaker 3: of I alone can fix it. So now he's like,
Speaker 3: I've got to deal with this data center issue at
Speaker 3: X and like we're gonna roll out this ROBOTAXI in
Speaker 3: Austin and we're going to go to Mars, And like
Speaker 3: he's trying to signal to investors that he is focused,
Speaker 3: because the big complaint of investors has been that he
Speaker 3: was spending too much time on Washington. So so I
Speaker 3: feel like this is a lot for his audience of
Speaker 3: investors and board members. I mean, he's always kind of
Speaker 3: micro focused and multitasks in a way that is sort
Speaker 3: of unique in corporate America. But is he really giving
Speaker 3: up like on the DOGE ambitions.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: He's got all of his people still there. It's like,
Speaker 3: is Steve Davis still the COO of Doge? Is Antonio
Speaker 3: Grassia still at the Social Security Agency? He's got CIOs
Speaker 3: in place, Like it's hard for me to imagine him
Speaker 3: really sort of working so hard in Washington and just
Speaker 3: like abandoning ship. I feel like this is optics more
Speaker 3: than a real change.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I tend to agree with you. I do think.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like two things could be true.
Speaker 4: Like one is, he could have less influence in Trump's
Speaker 4: White House today than he did I don't know a
Speaker 4: month ago. And also he could be more focused on
Speaker 4: his companies, like on a day to day basis, and
Speaker 4: also hardly moving away from politics. You know, he's still
Speaker 4: very much focused on, you know, on his influence in Washington.
Speaker 4: The other thing is, and I brought this up last week,
Speaker 4: he's going to this Bloomberg event in Qatar or dialing
Speaker 4: into the event and saying he's he's sort of spending
Speaker 4: less time on less money on politics, but at this
Speaker 4: in the same breath saying he's going to the White House.
Speaker 4: Like that week we saw him at the White House
Speaker 4: with the South African President Kurt. You know, X was
Speaker 4: kind of in the favored position before it was Doge.
Speaker 2: Has X suffered like.
Speaker 4: You kind of see it going, you know, one of
Speaker 4: two ways, but like, how have things worked at the
Speaker 4: company as Elon Musk Musk's attention sort of turned away
Speaker 4: from it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean my understanding is that he's been quite absent,
Speaker 1: which makes a lot a lot of sense. Right as
Speaker 1: we've talked about he's he not only has four other businesses,
Speaker 1: but that he's also you know, full time, halftime, part
Speaker 1: time whatever in DC. I look at the Doge thing
Speaker 1: and Elon and X more as a what does this
Speaker 1: mean for the business of the company, not so much
Speaker 1: even his time, his personal time, which is that I
Speaker 1: think in January and February, when he's tweeting constantly, when
Speaker 1: he's hanging out with Trump, when he's literally sort of
Speaker 1: dictating US policy via his Twitter account or his ex account,
Speaker 1: I think that gave X this continued influence. Right, you
Speaker 1: kind of had to pay attention to it still because
Speaker 1: it was still driving literal US policy decisions via his
Speaker 1: X account. As Elon has the last month or two,
Speaker 1: he has stopped tweeting as much about politics. He's obviously
Speaker 1: saying he's going to step away from politics. And so
Speaker 1: what I wrote last week in our newsletter was sort
Speaker 1: of like what happens to X if Elon truly follows
Speaker 1: through and steps away from politics, because he spent the
Speaker 1: last year turning this thing into a political machine. Like
Speaker 1: it the purpose of X for the most part was
Speaker 1: to get Donald Trump elected and then to support his
Speaker 1: agenda and possibly push his agenda in the ways that
Speaker 1: Elon wants it to. And if that's not what he's
Speaker 1: going to do anymore, like what is X, right, it's
Speaker 1: not really a place for breaking news, It's not really
Speaker 1: a place for the global conversation like it has historically
Speaker 1: been because Elon pivoted so aggressively into politics a year ago,
Speaker 1: and so I don't know, I'm sort of kind of
Speaker 1: sitting around wondering, like, what does this platform become if
Speaker 1: it's not a Donald Trump Elon Musk politics machine. I
Speaker 1: don't know if either what I mean, you two have
Speaker 1: both been on it for years as well. I'm curious
Speaker 1: if you have thoughts on that, But like, what's the
Speaker 1: identity of this thing now? It keeps morphine and I
Speaker 1: think the political identity that he's created is sort of
Speaker 1: crumbling as we're as we're standing here.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't really use x anymore. I lurk on it,
Speaker 3: but like I locked my account and I don't have
Speaker 3: it on my phone and I kind of like check
Speaker 3: in like every once in a while, but like, I
Speaker 3: don't use it. It is it is not the platform
Speaker 3: that I joined over a decade ago.
Speaker 4: Well, I from when I'm still addicted. Although Kurt, to
Speaker 4: your point, you know, I do think it loses some
Speaker 4: of its vitality. We will in the second segment talk
Speaker 4: a little bit about, you know, possible future identity for
Speaker 4: x as A as a bank before we get there.
Speaker 2: I mean, there is a swirl of things, right.
Speaker 4: It's not just the fact that Doge hasn't cut as
Speaker 4: much maybe as promised. It's not just the fact that
Speaker 4: there are fires breaking out in Twitter data centers and
Speaker 4: Twitter is going down. It is also, of course, you know,
Speaker 4: Tesla and the fact that the sales are are still
Speaker 4: despite Elon Musk's comments. You know, Elon Musk said last week,
Speaker 4: yet you're bad for us, but it's bad for everyone.
Speaker 4: Although as a report today essentially showing that Tesla sales
Speaker 4: are way down, down by more than fifty percent, while
Speaker 4: overall EV sales in the region are up twenty eight percent. Dana,
Speaker 4: one thing I've wondered about. We've talked about the demand thing,
Speaker 4: but if you look in that one big beautiful bill
Speaker 4: that the Trump budget bill, it is not a great
Speaker 4: bill for Tesla. And like the combination of Tesla's sales
Speaker 4: and this kind of potential hit to the revenue in
Speaker 4: the form of this budget build which takes away or
Speaker 4: would take away EV tax credits, do you think that
Speaker 4: could be pushing him away?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, Elon has always sort of said that he
Speaker 3: doesn't think there should be any subsidies whatsoever, whether it's
Speaker 3: for evs or oil and gas. So I don't know
Speaker 3: if that alone is enough to make him angry or
Speaker 3: cause some kind of rift with Trump. I think that
Speaker 3: tariffs are not good for Tesla, but like, fundamentally, like
Speaker 3: he what he cares the most about is SpaceX and
Speaker 3: he wants funding for a Mars mission, So I don't
Speaker 3: know if he's willing to jennison one for the other.
Speaker 3: But the any thing I pointed out about the European
Speaker 3: sales is that like Tesla has a factory in Germany
Speaker 3: that makes the model, why if these sales in Europe
Speaker 3: continue to crater, there's gonna be real questions about like
Speaker 3: do they keep this factory open or like do they
Speaker 3: start scaling back production, Like you don't keep making cars
Speaker 3: for a market that does not need them. And everyone
Speaker 3: always sees the problems in Europe as like, oh, Elon
Speaker 3: being so close to Trump, but it's really like it
Speaker 3: was really Elon Musk supporting the AfD in Germany that
Speaker 3: has caused this huge backlash in Europe. Like European consumers
Speaker 3: are very concerned about what Elon is doing with Visa
Speaker 3: v European politics.
Speaker 2: Trump aside, last thing, this SpaceX launch, Dana, what are
Speaker 2: you going to be looking for here? Like he's saying
Speaker 2: that twenty twenty six, right, He's that that's the goal
Speaker 2: for like some kind of Mars demonstration mission.
Speaker 4: Do you have any sense of how far away we
Speaker 4: are from that in terms of milestones that have to
Speaker 4: be hit? To me from the outside, it seems like
Speaker 4: a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's a very ambitious, very aggressive timeline, and
Speaker 3: Musk's plan is that like, not only will Starship launch
Speaker 3: to Mars in twenty twenty six, but Optimist is going
Speaker 3: to be on board. So he has a lot of
Speaker 3: a lot writing on this and we'll hear from him
Speaker 3: later today when he gives this, you know speech about Mars.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, he's always talked about going to Mars,
Speaker 3: but now Starship does exist. They've had a couple of
Speaker 3: launches that have haven't totally gone well, and so like
Speaker 3: there's a lot riding on this one going better. I
Speaker 3: think obviously he wants to show to Trump and a
Speaker 3: NASA that like this vehicle is ready and that like
Speaker 3: it can do all the things that it's supposed to do,
Speaker 3: but you know, they're constantly tweaking with the heat shield,
Speaker 3: and you know, there's all kinds of issues that they
Speaker 3: that they still work out. And I think in the
Speaker 3: world of space, you know, everyone will say space is hard,
Speaker 3: and you learn by doing and you iterate, and like
Speaker 3: what we might see as quote unquote failure is actually
Speaker 3: just part of the design, iteration, engineering learning process. So
Speaker 3: you know, SpaceX has always been very good at that.
Speaker 3: But I mean, you know, the window to go to Mars,
Speaker 3: it doesn't come around very often. So that's like a
Speaker 3: big reason why he is pushing for this twenty twenty
Speaker 3: six Dad.
Speaker 4: So in our first segment, you know, Kurt talked about
Speaker 4: kind of like what x becomes, and I think that
Speaker 4: is a big question.
Speaker 2: That's an open question. Of course.
Speaker 4: Last week we talked about Xai and this potential deal
Speaker 4: that it had with Calshi, which is a predictions company.
Speaker 4: You know, hours after we recorded that episode, Calshie actually
Speaker 4: did a one eighty pulled the announcement on the Xai deal,
Speaker 4: essentially saying that that x had not confirmed the announcement
Speaker 4: or something like that. So it sounds like some sort
Speaker 4: of either miscommunication or sort of a one eighty that
Speaker 4: business is up in the air. But Kurt, the business
Speaker 4: that I think feels actually a little bit easier to
Speaker 4: get your arms around, if not necessarily, I don't know.
Speaker 4: The most promising is money, right, the idea that Elon
Speaker 4: Musk has talked about for years that he's going to
Speaker 4: turn x Twitter into a bank.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he has been talking about this. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this just last night as I was preparing
Speaker 1: to chat about it. It was October of twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two that he first, you know, took over Twitter and
Speaker 1: was like, We're going to turn this thing into a bank.
Speaker 1: He was telling employees that from the get go, almost
Speaker 1: three years max. Where you know, we're summer of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. Now, I think we can say after a
Speaker 1: Memorial Day and we still haven't seen anything other than
Speaker 1: sort of a some hints, some teases that something might
Speaker 1: be coming. And the idea here, I think, to your point,
Speaker 1: is easy enough to wrap your head around. I think
Speaker 1: the execution is another thing. And then the adoption is actually,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, probably the toughest hurdle for them to
Speaker 1: get over. But let's talk just briefly about what this
Speaker 1: looks like I mean, imagine opening your X account and
Speaker 1: having a balance there right like essentially your your your
Speaker 1: debit card, your your account, your debit account right there,
Speaker 1: linked to your X account. Now, if I want to
Speaker 1: send you money, Max, I could. I could shoot you money,
Speaker 1: similar to Venmo. If I'm scrolling through my X feed
Speaker 1: and I see an ad for something I want to buy,
Speaker 1: I could click and I could buy it right there.
Speaker 1: You know, he had talked about having a really high
Speaker 1: interest yield on this, on the money that's in these accounts,
Speaker 1: so you'd be incentivized to essentially use this as like
Speaker 1: a safe account because you'd be making who knows how much,
Speaker 1: but we'll say three, four or five percent on that money.
Speaker 1: So that is the idea is like your X account
Speaker 1: and your financial accounts are linked together, and what would
Speaker 1: that do for you? Now, as we're now learning, it's
Speaker 1: been almost three years they haven't launched anything. So technologically
Speaker 1: this is clearly harder than they anticipated. I think they're
Speaker 1: running into some regulatory issues. They're trying to get licensed
Speaker 1: for payments in all fifty states. I believe they're in
Speaker 1: forty one states. But you don't want to roll out
Speaker 1: a product. When you know, if someone in New York,
Speaker 1: for example, where they're not licensed, can't send money to
Speaker 1: someone in California, like it just it doesn't really work
Speaker 1: all that well if you don't have all fifty states.
Speaker 1: And then the last thing is just adoption. Is the
Speaker 1: average X user going to actually move their money from
Speaker 1: a Chase or a Bank of America or something like
Speaker 1: that and store it in X And I think that's
Speaker 1: just an incredibly, incredibly high bar for a consumer to do.
Speaker 4: Dude, I don't trust X with my jokes, let alone
Speaker 4: my you know, let alone my life savings. But that said,
Speaker 4: there will be people, and I should just say the
Speaker 4: reason we're talking about this, so you know, Elon Musk
Speaker 4: as often, is kind of driving this with his with
Speaker 4: posting on X. A Tesla owners group tweeted that X
Speaker 4: money was launching soon. X Money being this you know,
Speaker 4: financial service offered by the company formerly known as Twitter.
Speaker 4: Elon wrote on May twenty fifth, so I believe that
Speaker 4: was on Sunday. This will be a very limited access
Speaker 4: beta at first. When people's savings are involved, extreme care
Speaker 4: must be taken.
Speaker 3: I don't want my bank account to be in beta,
Speaker 3: like sorry, like I just told like, I just would
Speaker 3: never want my personal finances to be in beta mode
Speaker 3: at an Elon Musk company like that. I mean, there's
Speaker 3: already enough problems as it is with just like security
Speaker 3: of data in this new world of you know, hackers
Speaker 3: and the Internet and like online banking in general. Like
Speaker 3: I don't know, I'm just I'm very I'm very like
Speaker 3: old school with my banking and would not willfully share
Speaker 3: my banking contacts with the social media platform, particularly one
Speaker 3: that's like AI based and trying to use information to
Speaker 3: train their algorithms.
Speaker 4: We're joking about this because of course the failwell and Twitter.
Speaker 4: As Kurt knows well. He wrote a book about Elon's
Speaker 4: takeover of Twitter, Battle for the Bird. This is a
Speaker 4: company that has like has sort of for its entire history,
Speaker 4: had technical problems even dating back to Elon. It definitely
Speaker 4: doesn't convey like trusted secure. It's more like free wheeling.
Speaker 4: Anything could happen. It's pretty much all the things you
Speaker 4: don't associate with a bank. On the other hand, Kurt,
Speaker 4: I mean you talked about the regulatory progress that they've made.
Speaker 4: There was also this report that I believe you wrote
Speaker 4: about back in January Musk essentially striking a deal with
Speaker 4: Visa that would make Visa a payments partner X. I mean,
Speaker 4: what is in place right now outside of the sort
Speaker 4: of regulatory issue that you talked about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I believe they have licenses secured in forty
Speaker 1: one states. So again that's just sort of bare bones.
Speaker 1: You need that in order to operate in those states
Speaker 1: to send money to other people or to businesses. So
Speaker 1: they're working their way through that. The Visa thing, My
Speaker 1: understanding of that is, you know, you would have some
Speaker 1: type of card that is linked to your accounts SOL,
Speaker 1: like a debit card for example, that you could literally
Speaker 1: go out into the real world and walk into a
Speaker 1: store and buy something with this card. And so in
Speaker 1: order to do something like that, Max, you need partners
Speaker 1: who do debit cards or credit cards, and Visa would
Speaker 1: make sense. They're they're gonna need banking partners, right, They're
Speaker 1: gonna need We know some of them, which of course
Speaker 1: I can't call at the top of my head, but
Speaker 1: we know some of them via their payments applications documents
Speaker 1: that we've gotten from some of these states. We've done
Speaker 1: Foyer requests to try and get those applications to get
Speaker 1: a better sense of what it is that they're doing.
Speaker 1: This will only if they are partnering with other financial
Speaker 1: services providers, Visa being one, and then once you get
Speaker 1: all of that stuff in place, you need to convince
Speaker 1: actual people to do this, and we've talked about how
Speaker 1: that's going to be a problem. But you know, a
Speaker 1: Visa that's a well known name, that's a household name.
Speaker 1: That's a good sign for them that they have partnered
Speaker 1: with someone that people are familiar with and who know.
Speaker 1: But I think that's sort of table stakes when it
Speaker 1: comes to your money, right, Like You're not gonna sit
Speaker 1: there and be like, wow, Visa, this is incredible. You're
Speaker 1: gonna be like, yeah, that's what I expect. Like if
Speaker 1: I'm going to be giving you my money, I expect
Speaker 1: to have household names involved. And so they are, to
Speaker 1: their credit kind of getting that. But I think that
Speaker 1: that again is sort of the bare minimum at this point.
Speaker 3: What is the model for this? Is this what Weibo does,
Speaker 3: Like is there payments on some of the apps in China?
Speaker 3: Because I feel like Musk is very aware of what
Speaker 3: consumer behavior is in China and there must be like
Speaker 3: even though this might be going back to the early
Speaker 3: PayPal days. Like this idea of making X the everything
Speaker 3: app is that modeled on something that already exists elsewhere
Speaker 3: in the world.
Speaker 1: I think everyone always points to we Chat in China,
Speaker 1: this idea of you know, having entertainment, banking, social networking,
Speaker 1: all shopping all in one location. The issue and why
Speaker 1: I'm pretty skeptical that this is going to work, is
Speaker 1: that several companies, including Meta and Mark Zuckerberg, have attempted
Speaker 1: to do this already in the US without success. And
Speaker 1: I think sort of the conclusion that I've come to
Speaker 1: from having spoken with people about this over the years
Speaker 1: is that the US market is just so fragmented already
Speaker 1: that the idea of sort of putting it all back
Speaker 1: together feels almost impossible. Right Like you go to Uber
Speaker 1: when you want a ride, and you go to your
Speaker 1: banking app when you want a bank, and you go
Speaker 1: to X or Meta or TikTok or whatever when you
Speaker 1: want a social network. And I think the consumer behavior
Speaker 1: is just so different in the US than it was
Speaker 1: in China, and in China it's controlled more, right, like
Speaker 1: the government can basically control which companies, you know, get
Speaker 1: get market share, or can sprout up and so it's
Speaker 1: just not the case here. And so I'm pretty skeptical
Speaker 1: this is gonna happen, in part because this is an
Speaker 1: idea I've probably been writing about for like ten years
Speaker 1: in the US specifically, and it just hasn't come to fruition.
Speaker 4: Facebook is way way bigger than X like, so, so
Speaker 4: you're starting with a much smaller base of users, a
Speaker 4: base of users that are not as addicted to it
Speaker 4: as as people are of Facebook.
Speaker 2: Like, it's just it's just a much weaker position.
Speaker 4: In addition to like all the market challenges we talked
Speaker 4: about as well as the political challenges, there is one
Speaker 4: little wrinkle. I've seen a couple of reports suggesting that
Speaker 4: when Elon Musk creates this X credit card, you will
Speaker 4: be able to print your Twitter user.
Speaker 2: Name on it. Wow. Okay, I think that could change everything, Kurt,
Speaker 2: because you know, throw.
Speaker 1: Out everything I've said to this point and let's let's
Speaker 1: start from zero. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, that sounds
Speaker 1: like something that would happen, you know. I feel like
Speaker 1: that's that's like the ex premium subscriber perk, right that
Speaker 1: lures people into their eight dollars a month.
Speaker 2: I'm picturing you taking the team out to.
Speaker 1: The local you know, Buffalo wild Wings after a taping
Speaker 1: and throwing down that visa card.
Speaker 4: Okay, so we just got through Memorial Day, you know,
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five, or two to a third of the
Speaker 4: way through a little more than that.
Speaker 2: But I wanted to look ahead to next year, and.
Speaker 4: We've been talking about all of these things that Elon
Speaker 4: Musk is trying to do, the reasons why he wants
Speaker 4: to sleep on the floor, sleep in the factory or whatever.
Speaker 4: And what I'd like, Kurt and Dana, what I'd like
Speaker 4: you both to do is sort of rank these from
Speaker 4: most likely to succeed to least likely to succeed by
Speaker 4: the end of twenty twenty six. So by the end
Speaker 4: of next year, so the list goes a functioning flea
Speaker 4: of robotaxis Tesla's trying to do that x money, surpassing
Speaker 4: one of the big mobile payment apps in usage by
Speaker 4: the end of twenty twenty six. Or third Optimist that's
Speaker 4: Tesla's humanoid robot heading on a starship rocket to Mars
Speaker 4: by the end of next year. Kurt Wagner, what's the
Speaker 4: most likely of those?
Speaker 1: Oh man, I know you're going to pick me.
Speaker 2: First.
Speaker 1: Least likely is probably a full functioning fleet of robotaxis,
Speaker 1: just because now I think that's actually the most likely
Speaker 1: of those, like long term probably, but twenty twenty six,
Speaker 1: I'm just not sold. I'll say the second least likely
Speaker 1: is X payments. As we've talked about, I've already shared
Speaker 1: why I'm pretty skeptical that that's going to take off.
Speaker 1: And then I'm going to say the most likely is
Speaker 1: the sending Optimists to Mars. And it's purely because of
Speaker 1: the window that Anna mentioned earlier, how there's sort of
Speaker 1: like limited windows that you can you can send these
Speaker 1: ships on their way to Mars, And so I think,
Speaker 1: you know, Elon will Again. I don't think any of
Speaker 1: these things are very likely, but I guess of the three,
Speaker 1: I would say maybe that one's most likely simply because
Speaker 1: it has that time pressure built in of trying to
Speaker 1: hit that window. So don't play this tape again at
Speaker 1: the end of twenty twenty six. Let's let's burn this
Speaker 1: one after this.
Speaker 3: I agree because I think also of all of the
Speaker 3: things Elon cares the most about, Mars, like Mars has
Speaker 3: been the animating force of his life for over two decades,
Speaker 3: and like, you know, for whatever criticism you might have
Speaker 3: of Elon, he's like what do they call it, like
Speaker 3: a forcing function, Like he will bring the full force
Speaker 3: of his personality and his ambition and he will drive
Speaker 3: his team to meet that deadline because it is a
Speaker 3: window and like Optimus is exists and is like walking
Speaker 3: around and you know, like who knows if it's tele
Speaker 3: operated or not. But like, I don't think there's anything
Speaker 3: stopping them from putting an Optimist a couple of Optimist
Speaker 3: robots on a ship and trying to send it to Mars.
Speaker 3: Whether they get to Mars remains to be seen, but like,
Speaker 3: I think that they will do everything in their power
Speaker 3: to meet that deadline. And as we've talked about before,
Speaker 3: President Trump mentioned it in his inauguration speech, and I
Speaker 3: think that that is really the main thing that Elon
Speaker 3: has always cared about.
Speaker 2: Okay, you guys are wrong.
Speaker 4: The most likely is the payment thing, because that's the
Speaker 4: only one of the.
Speaker 2: Three that could conceivably happen.
Speaker 4: And like I don't again, like I don't know that
Speaker 4: ex money can really take on Venmo or Zell or.
Speaker 2: Apple pay or Square.
Speaker 4: But to me, like you never know it like there
Speaker 4: are no like technological barriers to that one. Succeeding that
Speaker 4: one is just purely about perceptions about Elon Musk And
Speaker 4: maybe I mean, I feel like it's a comment on
Speaker 4: how difficult he like his position has gotten politically, that
Speaker 4: that we have trouble picturing it, because I do agree
Speaker 4: it's hard to imagine. I would say that the second
Speaker 4: most likely is the Robotaxi fleet only because I think
Speaker 4: like there's a lot of squishiness in that in that term,
Speaker 4: and I could see defining it in a way where
Speaker 4: Elon would allow himself to declare victory. I don't I
Speaker 4: don't buy Optimist getting to Mars by twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: Guys.
Speaker 4: I feel like it's it's gonna be tough. They got
Speaker 4: to refuel the thing. They're like eight zillion steps there.
Speaker 4: And like Danna does, does optimists actually work or we've
Speaker 4: seen some videos? Like again, like, I don't know, I
Speaker 4: don't know if I've seen enough optimists here to trust
Speaker 4: him on another planet.
Speaker 3: Oh, come on, Optimist is gonna be babysitting your kid
Speaker 3: and doing ballet and playing the piano.
Speaker 2: Come on?
Speaker 1: Well, new nickname for Max the contrarian.
Speaker 2: Name.
Speaker 4: Listen, I'm gonna sign up for X money right now,
Speaker 4: get that credit card out, start and start buy you
Speaker 4: guys things, and before you know it, ts.
Speaker 1: Up handedly push your prediction over the finish line. I
Speaker 1: think that's a good idea.
Speaker 2: Kurt Dana, thanks for being here as always.
Speaker 1: Thank you Max.
Speaker 4: This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Annam Maserakis is
Speaker 4: our editor, Blake Maple's handles engineering, and Dave Purcell factchecks.
Speaker 4: Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrickson. The Eloni theme is
Speaker 4: written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sagiera. Brendan
Speaker 4: Francis Newtam is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is
Speaker 4: ahead of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks to our supporters
Speaker 4: Joel Weber and Brad Stone.
Speaker 2: I'm Max Chafkin.
Speaker 4: If you have a minute, rate and review our show,
Speaker 4: it'll help other listeners find us and we will see
Speaker 4: you next week.