Conversation with Elon Musk | World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2026
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (13)
Transcript
3:28Larry FinkThat was not a. That was not a large applause. Start again.
3:39Larry FinkThat's better. Thank you.
3:41Elon MuskYeah, we're going to make this interesting.
3:45Larry FinkHow many quotes are you going to want that are going to be after this session?
3:52Elon MuskI don't know. I mean, five.
3:54Larry FinkOkay, so, good afternoon, everyone. It's great to see everybody here. It's been an amazing week here in Davos. Hopefully everybody saw that we are having conversations here. Hopefully everybody agrees.
4:11Larry FinkThere are some conversations that we may have disagreed. There's many conversations we may have agreed. But through those conversations and I think today's result with a peace agreement earlier today, the World Economic Forum is here to have those conversations, to have understandings and also resolution.
4:30Larry FinkSo it's an important component of who we and what we are. And I'm thrilled to have Elon Musk here. He came all the way from California to be here to see all of you.
4:44Larry FinkSo thank you, Elon.
4:46Elon MuskYou're most welcome.
4:51Elon MuskI heard about the formation of the peace summit and I was like, is that. Is that P. Iec,
5:03Elon MuskYou know, little piece of Greenland, a little piece of Venezuela.
5:09Larry FinkWe got one.
5:10Elon MuskAll we want is peace. Okay.
5:12Larry FinkI want to. As I said, I'm a pretty proud CEO of BlackRock. Since we went public, the compounding return of BlackRock to our shareholders with 21%. Since Elon took Tesla public, his compounded return is 43%.
5:34Larry FinkThis is just another advertisement for everybody, especially for Europeans. This is why more citizens should be investing with growth, investing with their countries. Imagine if a lot of pension funds invested with Elon Musk when Tesla went public and how much we return with the all the pension funds that invested side by side with Elon and the growth.
6:01Larry FinkSo a spectacular return. There's very few companies. Well, I don't think there's any other company as large as Tesla today that has that compounded return. So congratulations. I think a good measurement.
6:13Elon MuskWell, we have an incredible team at Tesla and that's the reason.
6:17Larry FinkSo I want to get into the dirt the meaningful component about technology, the possibilities. I want to talk about AI and robotics, energy, space, and the progress ultimately coming down to engineering, engineering discipline, scale, execution.
6:36Larry FinkAnd few people, if not anyone, has the experience and the fortitude to confront these issues head on. Not just the ideas, but the execution across so many different technologies, Elon.
6:50Larry FinkAnd that's why I thought it was important for us to have this dialogue here in Davos. So you're presently building on AI, on robotics, on space, on energy, all at the same time.
7:04Larry FinkWhen you look across those efforts what do they have in common from an engineering standpoint?
7:12Elon MuskWell, they're all very difficult technology challenges. But the overall goal of my companies is to maximize the future of civilization. Like basically maximize the probability that civilization has a great future and to expand consciousness beyond Earth.
7:34Elon MuskSo take SpaceX for example, that SpaceX is about advancing rocket technology to the point where we can extend life and consciousness beyond Earth to the moon, to Mars, eventually to other star systems.
7:49Elon MuskAnd I think we should always view consciousness, life as we know it as precarious and delicate, because to the best of our knowledge, we don't know of life anywhere else.
8:04Elon MuskYou know, I'm often asked, are there aliens among us? And I'll say that I am one
8:12Larry Finkor you're from the future.
8:13Elon MuskThey don't believe me. Okay, so, but I think if anyone would know if there are aliens among us, it would be me. And we have 9,000 satellites up there and not once have we had to maneuver around an alien spaceship.
8:32Elon MuskSo I'm like, I don't know. Bottom line is I think we need to assume that life and consciousness is extremely rare and it might only be us. And if that's the case, then we need to do everything possible to ensure that the light of consciousness is not extinguished.
8:55Elon MuskBecause we're effectively, the way I view it is, the image in my mind is of a tiny candle in a vast darkness, tiny candle of consciousness that could easily go out.
9:08Elon MuskAnd that's why it's important to make life multi planetary, such that if there is a natural disaster or a man made disaster on Earth, that consciousness continues. That's the purpose of SpaceX.
9:22Elon MuskTesla is obviously about sustainable technology and, and, and also at this point we've sort of added to our mission sustainable abundance. So with robotics and AI, this, this is really the path to abundance for all.
9:43Elon MuskIf you say, you know, people often talk about solving global poverty or essentially how do we make, give everyone a very high standard of living? I think the only way to do this is AI and robotics, which, which doesn't mean that it is without its issues.
10:04Elon MuskI mean we need to be very careful with AI, we need to be very careful with robotics. We don't want to find ourselves in a James Cameron movie, you know, Terminator, he's got great movies, love his movies.
10:20Elon MuskBut we don't want to be in Terminator obviously. But, but if you have ubiquitous AI that is essentially free or close to it and ubiquitous robotics, then you will have an ex, an explosion in the global economy, an expansion in the global economy that is truly beyond all precedent, Elon.
10:44Larry FinkCan that expansion be broad?
10:47Elon MuskYes.
10:47Larry FinkOr is it narrow? And how can that be created? How can it broaden the global economy?
10:54Elon MuskYeah, it's. I mean, I mean, a way to think of it is that if you have a large number of humanoid robots, the economic output is the average productivity per robot times the number of robots.
11:11Elon MuskRight. And, and actually my prediction is in the, in the benign scenario of the future that we will. The robots will actually make so many robots in AI that they will actually saturate all human needs, meaning you won't be able to even think of something to ask the robot for at a certain point, like there will be such an abundance of goods and services.
11:38Elon MuskBecause my prediction is that there'll be more robots than people. So.
11:43Larry FinkBut how do you then have human purpose in that scenario?
11:47Elon MuskYeah, I mean, you know, there are. Nothing's perfect, you know, but I mean, I mean, it is a necessary. Like you can't have both. You can't have work that has to be done and amazing abundance for all.
12:09Elon MuskBecause if it's, if it's work that has to be done, then, and only some people can do it, then you can't have abundance.
12:17Larry FinkIt's narrow.
12:17Elon MuskIt's narrow, exactly. But if you have billions of humanoid robots, and I think there will be. I think everyone on Earth is going to have one and going to want one.
12:31Elon MuskBecause you. Who wouldn't want a robot to, you know, assuming it's very safe, watch over your kids, take care of your pet. If you have elderly parents, a lot of friends of mine said they have elderly parents, it's very difficult to take care of them.
12:50Larry FinkExpensive.
12:50Elon MuskYeah, it's expensive. And, and it's expensive. And there just aren't enough people to take care of the. There aren't enough young people to take care of the old people.
12:57Elon MuskRight. So if they, if you had a robot that could take care of and protect an elderly parent, I think that would be great. That would be an amazing thing to have.
13:11Elon MuskAnd I think we will have those things. So overall, I'm very optimistic about the future. I think we're headed for a future of amazing abundance, which is very cool.
13:24Elon MuskAnd definitely we are in the most interesting time in history. I think there's more, a more interesting time in history.
13:35Larry FinkCan we, you and I, reverse aging in this new history, or are we going to see it?
13:43Elon MuskYou know, I haven't put much time into the aging stuff. I do think it is a very solvable problem. Like you can. I think when we figure out what causes Aging, I think we'll find it's incredibly obvious.
13:59Elon MuskIt's not a subtle thing. The reason I say it's not a subtle thing is because all the cells in your body, you know, with some pretty much age at the same rate.
14:09Elon MuskI've never seen someone with, with an old left arm and a young right arm ever in my life. So why is that? That means that there must be a clock, a synchronizing clock that is synchronizing across 35 trillion cells in your body.
14:27Elon MuskAnd you know, there is some benefit to death, by the way. There's a reason why we don't actually have a longer lifespan. Because if you, if you have, if people do live forever for a very long time, I think there's some risk of an ossification of society, of things just getting kind of locked in place.
14:54Elon MuskAnd you know, it just may become stultifying, just not lack vibrancy. But that said, do I think we'll figure out ways to extend life and maybe even reverse aging?
15:15Elon MuskI think that's highly likely.
15:18Larry FinkI'm looking forward to that. Yeah. So the future that you talk about, the AI models, autonomous machines, rockets, depends on massive increases of computer, massive increases in energy, expensive energy manufacturing scale.
15:39Larry FinkWhat are the bottlenecks to get there? And once again, with all that expenditures, again, how can we make sure that it's broadened? Not narrow.
15:56Elon MuskI just think the natural thing is it's going to be very broad because AI companies will seek as many customers as they possibly can and the cost of AI will get is already very low and it's plummeting every year.
16:09Elon MuskI mean, almost. The cost of AI is almost meaningfully changing on a month to month basis.
16:16Larry FinkThere's open, there's open models now everywhere.
16:18Elon MuskYeah. Yes, very. There's open models. And the open models only lack. They're maybe a year behind.
16:25Larry FinkRight.
16:25Elon MuskThe, the private, the sort of closed models. So, so I think the AI companies will seek as many customers as possible, which means they'll see, they'll provide AI to the world.
16:39Larry FinkBut the cost of getting to there, the compute, the chips, the fab, the powering that to me, what are the, what are the, you know, those are huge limiting factor.
16:53Elon MuskYeah. I think the limiting factor for AI deployment is fundamentally electrical power.
16:59Larry FinkIt's just, it's energy.
17:02Elon MuskYeah, yeah. I mean, we're seeing the, the rate of AI chip production increase exponentially. But the rate of electricity being brought online is 3%, 4% a year. Yeah. It's clear that we're very soon, maybe even later this year we'll be producing more chips than we can turn on.
17:25Elon MuskExcept for China. China. China is. China's growth in electricity is tremendous.
17:29Larry FinkThey're building 100 gigawatts of nuclear as we speak.
17:33Elon MuskActually, solar is the biggest thing in China. So China's, I believe China's production capacity on Solar is 1500 gigawatts a year. And they're deploying over 1000 gigawatts a year of solar.
17:47Elon MuskNow, you know, for continuous solar load, you divide that by roughly, I don't know, four or five. Call it, that's around 250 gigawatts of steady state power paired with batteries.
18:04Elon MuskAnd that's a very big number. That's half of the average power usage in the U.S. right. So U.S. u.S. Power usage on average is, is 500 gigawatts. China, just in solar, just like, just in solar, like that can provide steady state power and batteries can do half of the US electricity output per year just for solar.
18:29Elon MuskSolar is by far the biggest source of energy. And actually when you look beyond, or even on Earth, but certainly beyond Earth, the sun rounds up to 100% of all energy.
18:45Elon MuskThis is an important thing to consider. So the sun is 99.8% of the mass of the solar system. Jupiter is about 0.1%. And everything else is miscellaneous. Now even if you were to burn Jupiter in a thermonuclear reactor, the amount of energy produced by the sun would still round up to 100% because Jupiter is only 0.1%.
19:14Elon MuskIf you teleported, teleported three more Jupiters into our solar system and burnt three more Jupiters and everything else in the solar system, the sun's energy would still round up to 100%.
19:30Elon MuskSo it's really all about the Sun. And that's why one of the things we'll be doing with SpaceX within a few years is launching solar powered AI satellites, right?
19:45Elon MuskBecause the space is really the source of immense power. And then you don't need to take up any room on Earth. There's so much room in space. And you can scale to enormous, you can scale to I think ultimately hundreds of terawatts a year.
20:09Larry FinkYou and I have had these conversations before, but why don't you tell the audience what would it take for the United States and what type of geography would it take to have that solar field to electrify the United States?
20:22Larry FinkAnd then let me ask a question. Why aren't we doing it?
20:26Elon MuskYeah. So I mean, I guess rough way to think about it is 100 miles by 100 miles, or call it 160 km by 160 km of solar is enough to power the entire United States.
20:42Elon MuskSo 100 mile by 100 mile areas is, I mean, you could take basically a small corner of Utah, Nevada, Nevada, New Mexico. Obviously you wouldn't want it all in one place, but it was a very small percentage of the area of the US to generate all of the electricity that the US uses.
21:03Elon MuskAnd the same is true, actually. I mean, for Europe you could take a small, you could take relatively unpopulated areas of say Spain and Sicily and generate all of the electricity power that Europe needs.
21:18Larry FinkSo why don't you think that there's a movement towards that here and in the United States?
21:23Elon MuskWell, there is, as it is in China. Well, unfortunately in the US the, the tariff barriers for solar panels are extremely high and that makes the economics of deploying solar so artificially high because China makes almost all the solar and the.
21:46Larry FinkWhat would it take for Europe or the US to build it commercially if it's that scale?
21:53Elon MuskYeah, I think, I think. Well, I can tell you what we're going to do. You know, Space X and Tesla was, is where we're building up large scale solar.
22:03Larry FinkRight.
22:04Elon MuskSo the SpaceX and Tesla teams both separately are working to build to 100 gigawatts a year of solar power in the US of manufactured solar power. And that'll probably take us, I don't know, about three years or something.
22:20Elon MuskBut these are pretty big numbers and you know, I'd encourage others to do the same. We obviously don't control the, you know, U.S. tariff policy, but for other countries, China makes solar cells that are incredibly low cost and I think it would be worth doing large scale solar.
22:54Larry FinkSo I know you are, you're going to be having a couple of big announcements on robotics and what it can do. I mean, when I went to the factory, you showed me those robots.
23:06Elon MuskYeah,
23:10Larry Finkhow quickly you talked about the billions of robots, but how quickly and how quickly can they be deployed in a manufacturing setting? How quickly can they be utilized and be functional and be create that abundance that you talked about?
23:29Elon MuskWell, humanoid robotics will advance very quickly. I think. We do have some Tesla Optimus robots doing simple tasks in the factory, except probably later this year. By the end of this year I think they'll be doing more complex tasks, but still deployed in an industrial environment.
23:57Elon MuskAnd probably sometimes next year. I'd say by the end of next year I think we'd be selling humanoid robots to the Public, that's when we are confident that it's very high reliability, very high safety and the range of functionality is also very high.
24:20Elon MuskYou can basically ask it to do anything you'd like.
24:23Larry FinkYou're already seeing that in Tesla cars. This, the software changes that you're doing and what is it every quarter now a software change that upgrades the ability of the robot within the car.
24:34Elon MuskYes, the Tesla full self driving software. We update it sometimes once a week. And recently some of the insurance companies have said that it is actually so safe, Tesla full stop driving so safe that they're offering customers half price insurance if they, if they use Tesla full self driving in the car.
25:00Larry FinkAnd that can be monitored by the insurance company. Is that part of the agreement?
25:03Elon MuskYeah, but I think self driving cars is essentially a solved problem at this point.
25:15Larry FinkRight.
25:17Elon MuskAnd Tesla's rolled out sort of robotaxi service in a few cities and will be very, very widespread by the end of this year within the U.S. and then we hope to get supervised full self driving approval in Europe hopefully next month.
25:36Larry FinkReally? That quickly?
25:38Elon MuskYeah. And then maybe a similar timing for China, hopefully.
25:44Larry FinkI want to move to space because historically space is very capital intensive. It historically been done by governments. Obviously Space X changed the whole model, but we've seen it slow to scale and now I'm starting to see it ramping up in what you're doing and other things.
26:02Larry FinkTalk to us about the reason, you know, the automation and how it's changing the economics in building and preparing for us in operating in space. Sure.
26:18Elon MuskWell, the key breakthrough that tells the major breakthrough that SpaceX is hoping to achieve this year is full reusability. So no one has ever achieved full reusability of a rocket, which is very important for the cost of access to space.
26:35Elon MuskWe've achieved partial reusability with Falcon 9 by landing the boost stage. We've now landed the boost stage over 500 times. But we have to throw away the upper stage.
26:46Elon MuskThe upper stage sort of burns up on re entry for Falcon 9. So. And the cost of that is equivalent to a small to medium sized jet. So but with Starship, which is a giant rocket, it's the largest flying machine ever made.
27:01Larry FinkThat's a rocket that you're using for the idea of going to Mars, right?
27:05Elon MuskYeah, Mars and the moon as well as for high volume satellite stuff. So Starship, hopefully this year we should prove full reusability for Starship, which will be a profound invention because the cost of access to space will drop by a factor of 100 when you achieve full reusability.
27:33Larry FinkRight.
27:34Elon MuskIt's the same sort of economic difference that you would expect between say a reusable aircraft and a non reusable aircraft. Like if you have to throw your aircraft away after every flight, that would be a very expensive flight.
27:49Elon MuskBut if you only have to refuel, then it's the cost of the fuel. And so that's really the fundamental breakthrough that gets the cost of access to space, we think below the cost of freight on aircraft.
28:11Elon MuskSo, you know, under a hundred dollars a pound type of thing easily. So it makes putting large satellites into, into space very low, very, very cheap. And then when you have solar in space, you, you get five times more effectiveness, maybe even more than that than solar on the ground.
28:35Elon MuskBecause it's, it's always sunny.
28:37Larry FinkCold.
28:39Elon MuskYeah, it's, it's, it's, well, it's always sunny. So you don't have a day, night cycle or seasonality or weather. And you get about 30% more power in space because you don't have atmospheric attenuation of the power.
28:54Elon MuskThe net effect is solar is five times more. Any given solar panel will do five times more energy in space than on the ground.
29:05Larry FinkIs there any capacity in doing that and then taking that power and bringing it back to Earth? Is there any way of doing that? Or you're just taking that power and utilizing it for the needs like building AI data centers in the space.
29:22Elon MuskI think the case, it's a no brainer for building AI, solar powered AI data centers in space because as you mentioned, it's also very cold in space. If you're in the shadow, it's very cold in space, just 3 degrees Kelvin.
29:37Elon MuskSo you just have your solar panels facing the sun and then a radiator that's like point like pointed away from the sun so it has no sun incidents. And then it's, and then it's just cooling.
29:50Elon MuskIt's a very efficient cooling system. So net effect is that the lowest cost place to put AI will be space. And that'll be true within two years, maybe three, three at the latest.
30:05Larry FinkWow. So looking 10 or 20 years out, what would, how would you describe success with AI or space technology? And where do you see it? Is that, can you, are you more certain what's going to happen the next three years or five or 10?
30:23Elon MuskI don't know what's going to happen in 10 years, but the rate at which AI is progressing, I think we're, we might have AI that is smarter than any human by the end of this year.
30:38Elon MuskAnd I Would say no later than next year. And then probably by 2030 or 2031, call it five years from now, AI will be smarter than all of humanity collectively.
30:55Larry FinkWe only have a number of minutes left, but I want to humanize you for a second so there's no speculation that you're up.
31:02Elon MuskRight.
31:03Larry FinkI want to, I mean I would frame this question by you are the most successful entrepreneur industrialist in the 21st century, maybe beyond. So I want to really get this, you know, what inspired you, who inspired you?
31:20Larry FinkWhat was the foundation of your curiosity? And importantly, was there a aha moment epiphany at any time in your life and career?
31:34Elon MuskWell, I mean as a kid I read a lot of science fiction, sci fi, fantasy books. Yep. We talked about, and comic books and I always liked technology. I didn't expect to be where I am today.
31:50Elon MuskSeems incredibly implausible. But yeah, I was inspired by reading about books about the future, about science fiction and, and I guess I want to make science fiction, not fiction forever at some point turn science fiction to science back.
32:07Elon MuskAnd you know, we want to have like Starfleet and Star Trek. Really for real, like where we actually have giant spaceships traveling through space, going to other planets, traveling to other star
32:23Larry Finksystems, beamed up to go back to New York. I'd like to just be beamed back to New York instead of flying.
32:33Elon MuskYeah.
32:36Larry FinkTell you about Star Trek?
32:38Elon MuskNo, I guess my essential, what I would call the philosophy, philosophy of curiosity. I'd like to understand the meaning of life. You know, the, it is the standard model.
32:50Elon MuskIs the standard model of physics correct regarding the beginning of life, beginning of existence and the end of the universe? What, what questions do we not know to ask that we should ask and AI will help us with these things.
33:06Elon MuskSo I'm just trying to understand how do we get here, what's going on, what's real? Are there aliens? Maybe there are. And if we've got, if we've got spaceships that are traveling to other star systems, we may find, we may encounter aliens and we may find many long dead alien civilizations.
33:23Elon MuskBut I just want to know what's going on. I'm curious about the universe and that's my philosophy.
33:34Larry FinkDo you see yourself ever going to Mars in your lifetime?
33:39Elon MuskYeah, I mean I would say like, you know, I, that's a long commitment.
33:43Larry FinkI've been asked, isn't that three years each way?
33:46Elon MuskIt's six months.
33:48Larry FinkSix months, that's all it is.
33:49Elon MuskYeah, six months. But the planets only align every, every two years.
33:52Larry FinkOkay.
33:53Elon MuskSo yeah, I've been asked a few times like do I want to die on Mars? And I'm like yes but just not on impact.
34:08Larry FinkThat's a good answer. Anyway we're out of time. Hopefully everybody enjoyed this. I mean there's so many myths around Elon Musk I could tell you he's a great friend and I constantly learn so much from him and I'm totally inspired by what he has done.
34:30Larry FinkI've been inspired who he is and I'm totally inspired by his vision of the future and I don't think it's such a bad future and I agree with his optimism.
34:40Larry FinkSo Elon, thank you. Any last words?
34:46Elon MuskWell I think generally I think my last words would be I would encourage everyone to be optimistic and excited about the future.
34:53Larry FinkGood.
34:55Elon MuskAnd generally I think for quality of life it is actually better to err on the side of being an optimist and wrong rather than a pessimist and right on that