Elon Musk & Gwynne Shotwell on AI Risks and Peer Review, Starship, Terafab, SpaceX/Tesla Merger
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Quick question, what's our latest timeline on getting to Mars?
Getting to Mars? Oh, I think we'll put people down within a decade. Welcome Gwen Shotwell, the president and COO of SpaceX.
She's an instrumental, a really crucial person to to the success of SpaceX. She's really the glue. You know, she's the glue to the tornado.
Fail fast, learn fast, make your design robust. I would be disappointed if we didn't have a settlement on the moon.
The Space and AI firm has officially made history on its $75 billion IPO, debuting with a market value of $1.7 trillion.
The most efficient place to put it for its compute is on orbit. Manage risk, don't avoid it.
Please welcome Gwen Shotwell.
Okay. Thank you so much for coming. Wait a right here in the mouth?
Welcome. Thank you.
Thanks for being here. It's good
to be here.
Nice to see you. Nice to
see you.
Well, um we really appreciate you coming out. How's it going at SpaceX?
You know, we're bored, there's nothing going on.
Not a lot happening.
I've got all the time in the world. So by the way, Gwen Elon has more time, by the way.
Yeah, I mean You've been at SpaceX forever. Are you the longest tenured employee after Elon?
What is the background and role of Gwynne Shotwell at SpaceX?
After Elon, yeah. In fact, my twenty fourth anniversary was the ninth of September last week. Some time. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That is
extraordinary. Can you take us back to the day where you initially get this call and you're like, hey Uh there's this thing like What is the the arc of the decision look like? And how did you get convinced to underwrite this business? Like just walk us through that.
Okay, well Elon underwrote it, right? I just worked there.
Yeah.
But the the story is uh a little crazy actually. So I was going out to lunch. Uh one of my best friends who I was working with was gonna go work for Elon. And I took him out to lunch, kind of a going away lunch, and he's like, Oh when I dropped him back off, he said, Oh, come on in and meet Elon. Like, ah, he's busy, you know, uh, we why we don't need to do that. But we did it anyhow, and I met him And um I said, Hey, I think you really need I think you need a full time person to run your business development shop. You know, you've got kind of a part timer, he's a contractor, it you know, it's not a great look. And and he looked at me very thoughtfully and, you know, kinda Scratched his head and then w said goodbye.
Chatted a little bit, said goodbye, and then I got back to my office and I got a call from Elon's assistant, Mary Beth, and she said Elon wants you to apply for the new vice president in a business development position. Can you come interview? I'm like, now? I no more, I have a job. I can't go now. Tomorrow Uh okay, sure. Tomorrow. And then it took me like four weeks to decide, yes, I was being a total idiot.
But at the time, like what was the scale of that business? Like what did what what did you think it needed that it didn't have? Because it was still very much an R and D
It was very R and D, but y you know, Elon had an investment and he wanted some return. He wanted cash, right? He wanted customers. And I was doing that work anyhow in the space industry. Um Turned out I was pretty good at it. Um uh but uh yeah, so he so what did it look like? I was the seventh employee to sign my contract. I took I gave two weeks notice and took a week off to remodel a bathroom because I knew I would never have time to do it once I started working for Elon. Came three weeks later, employee number eleven, and we just got to it and we sold a rocket. About twelve months later.
And that's and that's about a
rocket. There wasn't a rocket.
There wasn't a rocket, yeah. So what does that sales cycle look like? How do you convince somebody that they can they can actually take that risk and maybe give you the deposit you need to start the cycle to build the thing?
So the timing was great. By the way, SpaceX should never have existed, right? If the other launch providers were great. then a new entrant can't make headway, right? 'Cause they were so entrenched. So we should have never made it. But turns out You know, customer service wasn't great.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:03–1:28
2
What is the background and role of Gwynne Shotwell at SpaceX?
1:28–6:30
3
How does SpaceX integrate AI, Starlink, rockets and X in its daily operations?
6:30–13:03
4
What is the direct‑to‑cell plan for Starlink and how does it affect competition?
13:03–17:02
5
Why are data centers being considered for deployment in space?
17:02–19:56
6
How does SpaceX manage its culture and leadership to keep engineers productive?
19:56–25:30
7
What are Elon Musk’s views on the real risks of AI and how should peer review work?
25:30–35:20
8
What is the current status of Starship development and its future roadmap?
35:20–1:04:21
Speakers
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