Elon Musk, every mention

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Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Elon Musk comes up

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The Walt Disney Company: The most successful enterprise for monetizing human nostalgia (Audio) · Acquired Jun 23, 2026 · 3 mentions

  • ▶ 2:43:12 Ben Gilbert I was about to make the comment, oh, this sounds a lot like Elon Musk, but none of Elon's companies have a board that would vote against him.
  • ▶ 2:43:19 Ben Gilbert And so that's really the only difference here is kind of the like Elon before Elon.
  • ▶ 3:23:28 Ben Gilbert People were willing to take these giant leaps on Walt because of who he was and what he had accomplished the same way that they do with Elon or Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett getting deals that no one else could get.

Google Part III: The AI Company. Google is amazingly well-positioned... will they win in AI? (Audio) · Acquired Oct 6, 2025 · 43 mentions

  • ▶ 1:02:03 Ben Gilbert And probably XAI, given Elon's involvement.
  • ▶ 1:05:01 Ben Gilbert For what it's worth, not Elon Musk.
  • ▶ 1:05:04 Ben Gilbert He's not included in that list because Demis would be the one who tells Elon about this.
  • ▶ 1:11:31 Ben Gilbert Hey, Elon, you should meet this guy.
  • ▶ 1:11:33 David Rosenthal To another member of the PayPal mafia, Elon Musk.
  • ▶ 1:11:41 Ben Gilbert Hey, Elon, you should meet this guy.
  • ▶ 1:11:47 Ben Gilbert So Elon says, great.
  • ▶ 1:12:05 Ben Gilbert Musk told Hassabis his priority was getting to Mars as a backup planet in case something went wrong here.
  • ▶ 1:12:35 Ben Gilbert Shortly after, Musk, too, became an investor in DeepMind.
  • ▶ 1:12:42 Ben Gilbert I think it's crazy that Demis is sort of the one that woke Elon up to this idea of, we might not be safe from the AI on Mars either.
  • ▶ 1:12:54 Ben Gilbert So, uh, this is the first time the bit flips for Elon of, we really need to figure out a safe, secure AI for the good of the people.
  • ▶ 1:13:18 David Rosenthal Also, in the intervening months to year after this meeting between Demis and Elon and Elon investing in DeepMind, Elon also starts to get really, really excited and convinced about the capabilities of AI in the near term, and specifically…
  • ▶ 1:13:43 Ben Gilbert In Elon's world, once the bit flips and he becomes interested, he completely changes the way he views the world, completely sheds all the old ways and actions that he was taking, and it's all about what do I most do to embrace this new…
  • ▶ 1:14:12 David Rosenthal So, Elon starts trying to recruit as many AI researchers as he possibly can and machine vision and machine learning experts into Tesla.
  • ▶ 1:14:52 David Rosenthal So Elon's excitement channeled initially through DeepMind and Demis about AI and AI for Tesla starts ratcheting up big time.
  • ▶ 1:18:22 David Rosenthal Elon finds out about what's going on.
  • ▶ 1:18:52 David Rosenthal But to your point, they have the same issues with Elon and Tesla that they had with Mark.
  • ▶ 1:18:59 David Rosenthal Elon wants them to come in and work on autonomous driving for Tesla.
  • ▶ 1:19:28 Ben Gilbert Apparently, Elon Musk is on a private jet with Luke Nosek, who's another member of the PayPal mafia and an angel investor in DeepMind.
  • ▶ 1:20:13 David Rosenthal Of course, because Elon and Larry used to be very good friends.
  • ▶ 1:20:26 David Rosenthal Elon must have been so angry about all this.
  • ▶ 1:31:03 David Rosenthal Of course, Elon Musk is very upset about this acquisition.
  • ▶ 1:31:09 David Rosenthal When Google buys DeepMind out from under him, Elon goes ballistic.
  • ▶ 1:31:14 David Rosenthal As we said, Elon and Larry had always been very close, and now here's Google, who Elon has already started to sour on a little bit as he's now trying to hire AI researchers, and you've got Alan Eustace flying around the world sucking up…
  • ▶ 1:31:33 David Rosenthal And Elon's invested in DeepMind
  • ▶ 1:32:01 David Rosenthal By two of the most leading figures in the Valley at the time, Elon Musk and Sam Altman.
  • ▶ 1:33:01 David Rosenthal And the question and the pitch that Ilan and Sam have for these researchers gathered at this dinner is, what would it take to get you out of Google for you to leave?
  • ▶ 1:34:13 David Rosenthal And no one at the dinner was quite sure that these thinkers could be lured into a new startup, even if Musk and Malteman were behind it.
  • ▶ 1:34:49 David Rosenthal So the pitch that Ilan and Sam are making to these researchers is, let's start a new nonprofit AI research lab where we can do all this work out in the open.
  • ▶ 1:35:56 David Rosenthal It was a group of seven or so researchers who left Google and joined Elon and Sam and Greg Brockman from Stripe who came over to create open AI.
  • ▶ 1:36:45 Ben Gilbert And that came from, famously, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, who I think most people don't realize was part of that initial tranche, and Peter Thiel.
  • ▶ 1:39:46 David Rosenthal And if you think back to Elon being an investor in DeepMind, being really upset about Google acquiring it out from under him.
  • ▶ 1:39:54 Ben Gilbert And I think Elon deserves a lot of credit for having his name and his time attached to OpenA at the beginning.
  • ▶ 1:40:01 Ben Gilbert A lot of the big heavy hitter recruiting was Elon throwing his weight behind this.
  • ▶ 1:50:19 David Rosenthal This is one of the great ironies and maddening things to OpenAI and Elon Musk is that OpenAI gets founded in 2015 with the goal of, hey, let's shake all this talent out of Google and level the playing field.
  • ▶ 2:04:02 David Rosenthal Right after Google publishes the Transformer paper, in September of 2017, Elon gets really, really fed up with what's going on at OpenAI.
  • ▶ 2:05:07 Ben Gilbert But in Elon land, if he takes over as CEO of OpenAI, it almost doesn't matter.
  • ▶ 2:05:36 David Rosenthal They don't reach a resolution, and by early 2018, Elon is out, along with him, the main source of OpenAI's funding.
  • ▶ 2:05:47 David Rosenthal So either this is just a really, really, really bad misjudgment by Elon or
  • ▶ 2:06:11 Ben Gilbert I don't know if during this personal tension between Elon and Sam, if they had already decided to go all in on Transformers or not.
  • ▶ 2:08:48 David Rosenthal So Elon's just walked out the door.
  • ▶ 2:12:34 Ben Gilbert I hesitate to say it out loud, but I think AWS was actually in the very first investment with Elon in open AI.
  • ▶ 2:55:19 David Rosenthal I think at the time that negotiations were taking place between Elon and Larry and Google, this was in the depths of the Model S production scaling woes.

The Steve Ballmer Interview · Acquired Jun 2, 2025 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 1:37:36 Steve Ballmer I mean, it's possible that at the Elon level, the Musk empire could have three tricks, right?

Mars Inc. - The Chocolate Story (Audio) · Acquired Dec 16, 2024 · 1 mention

Meta (Audio) · Acquired Oct 28, 2024 · 4 mentions

Novo Nordisk (Ozempic) · Acquired Jan 22, 2024 · 1 mention

Charlie Munger (Audio) · Acquired Oct 30, 2023 · 2 mentions

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang · Acquired Oct 16, 2023 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 21:01 Jensen Huang I wasn't involved in the founding of it, but I knew a lot of the people there, and, um, uh, Elon, of course, uh, I knew, and, uh, uh, Peter Beal was there, and Ilya was there, and,

Nvidia Part III: The Dawn of the AI Era (2022-2023) (Audio) · Acquired Sep 6, 2023 · 8 mentions

  • ▶ 21:11 David Rosenthal So of course, those two shadowy figures are Elon Musk and Sam Altman, who at the time was president of Y Combinator.
  • ▶ 22:24 David Rosenthal There's one person who's intrigued by Elon and Sam's pitch.
  • ▶ 22:29 David Rosenthal And to quote an amazing Wired article from the time by Cade Metz that we will link to in our sources, quote, the trouble was so many of the people most qualified to solve all these AI problems were already working for Google and Facebook,…
  • ▶ 23:07 David Rosenthal So after the dinner, Ilya leaves Google and signs up to become, as we said, co-founder and chief scientist of a new independent AI non-profit research lab backed by Elon and Sam.
  • ▶ 44:23 David Rosenthal So in 2018, Elon gets super frustrated by all this, basically throws a hissy fit and quits and pieces out of OpenAI.
  • ▶ 44:36 David Rosenthal He may or may not have given an ultimatum to the rest of the team that he would either take over and run things or leave.
  • ▶ 44:43 David Rosenthal It's Elon.
  • ▶ 44:55 David Rosenthal It was also a probably super bad decision by Elon.

Nike (Audio) · Acquired Jul 25, 2023 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 8:57 David Rosenthal I mean, Rockefeller was pretty introverted, but he looks like Elon Musk compared to Phil Knight.
  • ▶ 19:32 David Rosenthal Deep down underneath all that introvert, he has that same drive that John Rockefeller had, that an Elon Musk has, that a Mark Zuckerberg has.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi · Acquired Jun 13, 2023 · 3 mentions

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek · Acquired May 18, 2023 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 1:13:35 Daniel Ek No, no, I think you're, you're entirely right, which is why, you know, um, there's been a lot of sort of debate around the Elon Musk, the subscriber, uh, thing, uh, and actually as usual, when you tease it out, there's many different…

Sessions: David Senra (Founders Podcast) · Acquired Mar 29, 2023 · 7 mentions

Holiday Special 2022 · Acquired Dec 19, 2022 · 3 mentions

Benchmark Part II: The Dinner · Acquired Oct 17, 2022 · 3 mentions

  • ▶ 1:10:14 Eric Vishria So what you're saying, it's like the Elon Musk's tweets.
  • ▶ 1:55:20 Peter Fenton And it doesn't change unless there's some catastrophic event where it has to get reborn, but good luck with Elon at Twitter.
  • ▶ 1:55:54 David Rosenthal We have a, we have a, actually, there's been a lot of discussion in the quiet Slack about, like, why have you guys not covered Elon on Twitter?

ACQ Sessions: Jason Calacanis · Acquired Oct 4, 2022 · 5 mentions

Benchmark Part I · Acquired Sep 28, 2022 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 2:38:19 Ben Gilbert And unbelievably, Brett has gone on with the Quip acquisition by Salesforce to become the president, co-CEO of Salesforce with Marc Benioff, and also is the chairman of the board at Twitter, who is the central spokesperson for this ongoing…

Amazon.com · Acquired Aug 16, 2022 · 4 mentions

  • ▶ 3:07:31 David Rosenthal Also, like, just wild that, like, if Amazon and Bezos hadn't acquired accept.com, like, probably no PayPal, which means Elon doesn't have the money, which means.
  • ▶ 3:42:02 Ben Gilbert Building a brand around your stock, which I think Elon is sort of the king of today, because when you're talking about the present value of future cash flows, since future cash flows are unknown, you do have to kind of build religion…
  • ▶ 4:03:56 Ben Gilbert There's so many other companies where, compare it to Elon Musk, for example, you look at SpaceX, it worked.
  • ▶ 4:04:12 Ben Gilbert He doesn't go start

From NFL to Startup COO to Congressman Regulating Crypto (with Rep. Anthony Gonzalez) · Acquired Aug 2, 2022 · 1 mention

The Playbook: Lessons from 200+ Company Stories · Acquired Jun 20, 2022 · 1 mention

Arena Show Part I: Idea Dinner + YC Continuity · Acquired May 12, 2022 · 4 mentions

  • ▶ 15:43 Packy McCormick Apparently it's possible to get into the equity tranche of Elon's Twitter Take Private.
  • ▶ 17:43 Packy McCormick So there's a lot you can do on the cost side, and then I think with somebody like Elon, it's either gonna go horribly, horribly, horribly wrong, or it's gonna go really, really, really well, and I think that you can kind of build the,…
  • ▶ 22:46 Ben Gilbert If you think that Elon is actually going to close this deal and pay out every single Twitter shareholder at 54 dollars and 20 cents per share,
  • ▶ 23:01 Ben Gilbert But, I mean, that's free money if you think Elon is actually going to complete the deal.

Nvidia: The Machine Learning Company (2006-2022) · Acquired Apr 20, 2022 · 1 mention

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