Evidence receipt / prediction
Published · transcript-backedElon Musk: prediction
5 Feb 2026 Dwarkesh Podcast Elon Musk — "In 36 months, the cheapest place to put AI will be space”
“To reach a large volume in, say, 36 months, to match the rocket payload to orbit… If we’re doing a million tons to orbit in, let’s say three or four years from now, something like that… We’re doing 100 kilowatts per ton. So that means we need at least 100 gigawatts per year of solar.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Elon Musk
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- prediction
- Recorded
- 5 Feb 2026
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
Transcript context
…Would you consider making the ASML machines? “I don’t know yet” is the right answer. To reach a large volume in, say, 36 months, to match the rocket payload to orbit… If we’re doing a million tons to orbit in, let’s say three or four years from now, something like that… We’re doing 100 kilowatts per ton. So that means we need at least 100 gigawatts per year of solar. We’ll need an equivalent amount of chips. You need 100 gigawatts worth of chips. You’ve got to match these things: the mass to orbit, the power generation, and the chips. I’d say my biggest concern actually is memory. The path to creating logic chips is more obvious than the path to having sufficient memory to support logic chips. That’s why you see DDR prices going ballistic and these memes. You’re marooned on a desert island. You write “Help me” on the sand. Nobody comes. You write “DDR RAM.” Ships come swarming in. I’d love to hear your manufacturing philosophy around fabs. I know nothing about the topic.…
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