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Published · transcript-backed

Elon Musk: evaluation

5 Feb 2026 Dwarkesh Podcast Elon Musk — "In 36 months, the cheapest place to put AI will be space”

“Which it is because you don’t have a day-night cycle, seasonality, clouds, or an atmosphere in space.”

— Elon Musk

Source trail

Everything needed to verify it.

Speaker
Elon Musk
Attribution
Verified speaker
Claim type
evaluation
Recorded
5 Feb 2026
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

Transcript context

…So space is really a regulatory play. It’s harder to build on land than it is in space. It’s harder to scale on the ground than it is to scale in space. You’re also going to get about five times the effectiveness of solar panels in space versus the ground, and you don’t need batteries. I almost wore my other shirt, which says, “it’s always sunny in space”. Which it is because you don’t have a day-night cycle, seasonality, clouds, or an atmosphere in space. The atmosphere alone results in about a 30% loss of energy. So any given solar panel can do about five times more power in space than on the ground. You also avoid the cost of having batteries to carry you through the night. It’s actually much cheaper to do in space. My prediction is that it will be by far the cheapest place to put AI. It will be space in 36 months or less. Maybe 30 months. 36 months?…

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