SpaceX and Tesla Will Combine, Steve Westly Predicts

Steve, let's start with Tesla, and not so much with the numbers. But what was said yesterday when we got those space earnings and about this idea that a committee had been formed to maybe combine these two companies, something that has been speculated for quite a bit. And I guess when we saw that quote unquote flying car the other day that raised the speculation even more. Does that make sense to you just mash these two companies up? Well, I think it's going to happen. I think he has been talking about it for some time tested, just posted solid numbers. And look, all signs point to Musk wanting to consolidate the companies space. As you saw the share price up 10%. That makes it easier to buy stuff. This would be the biggest merger in history. I think most, you know really wants to combine Space X's eye compute, uh, strengths for Tesla's cars, energy and robotics. That's a powerful, uh, combination. Uh, recent developments make it easier. Just one sec approval for auto voting for the board. And, uh, the big question is, what are the regulators going to say about this? And what will SpaceX have to do to make it happen? And the big questions I think will be valuations FCC. Can they keep Tesla China. A lot to sort out here, but as a betting person you'd have to say, uh, this would be the biggest merger in history. And I think Elon Musk, uh, wants to do it. Well, it'll be interesting to see too. And what's interesting also to see in space, uh, just how far along the I business has come. Obviously, SpaceX trying to use connectivity and revenue and compute contracts to build out its AI dreams. Tesla obviously much more of a physical I, uh, focus and then of course, you have meta, uh, which is kind of a little bit everywhere here. And I'm curious as to when you look at the AI build out overall across the spectrum here. Where are you seeing the more durable models that you think not just will survive, but will really thrive in the future? I think there's three things you look for. In the previous Jeff's just talked about it. You're looking for who has a lot of compute. Tesla was very smart. That's where a lot of the revenues are coming from. I think Tesla surprised at SpaceX's earnings yesterday that they were as far along as they were on the compute side. But you can't forget the energy part. You've got to have energy. That's sort of the forgotten part of the entire equation. That's why you see firms like this, that last year, it's the largest independent power producers in the United States, had a share price that was the third fastest growing in the world, one stock, a step ahead of Nvidia. So you got to solve the energy issues. Tesla again can stand up and say they're posting historic energy numbers this year. It'll be about 15% of revenues over $16 billion. So that's another part of the Tesla equation. But you can see the piece is just lining up between SpaceX and Tesla. So I would just say get ready for the biggest merger in history. It's going to knock people's socks off and talking about energy and power, like we are expecting about 20 to 25GW of AI data center capacity this year. Next year, the forecast is around double 50GW. Do you think one it's feasible. And then what kind of impact will it have on that supply demand dynamic that we keep hearing about in AI. Well, it's not only physical, it has to happen. And I'm probably a good person to ask about this because we have 16 of the world's largest utilities as investors and so on. So we spend every day thinking about it. You're witnessing not only the largest buildout in construction since World War two, but the largest buildout in energy. So you're seeing an all of the above approach, record amounts of solar being built, record amounts of wind. The really interesting part is you're seeing more and more batteries. Batteries are becoming the new oil. Uh, oil and gas companies absolutely can have Renaissance for the next 4 or 5 years. You can see whole new concepts, like this concept of a virtual power plant. That means a power plant that doesn't exist as a single building, but is basically an aggregation of what could be, uh, Tesla or anybody else has power walls and garages, combined with fleets of electric vehicles that utilities harness to draw in times of peak power demand. But you're going to see more happening in the world of energy in the next five years. That has happened in the last century. Now, a lot of people are going to make money off that. Uh, Vistra probably just at the top of the pack and a lot of others behind them. So just to be clear, Steve, I just listening to you. You don't have any real concern about it over bills right now. When it comes to I data centers, power, etc., you think that at least what's being put out there right now will have the demand, will have the use case when it comes. Well, let's break that into two. In terms of demand for power for I, this thing is not slowing down. If you look at the numbers for OpenAI anthropic, the revenue numbers and they are in the billions have gone up. For example, you know, they've grown ten x the last three years in a row. At the beginning of this year, January 1st, they were saying, well, I think we'll grow from 9 billion to maybe 27 billion. I think the eclipse that by March now it looks likely to be well over 100 billion. The demand is absolutely there. Now the world's going to figure out where do you get the energy to do it. And you know that's not going to be easy. I can tell you generally speaking, what it's going to look like.