5 ms·

2 years doesn't seem like a very long time to stay at a company you founded. I can only imagine what would cause someone to make such a drastic move. If he's

2 years doesn't seem like a very long time to stay at a company you founded. I can only imagine what would cause someone to make such a drastic move. If he's going into Venture Capital then he has no problem with the workload. Elon seems very talented at finding trends and convincing talented people to help him build the future. He seems equally talented at then pushing these same people away.

guywithahat 1y ago
I would argue one moves to the VC world to lower the workload; I suspect there's a reason so many people seemingly retire into it
- htrp 1y ago
  you work on your own schedule (people meet your deadlines since you write the checks).. and if you invest your own capital, you have no financial pressure
- blitzar 1y ago
  > moves to the VC world Early retirement
VladVladikoff 1y ago
Hasn’t xAI already accomplished its goal? Milk some 50B of capital out of the AI hype bubble. Didn’t I read some story a month or two ago about Elon bank rolling some other projects off of the xAI valuation.
- stephen_g 1y ago
  One thing was that he shuffled what was once Twitter into xAI ownership in an all-stock transaction, so that the people who bankrolled the Twitter purchase can pretend that they have stock that's worth something for now, instead of having to write down the value of those shares.
  - Hamuko 1y ago
    I have a hard time taking xAI seriously as a company considering how Elon seems to treat it as an accounting strategy and not as an independent company.
    - spwa4 1y ago
      Elon Musk's claim to fame is that he "helped create" (although the actual stories are more along the lines of "stopped sabotaging") paypal, which is a bank. An internet bank focusing on enabling payment to first Ebay, then merchants in general. And you can tell by his later takeovers. He took over Tesla, and absurdly financialized it. He took over SpaceX, and absurdly overleveraged it. That is what he does, any technical chops are for show. He's an accidental banker with a gimmick: ketamine can make you believe anything! Politico.eu collected Musk's latest results [1]. Out of what Musk and Trump promised [2], Musk first lowered his promises himself (after getting the money, sorry, the election) from 2000 billion (2 trillion) to 180 billion, a 91% reduction. He didn't make anywhere close to those savings, his organisation then made a further reduction in his promise to 52.8 billion, missing the promised target by 97.36%. But those appear to be inflated claims and actually verified savings only amount to 1.4 billion, 99.93% less than Musk initially promised. BUT ... Then Trump was going to NOT spend this money. How's that going? Well, in order to NOT spend 1.4 billion dollars, Musk and Trump have spent 7.4 trillion taxpayer dollars. Hey, you missed "saving" by a tiny bit there, Elon. So Musk, who promised to save the us government 2000 billion dollars, has in fact "saved" the government MINUS 7400 billion dollars. As always, Musk's direct contribution is barely a rounding error. This number is not counting, of course, what he personally received from the US government which will comfortably put the cost of doing business with Musk for the US government over 8000 billion dollars. I guess that's one way to become "the richest man in the world" (even though I wouldn't trade $1000 of my money for all Tesla shares in existence, so is he really? I mean, maybe $100 for bragging rights, but they don't even come with a certificate anymore) Let's just say that anyone expecting investments with Mr. Musk to pay off is not just crazy, that is WAY past dangerous insanity. Even his supposed "high-tech" achievements ... well, here's a summary [3]. TLDR: 99.97% miss in performance for Musk's latest project. Total cost to taxpayers of Mr. Musk: over 8000 billion dollars. [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/12/trump-doge-contract-claims-savings-inflation-00498178 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/12/trump-doge-contract... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4j33klz33o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4j33klz33o [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B71PNEwhyXc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B71PNEwhyXc
kangs 1y ago
looks like to me he cashed out and wanted to own his own company, so he did
lwo32k 1y ago
"Talent" in a tech firm is overrated, because what tech firms do is over rated.
DustinBrett 1y ago
He said in the post, he is scared AI is going off the rails and needs to focus on safety. Probably too late anyway.

guywithahat 1y ago

I would argue one moves to the VC world to lower the workload; I suspect there's a reason so many people seemingly retire into it

htrp 1y ago
you work on your own schedule (people meet your deadlines since you write the checks).. and if you invest your own capital, you have no financial pressure
blitzar 1y ago
> moves to the VC world Early retirement

VladVladikoff 1y ago

Hasn’t xAI already accomplished its goal? Milk some 50B of capital out of the AI hype bubble. Didn’t I read some story a month or two ago about Elon bank rolling some other projects off of the xAI valuation.

stephen_g 1y ago
One thing was that he shuffled what was once Twitter into xAI ownership in an all-stock transaction, so that the people who bankrolled the Twitter purchase can pretend that they have stock that's worth something for now, instead of having to write down the value of those shares.
- Hamuko 1y ago
  I have a hard time taking xAI seriously as a company considering how Elon seems to treat it as an accounting strategy and not as an independent company.
  - spwa4 1y ago
    Elon Musk's claim to fame is that he "helped create" (although the actual stories are more along the lines of "stopped sabotaging") paypal, which is a bank. An internet bank focusing on enabling payment to first Ebay, then merchants in general. And you can tell by his later takeovers. He took over Tesla, and absurdly financialized it. He took over SpaceX, and absurdly overleveraged it. That is what he does, any technical chops are for show. He's an accidental banker with a gimmick: ketamine can make you believe anything! Politico.eu collected Musk's latest results [1]. Out of what Musk and Trump promised [2], Musk first lowered his promises himself (after getting the money, sorry, the election) from 2000 billion (2 trillion) to 180 billion, a 91% reduction. He didn't make anywhere close to those savings, his organisation then made a further reduction in his promise to 52.8 billion, missing the promised target by 97.36%. But those appear to be inflated claims and actually verified savings only amount to 1.4 billion, 99.93% less than Musk initially promised. BUT ... Then Trump was going to NOT spend this money. How's that going? Well, in order to NOT spend 1.4 billion dollars, Musk and Trump have spent 7.4 trillion taxpayer dollars. Hey, you missed "saving" by a tiny bit there, Elon. So Musk, who promised to save the us government 2000 billion dollars, has in fact "saved" the government MINUS 7400 billion dollars. As always, Musk's direct contribution is barely a rounding error. This number is not counting, of course, what he personally received from the US government which will comfortably put the cost of doing business with Musk for the US government over 8000 billion dollars. I guess that's one way to become "the richest man in the world" (even though I wouldn't trade $1000 of my money for all Tesla shares in existence, so is he really? I mean, maybe $100 for bragging rights, but they don't even come with a certificate anymore) Let's just say that anyone expecting investments with Mr. Musk to pay off is not just crazy, that is WAY past dangerous insanity. Even his supposed "high-tech" achievements ... well, here's a summary [3]. TLDR: 99.97% miss in performance for Musk's latest project. Total cost to taxpayers of Mr. Musk: over 8000 billion dollars. [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/12/trump-doge-contract-claims-savings-inflation-00498178 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/12/trump-doge-contract... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4j33klz33o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4j33klz33o [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B71PNEwhyXc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B71PNEwhyXc

kangs 1y ago

looks like to me he cashed out and wanted to own his own company, so he did

lwo32k 1y ago

"Talent" in a tech firm is overrated, because what tech firms do is over rated.

DustinBrett 1y ago

He said in the post, he is scared AI is going off the rails and needs to focus on safety. Probably too late anyway.