Despite his new trillionaire status, Elon Musk says money ‘will stop being relevant’ in the future because of AI
Space X’s IPO has made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, but the CEO spent the lead-up to the moment espousing his belief that money won’t matter one day. In a recent conversation with Peter Diamandis, an entrepreneur and executive chairman of the XPrize Foundation, Musk fleshed out his moonshot visions for the future, which have previously included work being completely optional and retirement becoming inapplicable. Musk said in a video clip Diamandis uploaded to X on Thursday that in an AI-powered world where robots serve humans, “AI and robots are going to make so much stuff and provide so many services that they’ll run out of things to do for humans.” As a result, the output of goods and services will exceed the supply of money, effectively creating deflation. With cheap automated labor and no growth in the money supply because work is completed by robots instead of humans, there will be no need for currency. “I think money will stop being relevant at some point in the future,” he said. However, Musk’s own companies have struggled to deliver on their automation promises. Though the CEO has set a goal of having 80% of Tesla’s value come from its humanoid Optimus robots, the bots have experienced multiple production delays. Musk’s imagined future of money losing its relevance contrasts with his immense wealth gains. SpaceX’s IPO has cemented Musk’s status, for now, as the world’s richest man, with a net worth surpassing $1.1 trillion following SpaceX shares opening at $150 per share, boosting Musk’s wealth by about $180 billion in a single day. Diamandis called out the irony of Musk’s obsession with a money-less society amid the CEO’s own surging net worth: “So just as you’re becoming a multi-trillionaire, money starts to have less value?” “Yeah, pretty much,” Musk replied. What is Elon Musk’s vision for the role of money? Musk has cited the Culture series of sci-fi novels by Iain M. Banks, a self-proclaimed socialist author, as the inspiration behind