Elon Musk's predictions
Public predictions Elon Musk (@elonmusk) made from 2023-11 to 2026-11, each checked against what happened.
Wishful thinker#3 of 5
2 came true · 4 mostly true · 6 partly true · 3 mostly wrong · 17 wrong · 19 pending
By topic
- Space 25% of 9
- Cars 39% of 9
- AI 21% of 6
- Other 31% of 4
- Tech 0% of 2
- Business 50% of 1
- Politics 0% of 1
Scored predictions
- Mostly true2026-05-13· Space· due 2026-05-20
Starship launch next week!
Flew May 22, 2026, about 9 days after the post (a couple of days past 'next week').
- Wrong2026-03-17· Other· due 2026-04-30
New Roadster unveil hopefully next month. It will be a banger next-level.
Unveil slipped to an Oct 2026 event.
- Partly true2026-03-10· Business· due 2026-04
X Money would open in early public access the following month, April 2026.
The rollout was delayed; X Money expanded to more users in June and began a staged US launch for paying subscribers on July 27, 2026.
Original (paymentexpert.com)news.bloomberglaw.comdealroom.co
- Wrong2026-02-21· Space· due 2026-03-31
Starship flies again next month
Slipped to May 22, 2026.
- Wrong2025-11· AI· due 2026-03
Grok 5, a roughly 6-trillion-parameter model, would arrive very soon, around the end of 2025 or early 2026.
Grok 5 missed both the Q1 and Q2 2026 windows; xAI shipped Grok 4.x updates instead and as of August 2026 Grok 5 still had no release date.
- Mostly wrong2025-08-27· Other· due 2025-12-31
This slide needs an update, but gives a rough idea of what we’re aiming for with V3 and V4. V3 should be built & tested (maybe flown) by end of this year. V4 is 2027. Probably closer to 150m height and 7500 tons. h...
The first V3 booster failed ground testing in Nov 2025. First V3 flight came May 22, 2026.
- Wrong2025-08-07· AI· due 2025-12-31
Grok 5 will be out before the end of this year and it will be crushingly good
Grok 5 still not released as of Nov 2026.
- Mostly true2025-08-06· Cars· due 2025-09-30
Tesla is training a new FSD model with ~10X params and a big improvement to video compression loss. Probably ready for public release end of next month if testing goes well.
FSD v14 rolled out Oct 7, 2025, about a week late.
- Came true2025-07-28· Space· due 2025-08-31
Starship launches again next month
Flight 10 launched Aug 26, 2025.
- Wrong2025-07-23· Cars· due 2025-12
Tesla would probably offer autonomous ride-hailing to about half of the US population by the end of 2025.
At the end of 2025 Tesla ran small robotaxi fleets in a handful of Texas and California areas, a tiny fraction of the US population.
- Wrong2025-06-05· Cars· due 2025-12-31
Tesla Dojo AI training computer making progress. We start bringing Dojo 2 online later this year. It takes three major iterations for a new technology to be great. Dojo 2 is good, but Dojo 3 will be great. https://t...
Dojo was shut down in Aug 2025.
- Wrong2025-04-29· Space· due 2025-05-06
Next week, Grok 3.5 early beta release to SuperGrok subscribers only. It is the first AI that can, for example, accurately answer technical questions about rocket engines or electrochemistry. @Grok is reasoning fro...
Grok 3.5 was never released. Grok 4 shipped July 2025.
- Partly true2025-04-22· Cars· due 2025-06
Tesla's cheaper, more affordable models would start production in the first half of 2025.
The cheaper cars turned out to be stripped-down Model Y and Model 3 Standard versions launched in October 2025 at about $37K to $40K, later and pricier than many expected.
- Wrong2025-04-19· Other· due 2025-12-31
It was an honor to speak with PM Modi. I am looking forward to visiting India later this year!
No 2025 India visit was reported. Lower-certainty evidence (absence of reports).
- Wrong2025-04-10· Space· due 2026-12-31
Starship will hopefully depart for Mars at the end of next year with Optimus explorer robots!
SpaceX pivoted to the Moon in Feb 2026 and is skipping the 2026 Mars window. Re-check if anything launches before the window closes.
- Mostly wrong2025-04-02· AI· due 2025-12-31
The rate of improvement is indeed rapid. There will be a legion of Optimus robots this year.
Only a few hundred Optimus units were built, against a 5,000 goal.
- Wrong2025-03· Tech· due 2025-12
Tesla would build about 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots in 2025 and roughly ten times that in 2026.
Reported 2025 output was in the hundreds, the target was cut by mid-year, and high-volume Optimus production only started in Fremont in late 2026.
- Wrong2025-03· Tech· due 2025-12
Neuralink would implant its vision-restoring Blindsight device in a first human patient by the end of 2025.
In late January 2026 Neuralink was still described as ready for, but awaiting approval for, the first human Blindsight implant.
- Wrong2025-02-28· Space· due 2025-12-31
There is a good chance of achieving full reusability of Starship this year. Full and immediate reflight of Starship, along with orbital refilling, probably happens next year. This is the fundamental breakthrough n...
No ship catch or reuse in 2025. First ship-catch attempt targeted for Flight 15 (Nov 2026).
- Partly true2025-02-10· Cars· due 2025-12-31
And it only gets better from here. Tesla is still on track to launch autonomous ride hailing in Austin in June and roll out to many cities in America by the end of this year. The threshold is achieving safety far ...
Austin launched June 2025 (true). Only Austin and the Bay Area by year end, with safety monitors (not 'many cities').
- Partly true2025-01-29· Cars· due 2025-06
Tesla would launch an unsupervised, no-one-in-the-car robotaxi service in Austin in June 2025.
A small invite-only robotaxi service did start in Austin on June 22, 2025, but with Tesla safety monitors on board rather than empty cars.
- Wrong2025-01-29· Cars· due 2025-12
Unsupervised Full Self-Driving would reach customer cars in California and other parts of the US later in 2025.
No customer-owned Tesla got unsupervised FSD in 2025; in April 2026 Musk pushed it to probably Q4 2026, and in October 2026 Tesla pointed to around Q2 2027.
- Partly true2024-12-11· Cars· due 2025-12-31
Not Teslas, once unsupervised FSD starts to happen next year
Only limited no-monitor robotaxi testing in Austin in Dec 2025; not unsupervised FSD for owners.
- Came true2024-11-27· Other· due 2025-12-31
And next year, Falcon is aiming for >150 flights!
165 Falcon 9 launches in 2025.
- Wrong2024-10-27· Politics· due 2026-07
DOGE could cut at least $2 trillion from federal spending.
DOGE's own final tally claimed about $215 billion, independent reviews verified far less, and total federal spending rose.
- Mostly true2024-10-10· Cars· due 2026
The steering-wheel-free Cybercab would enter production in 2026.
Tesla said Cybercab production started at Giga Texas in 2026 and the car was carrying riders in Austin by October, though at a slow early rate.
- Wrong2024-09-07· Space· due 2026-12
The first uncrewed Starships would launch to Mars in the late-2026 transfer window, with crewed flights possibly following in 2028.
In February 2026 SpaceX postponed the 2026 Mars mission and said the Moon would be its initial focus; no Starship is heading to Mars this window.
- Wrong2024-06· Space· due 2025
Starship would demonstrate ship-to-ship propellant transfer in orbit in 2025.
The demonstration slipped out of 2025, first to 2026, and orbital refueling was still cited as unproven when SpaceX shifted away from the 2026 Mars window.
- Partly true2024-05-20· Space· due 2024-12-31
SpaceX might exceed 90% of all Earth payload to orbit later this year. Once Starship is launching at high rate, probably >99%. Has to be or we can’t build a city on Mars or base on moon. We file almost no patents, ...
Hedged ('might'). SpaceX launched about 84% of mass to orbit in 2024, short of 90%.
- Wrong2024-04-08· AI· due 2025-12
AI would probably be smarter than any single human by around the end of 2025.
By the end of 2025 frontier models were strong on benchmarks but not broadly accepted as smarter than any human, and Musk himself moved the target to late 2026 or 2027 at Davos in January 2026.
- Mostly wrong2024-03-13· AI· due 2025-12-31
AI will probably be smarter than any single human next year. By 2029, AI is probably smarter than all humans combined.
Frontier models still trailed humans on ARC-AGI-2 and other general-reasoning tasks at end of 2025.
- Mostly true2024-03-01· AI· due 2025
After the chip shortage, AI would next be held back by a shortage of step-down transformers and then of electricity, starting around 2025.
Power and grid equipment became widely cited bottlenecks for AI data centers in 2025, with long waits for transformers and grid connections, though AI buildouts kept growing rather than stalling.
Pending
Not resolved yet, so not counted.
- Pending2026-08-20· Other· due 2027-03-31
Looks like we will probably catch the ship with the tower in a few months. If there had been a tower out to sea where we practiced landing the ship, it would have been caught. First reflight of the ship will be eith...
Ship catch is targeted for Flight 15 (mid-Nov 2026).
- Pending2026-06-23· Space· due 2027-12-31
Starlink coming to @AmericanAir next year!
Not resolved yet.
- Pending2026-06-17· Other· due 2026-12-31
Full movies by the end of this year
Not resolved yet.
- Pending2026-06-14· Space· due 2030-12-31
I think SpaceX might be able to reach approximately $1T revenue in 2030
Not resolved yet.
- Pending2026-04-22· Cars· due 2026-12
Unsupervised FSD for customer-owned cars would probably arrive in the fourth quarter of 2026.
Still open, though on the October 2026 earnings call Tesla already pointed to around Q2 2027 for customer cars joining the robotaxi network.
- Pending2026-01-31· Other· due 2027-12-31
China electricity generation is still growing super fast, with solar being the largest incremental contributor, and will exceed America by a factor of 3X either this year or next
Not resolved yet.
- Pending2026-01-28· AI· due 2026-12-31
Congrats to the @Neuralink team for helping many people who have lost use of their body with our Telepathy implant that enables computer use simply by thinking! The next generation Neuralink cybernetic augment with 3...
Not resolved yet.
- Pending2026-01-22· AI· due 2027-12
AI might be smarter than any human by the end of 2026, and no later than 2027, and smarter than all of humanity combined by around 2030.
The deadline has not passed yet.
- Pending2025-11-25· AI· due 2026-12-31
Let’s see if @Grok 5 can beat the best human team @LeagueOfLegends in 2026 with these important constraints: 1. Can only look at the monitor with a camera, seeing no more than what a person with 20/20 vision would se...
Not resolved yet.
- Pending2025-10-06· AI· due 2026-12-31
The XAI game studio will release a great AI-generated game before the end of next year
Not resolved yet.
- Pending2025-10-06· AI· due 2026-12-31
Grok will make a movie that is at least watchable before the end of next year and really good movies in 2027
Not resolved yet.
- Pending2025-10· AI
Grok 5 had about a 10% and rising chance of being AGI.
Grok 5 has not been released as of November 2026, so the claim cannot be judged yet.
- Pending2025-09-07· AI· due 2026-12-31
Not bad, given that Grok Imagine is still an early beta product. Big release coming in a few weeks. Probably out of beta by the spring. Compelling half hour episodes and first good video game next year. https://t....
Multi-part: out of beta by spring 2026; episodes and a game in 2026.
- Pending2025-08-23· Other· due 2030-08-31
Having thought about it some more, I think the 50 million H100 equivalent number in 5 years is about right. Eventually, billions.
Not resolved yet.
- Pending2025-06-20· Other· due 2029-06-30
Solar power in China will exceed ALL sources of electricity combined in the USA in 3 to 4 years. Wake up call.
Not resolved yet.
- Pending2025-06-03· Space· due 2026-12-31
Perhaps an interesting milestone: @SpaceX commercial revenue from space will exceed the entire budget of @NASA next year. SpaceX revenue this year will be ~$15.5B, of which NASA is ~$1.1B.
Resolve with 2026 financials.
- Pending2025-04-27· AI· due 2030-04-30
Robots will surpass good human surgeons within a few years and the best human surgeons within ~5 years. @Neuralink had to use a robot for the brain-computer electrode insertion, as it was impossible for a human to a...
Not resolved yet.
- Pending2025-03-02· Cars· due 2030-03-01
It will require outstanding execution, but I think more like 1000% gain for Tesla in 5 years is possible
Hedged ('possible').
- Pending2025-02-21· AI· due 2026-12-31
Grok 3 can make any arcade game you can think of. This year, we will add the ability to apply high resolution imagery. I think we’ve got a shot at making a AAA game sometime next year. Join us to make it happen! h...
'Got a shot at' AAA game in 2026.
Elon Musk's maker profile →Data updated 2026-11-05
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Frequently asked questions
How accurate are Elon Musk's predictions?
Elon Musk got 27% of 32 resolved predictions right (2 came true, 17 were wrong), with 19 still pending.
How does Elon Musk rank as a predictor?
Elon Musk ranks #3 of 5 makers with at least 3 resolved predictions on IndieMakerList.
How is the score calculated?
Came true = 1, mostly true = 0.75, partly true = 0.5, wrong = 0, averaged over resolved predictions. Pending predictions aren't scored until they resolve.