In an interview of Elon Musk, Elon talks about getting greater than 10X the world economy in 10 years. What does this mean, if it were to happen.
It means averaging 27% per year GDP growth but starting with a ramp in the first half. NOTE: in WW2, the USA had 18% gdp growth for 4-5 years to double the world economy with massive investments in factories. China had 10-12% per year GDP growth for about two decades.
~15–16× cumulative growth by 2036 (comfortably above the “greater than 10×” Elon described).
Average CAGR across the decade is still right around 27–29%.
The later phase (2030 onward) features ~40–58% annual growth — equivalent to the economy doubling every 1.6–2 years. This is exactly what happens when AI agents + physical robots + space infrastructure remove previous bottlenecks at planetary scale.
*Humanity's goal for the next century is… prevent WW3.*
Elon: "Okay, this is going to sound pretty crazy."
"I'd say the economy is 10 times the its current size in 10 years. Greater than. I feel like that's actually a fairly comfortable prediction."
"Obviously if there's… pic.twitter.com/hgqlRhfghh
— Peter H. Diamandis, MD (@PeterDiamandis) June 21, 2026
How This Maps to SpaceX (and Merged SpaceX + Tesla) Revenue/Profits
I have mapped out the revenue for SpaceX and then Tesla from 2026-2029 in the still relatively slow ramp and foundation building phase.
The 2027–2029 has harp acceleration (AI Rent, Cursor, Space AI, Digital Optimus explode as first GWs come online).
There can be a shift from AI rental revenue to Cursor-Grok revenue if SpaceX gets to a frontier coding model that is competitive or better than Anthropic Claude
In the full 10-year economy path above, SpaceX’s AI/compute segments will grow even faster than the overall economy because the company is capturing a large and growing share of the new value being created. There will be replatforming effect discussed in the linked articles where the economy shifts from regular cloud and Software as a service to AI agents, digital optimus and AI data centers.
In a Crazy AI World, the Largest AI, Space, Robotics and Energy Company Would be Crazy
Early-to-mid period (through 2030) is still investment-heavy but already highly profitable per the table.
From 2031 onward the energy/compute scaling (100 GW/year → 1 TW/year) provides the extra 5–10× boost.
Margins stay extremely high (70%+) because once the orbital/terrestrial capacity is built, incremental revenue from leasing AI compute has very low marginal cost.
Digital Optimus line grows into the hundreds of trillions as physical robot fleets and the digital agents they enable scale to trillions.
Implications for Merged SpaceX + Tesla Share Price (2036)
In this phased 10× economy scenario. The merged entity becomes the central picks and shovels provider and a major players for the AI productivity explosion (AI compute infrastructure + physical + digital labor).
By 2036 it can realistically be generating $1.5–3+ quadrillion in combined annual revenue with very high margins.
Market capitalization in the $300T – $1,000T+ range becomes plausible (still only a few percent of the much larger global economy).
Fictional Approximations
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
10x GDP in 10 years is a bit delusional. Musk had done a lot and I respect him for that&all his contributions to science&tech, but his timelines are totally off.
Not going to happen.
Musk has gone from chronic misser-of-his-own-deadlines to outright delusional futurist.
Even leaving off the fact that Musk will almost certainly step back from his punishing work load before he’s ready for Medicare in 10 years – assuming Medicare even exists in debt-ridden America by then (it’s due to run out of money in the early 2030s) – there are multiple reasons why his productivity dreams won’t happen.
First, AI is accelerating faster than any other technology in large part because it’s being given away for free by (formerly?) rich hyperscallers. Imagine if electricity was free to 95% of users. Would the remaining 5% be able or willing to pay for the freeloaders? It’s a similar ratio for AI. The vast majority use it for free or for far less than it costs to run – a cost which will not go down since chips have to be replaced every 3 years. Only the shell of the data centers can be reused in a decade. Water, space, fuels/electricity needs are overwhelming capacity already. Don’t even get me started on the probability of a Kessler syndrome bringing down space-based data centers (and that’s assuming Starship stops blowing up parts of itself in the near future, and becomes practical enough to launch huge data centers – individual size will ameliorate the chances of having so many data centers that they form a Kessler cluster).
No one has noticed this, but Grok now defaults to summaries of X posts when clicked on by icon above a post. It used to determine if the post was factual by default. Now it saves compute cycles – and enormous costs – by simply summarizing. You have to specifically follow that up with a prompt asking if the post’s main points are factually true. Musk or someone has apparently decided that it was too costly to use Grok for what most people use it for: free fact-checking of unverified and frequently wrong claims made on X. That’s what social media is, and that’s what much of AI is being used to correct.
I use AI for reports and fact checking every day. I pay nothing more than for a premium X account, and nothing for my ChatGPT or Co-pilot usage. I think that’s what most people do. And I won’t/can’t pay what it costs. Corporate use pays more of course, but laying off staff to create the funds reduces national revenue to pay for AI, which is also still too frequently wrong, even getting worse in the most complex uses. This is a bad trendline.
There will be progress, by 5X/year would be wonderful and surprising. 10X is delusional over the long term.
How to get the energy at that scale without burning fossil fuel ?
I hear he’s going to cut government spending by $2Trillion/year in his spare time.
MY main concern is how to get the governments out of the way of productive people.
We could 10x the global GDP in real production and these government would raise taxation from 50% to 90%.
If we had 10% taxation and 10x economic production increase, the individuals would not have need for government handouts. And this would screw the government legitimacy and ability to exert power over the people.