Elon Musk

Sam Altman joined the board of Neuralink, a company Elon Musk founded, in August 2025, roughly a decade after the two co-founded OpenAI together in 2015. Musk left that board in 2018 citing conflicts, then built xAI as a competitor and clashed publicly with Altman over AI safety. The reunion arrives with the roles inverted: the frontier-model CEO now sits on the brain-computer-interface board, and OpenAI's own directors reportedly approved the appointment while noting reservations about conflicts that could surface as the two technologies converge.

The other reason this name recurs is measurement. In June 2026, ahead of the SpaceX IPO (ticker SPCX on the Nasdaq, around $135 a share, a target valuation of roughly $1.75 to $1.8 trillion), the New York Times coded more than 600 dated, quantified public predictions and commitments Musk had made across statements, social posts, and investor calls. About 19 percent were delivered as promised. The rate has fallen over time: in 2015 he met close to three quarters of announced targets; by 2020, fewer than half landed on schedule.

Two subjects absorb the repeated misses. Mars appears around 19 times, from a 10-to-20-year horizon in 2011 to humans "in 2025" promised in 2016. Autonomy accounts for more than 60 targets, including the fully autonomous Tesla robotaxi promised for the end of 2025. SpaceX's own prospectus concedes it cannot currently determine the timeline or feasibility of several major programmes, for want of the technologies they require.