S.E. Robinson, Jr.

Want to Know: Your Daily Elon Musk Companies Update (Patreon)

Published:

2025-02-18 23:47:21

Imported:

2026-06

Tags:

Elon Musk ElonMusk Grok Neuralink SpaceX Starlink TSLA Tesla The Boring Company X xAI

Content

18th of February, 2025

"Archangel-12..." - Elon Musk (@elonmusk)

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■ TESLA $TSLA ($354.11, -0.49%):

- Production of the new Model Y has ramped. Both Giga Shanghai and Giga Berlin have started producing only the new version and are expected to start deliveries as early as next week.

- Tesla has urged a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas o dismiss most of a lawsuit filed by Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC. The suit alleges that Tesla’s self-driving cars infringe on three autonomous vehicle patents (U.S. Patent Nos. 11,597,402, 11,738,765, and 12,037,004). Tesla argued that Granite failed to provide sufficient facts to support infringement claims for two of the patents (11,738,765 and 12,037,004), asserting that the allegations lack specificity beyond a basic recitation of the cause of action. Tesla also requested the case be transferred to a California federal court due to potentially sensitive information for driverless ride-hailing services plan in 2025.

- The 13 job postings for Tesla in India. Per Tesla APAC Lead Recruiter Ricky Ip (@ipwaikrazy), "Yes, Tesla is officially hiring in India! Our next big project in coming months, get excited!" Some are posting that Tesla has secured showrooms in New Delhi and Mumbai.

- Dutch energy storage developer Lion Storage announced financial closing on the €350 million ($367 million), 350 MW/1.4 GWh Tesla Megapack site, near the coastal city of Vlissingen in the southwest Netherlands. It will feature 372 Megapack 2 XLs, and Tesla will provide engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) services for the site. The build is called Project Mufasa and will be operated by Dutch energy company Eneco. It will use the high-voltage grid connection of a former coal-fired power plant and is due to be operational in the first half of 2027.

- The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) has officially given Cybertruck a 5-Star overall safety rating! Cybertruck had the lowest overall probability of injury and lowest chance of rollover of any pickup truck tested.

- Richards, Layton & Finger, a law firm representing Elon and Tesla, drafted legislation to amend Delaware General Corporation Law. It was introduced to the Delaware General Assembly yesterday. If passed by the state’s two chambers and Governor Matt Meyer, it could reinstate Elon's 2018 Tesla pay package by potentially redefining him as not a “controller” of Tesla, reducing scrutiny on self-dealing transactions, and limiting minority stakeholders’ access to informal board communications.

FLYOVERS (flight links in sources section):

Giga Texas: , Brad Sloan, 18th of February, '25.

■ SPACEX:

- Pad B's Tower Chopsticks are now operational! The full installation of the actuators were confirmed by the removal of support straps and shortly after the Chops started to move. Video by Ryan Caton (@dpoddolphinpro) of NSF.

- Falcon 9 Starlink 10-12 is vertical and ready to launch this evening. It will land on droneship Just Read the Instructions off the coast of The Bahamas for the first time! Don't miss it. Hopefully we get some great footage. Launch is at 6:15 p.m. ET. Per SpaceX's Kiko Dontchev (@TurkeyBeaver), "Droneship is in position in the Exuma sound. Tracking no issues or constraints at this time to launch… This launch is special as it will be the first time a rocket launches from one country and lands in another. One step closer to making spaceflight, aircraft like!"

- SpaceX is installing a permanent roped fence along the perimeter of the launch in the mudflats. This sue to the idiots who continue to walk into the no trespassing areas, completely ignoring the NO TRESPASS signs. I can't even count on my hand how many times I have has to stop and come back. Pic by Shaun Gisler (@lifeatstagezero).

- The South Texas environmental group, Save RGV, voluntarily dismissed its federal lawsuit against SpaceX today. They alleged the company was polluting local waters in violation of the Clean Water Act at Starbase even after the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) issued a permit allowing the discharge wastewater. The case is now moot according to Save RGV board member Jim Chapman.

- Per Elon, "If all goes well, SpaceX will send Starships to Mars with Optimus robots and Grok."

Countdown to 180 (20 - Falcon 9, 0 - Falcon Heavy, and 1 - Starship):

Launch 22! Tuesday, 18th of February, at 6:06 p.m. ET, Falcon 9 Starlink 10-12 will launch from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The booster will land on drone ship Just Read the Instructions in the Bahamas.
Launch 23! Wednesday, 19th of February, at 4:01 p.m. PT, Falcon 9 Starlink 15-1 will launch from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The booster will land on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean.
Launch 24! Friday, 21st of February, at 6:31 a.m. ET, Falcon 9 Starlink 12-14 will launch from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The booster will land on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
Launch 25! Wednesday, 26th of February, at 7:17 p.m. ET, Falcon 9 Nova-C IM-2 & Lunar Trailblazer will launch from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The booster will land on Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. This is the second mission of Nova-C lunar lander developed and built by Intuitive Machines. This time it carries a NASA payload called PRIME-1 (Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1), which is to be the first demonstration of in-situ resource utilization on the Moon. PRIME-1 consists of two instruments: TRIDENT drill and Msolo mass spectrometer.
Launch 26! Thursday, 27th of February, at 7:10 p.m. PT, Falcon 9 SPHEREx & PUNCH will launch from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The booster will return to Vandenberg and land at Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4).

SPHEREx is a planned two-year astrophysics mission that will survey the sky in near-infrared light to explore the origins of the universe and the evolution of galaxies, while also searching for water and organic molecules in stellar nurseries and planet-forming disks around stars. It aims to collect data on over 300 million galaxies and more than 100 million stars within our Milky Way, providing insights into the conditions necessary for life.
NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) consists of four suitcase-sized satellites, which will focus on the Sun’s outer atmosphere (the corona) and how it generates the solar wind. The spacecraft also will track coronal mass ejections – large eruptions of solar material that can drive large space weather events near Earth – to better understand their evolution and develop new techniques for predicting such eruptions.

Launch 27! TBD, Falcon 9 NROL-57 will launch from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The booster will land on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean. This is the eighth batch of satellites for a reconnaissance satellite constellation built by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman for the National Reconnaissance Office to provide imaging and other reconnaissance capabilities.

■ THE BORING COMPANY:

- We have a great flyover today from Joe Tegtmeyer (@JoeTegtmeyer) of the Musk facilities in Bastrop, Texas. He is the latest view at TBC HQ. There are tons of new tunnel wall sections and the areas in the northeast are now being utilized and expanded. Flyover link is in the sources section. Subscribe to Joe!

- Just as a reminder, the Not-A-Boring-Competition will start on March 24th and end on the 29th... I think. Many crews around the world have started preparing for their journeys to Bastrop.

Full competition teams will compete in four categories:

Fastest to complete a horizontal tunnel (Champion Award)
Innovative design, build, or test (Innovation Award)
Most accurate guidance and navigation system (Accuracy Award),
Most impressive design, build, or test by a rookie competitor (Rookie of the Year Award)

They all must design a tunnel boring machine (TBM) that digs a tunnel with a minimum 0.2m² cross-section (equivalent to 0.5m diameter), follows a nominal alignment with a 30m straight-line distance between fully underground ingress and egress points, breaks through within 0.5m of the target (with penalties for deviations exceeding 0.5m), reaches a tunnel crown depth over 0.5m (maximum depth up to the team), is of original design with documented collaboration on out-of-house assemblies, and is remotely controlled from the surface without combustion engines or explosives, while reporting 6DOF state and telemetry at 0.1 Hz minimum and monitoring explosive/flammable gases for safety shutdowns.

For the second year in a row, TBC is also hosting several Mini Competitions that provide a lower barrier-to-entry, to rookie and pre-collegiate teams, who want to get involved. They include:

Digging Mini Competition: Create an innovative soil excavation system for a TBM of your own design and building that can complete a vertical bore with a cross section of at least 0.2 m2 to a depth of at least 1m.
Tunnel Lining Mini Competition: Create an innovative tunnel support system for a TBM on your own design and build that can be deployed and support a reinforcement system which supports dirt placed and settled on top of it within a test pit.
Navigation Mini Competition: Create an innovative guidance and navigation system which conforms to the approximate constraints of a full size TBM, demonstrated on a small autonomous rover. It must autonomously navigate an above ground obstacle course in a field made up of obstacles and checkpoints of varying sizes and shapes. It must report relevant telemetry at a rate of at least 0.1 Hz b. Be capable of receiving a remotely commanded E-Stop signal from a surface ground control station. And it can not utilize combustion engines or explosive materials.

■ NEURALINK: N/A...

■ STARLINK:

- Here is the latest view of the Starlink Factory in Bastrop thanks to Joe Tegtmeyer. They have added a new parking lot on the south end.

- Vietnam plans to adopt rules that allow Starlink service while maintaining full ownership of its local subsidiary. This change is part of a 12-page resolution to ease technological innovation obstacles and requiring the prime minister's approval. It is seen as an "olive branch" to SpaceX amid President Trump's tariffs. Vietnam had a $123.5 billion trade surplus with the U.S. last year. SpaceX aims to invest $1.5 billion into Vietnam.

■ X:

- "Let’s go, Grok 3!" Team X Japan watching the Grok live demo in Tokyo. Pic by X's Q (@QXsToo).

- X is contesting a Berlin court decision that mandated unrestricted access to all user data for research by Democracy Reporting International and Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte ahead of the German election, claiming it violates due process and privacy rights. The judge had prior ties to Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte, raising impartiality concerns. This case is part of the EU's Digital Services Act enforcement, which requires transparency from platforms like X for research purposes.

- Great update views of the X Safety and Moderation facility in Bastrop, Texas. This building will become the new X HQ once completed. As you can see they have added a large parking area. Either here or the Hyperloop Plaza parking lot will soon get Supercharger stalls.

- X increased the Premium+ subscription price to $40/month on web or $395 annually, providing access to Grok 3, higher Grok limits, a fully ad-free experience, and article writing capabilities. The Premium+ is $30/month on the mobile app due to Grok limitations compared to the web.

■ xAI:

- It's here and it's good... Last night Elon, Igor Babuschkin (@ibab), Jimmy Ba (@jimmybajimmyba), and Tony (help me out Tony) introduced Grok 3!

Per xAI's Hieu Pham (@hyhieu226), "Chocolate for those who spent their Valentine's day grinding."

Grok 3, codenamed "chocolate," topped the Chatbot Arena leaderboard, breaking the 1400 score barrier for the first time, with a score of 1402 after approximately 8,000 votes.
Grok 3 reasoning beta achieved 96 on AIME and 85 on GPQA, which is on par with the full o3.
The model has shown superior performance across all benchmarks, including math, science, and coding, outpacing competitors like Gemini 2.0 Pro, DeepSeek-V3, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and o3-mini.
Requires 10-15 times more compute than its predecessor, Grok 2. Significant advancements in computational power and AI efficiency.
The development of Grok 3 involved training on the Colossus Supercomputer, which has over 200,000 GPUs, with phase 1 taking 122 days for 100,000 GPUs and phase 2 expanding to 200,000 GPUs in 92 days.
xAI's focus on expanding AI capabilities through Grok 3 includes deep search and reasoning, positioning it as a formidable competitor in the AI chatbot market, challenging the likes of ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.
DeepSearch performs comprehensive web searches by compiling reports and providing citations, enhancing the user's ability to delve deep into topics similar to Google Gemini's Deep Research.
Think leverages Grok 3's advanced reasoning capabilities to solve complex problems innovatively, accessible via the Grok app's "Big Brain" mode, allowing users to engage in logical reasoning tasks that surpass previous AI benchmarks.
Grok Pro is a subscription model at $30 a month or $300 a year, Users gain access to all premium features. X Premium+ subscribers have full access.
xAI is set to introduce Grok Voice as soon as possible, allowing users to interact with Grok 3 through synthesized voice, making the AI experience more natural and accessible. The feature will have one unified model for its voice capabilities, ensuring consistency and coherence in voice interactions.
The API for Grok 3 will be available in the coming weeks, enabling developers to integrate the AI's capabilities into various applications, thus broadening its utility in the tech ecosystem.
Another feature highlighted is Grok's ability to transcribe audio into text providing users with a tool to convert spoken words into written form effortlessly.
Grok will incorporate conversation memory, allowing for more contextually aware and continuous interactions, by remembering past conversations.
Users will have the option to interact with one or multiple instances of Grok.
xAI plans to open-source Grok 2 in a few months.

- xAI Team members ready and excited reveal Grok 3!

- Per xAI's Toby Pohlen (@TobyPhln), "The rate at which we can improve our models and systems is more important than any one particular milestone. Grok 3 showed that we were able to go from 0 to SotA in 19 months."

- Per Elon, "We're already working on the next training cluster. We anticipate it to be roughly 5x bigger than the current cluster." That is approximately 1 million GPUs at about $25 to $30 billion.

- xAI wants you to email them at gamestudio@x.ai if you're a developer and interested in designing AI games via first principles. Per Elon, "We’re working on being able to integrate photo-realistic graphics into AI games for the xAI game studio."

- Grok Android was opened last night for testing, but only the first 2k users to register were allowed. Boooo...

- Today, xAI's Brent Mayo (@BrentM_SpaceX) went in front of the Memphis City Council to discuss the purchase of the 13 acres of city-owned land for $820,000 to build the $80 million graywater facility. The city paid $200,000 for the entire 65 acres and will sell 13 acres to xAI for about 4 times more. xAI said the company could build the water facility on land it already owns but wanted to go through the public process. Brent and xAI want Memphis involved. Per Brent, "I personally want to work with city council, so I will do everything in my power to get it pushed through so that we can do what’s good, and right, for the city of Memphis. Not to be confused with West Tennessee, which everybody seemingly in the state alludes to West Tennessee. This is Memphis. I want Memphis to win. It’s really critically important for us to be sustainable in everything we do. This is a big deal for us and a big deal for the community." All members are onboard, except Yolanda Cooper-Sutton, who appears to place the benefits gained by her constituents behind her political motivations. The sale of the land must be approved by the full council.

■ DOGE:

- Member of the DOGE leadership:

Christopher Stanley (@cstanley); We all know Chris. He is a security engineer at X.
Brad Smith; Ex-Trump administration official linked to Operation Warp Speed
Steve Davis; President of The Boring Company and longtime friend and confidant of Elon.
Joe Gebbia (@@jgebbia); Co-founder of Airbnb.

- DOGE.gov now features "Savings" and a "Wall of Receipts" detailing where savings were made, with specific examples.

- DOGE made the Treasury Access Symbol (TAS) a mandatory field for federal payments. For approximately $4.7 trillion this was optional, making all traceability and transparency unkown. This change was implemented in collaboration with the U.S. Treasury starting this past Saturday.

- NASA's workforce of nearly 18,000 civil servants across its headquarters and 10 field centers will be reduced by approximately 10 percent. This includes about 750 employees accepting a deferred resignation offer and nearly 1,000 probationary employees. The cuts target programs like the Space Launch System (SLS), Orion spacecraft, and Lunar Gateway, which have faced significant delays and budget overruns. DOGE played a pivotal role in this workforce reduction.

■ ELON NEWS:

- Per Elon, "All you need to know to understand which company will win a technology competition is look at the first and second derivatives of the rate of innovation."

- OpenAI is considering granting special voting rights to its non-profit board to preserve directors' power as it transitions to a for-profit structure and fends off a $97.4 billion hostile takeover bid from Elon and friends. This move would allow the board to overrule major investors like Microsoft and SoftBank, ensuring control remains with the non-profit board during the transition.

- Trump, Elon, and Hannity tonight at 9 p.m. ET on Fox News.

__________

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