S.E. Robinson, Jr.

ELON CHRON: The Daily Chronicle of Elon Musk's Companies

Added 2025-07-10 20:36:00 +0000 UTC

10th of July, 2025

"The value of AI companies will exceed non-AI probably by an order of magnitude..." - Elon Musk (@elonmusk)

■ TESLA TSLA 3.72%↑ ($309.87, +4.73%):

- The above pic was posted yesterday by Tesla Fremont Production Supervisor Nick Almanza. If this recent, Sr. VP of Automotive Tom Zhu is back in the States.

- According to the latest 8-K filing with the SEC, Tesla will hold their Annual Shareholder Meeting on November 6, 2025.

- Elon posted that Grok integration in Tesla vehicles will happen next week at the latest. He also posted that Robotaxi for California is still waiting on regulatory approvals, but expected in a month or two.

- thyssenkrupp Supply Chain Services piloted the Tesla Semi at a California hub, covering 5,000 miles in 3 weeks, including Altamont Pass. They did say there are not enough charging stations. Per Bob Denehy, Chief Commercial Officer at thyssenkrupp, "The Tesla Semi aligns with our ongoing commitment to sustainability and operational excellence. Its efficiency and diagnostic features, and low environmental impact make it a natural fit for our evolving logistics strategy."

Per Tesla's Semi Lead Dan Priestley (@danWpriestley), "Working with our suppliers and logistics partners to electrify Tesla’s supply chain. With lower cost and higher reliability, it just makes sense. thyssenkrupp pushed the truck hard over this demo and now plans to integrate Semi into their fleet.”

- WattEV began construction on its sixth heavy-duty electric truck charging depot at the Port of Oakland. This site anchors a zero-emission freight corridor linking the Bay Area, Sacramento, Nevada, and Southern California. The depot features 15 CCS (240-kilowatt) and six MCS (megawatt) dispensers, enabling 25 trucks to charge simultaneously in 30 minutes or less. You can see their Tesla Semi in the background. They currently have 40 Tesla Semis on order and two in testing. The company is planning 15 more sites, targeting 100 West Coast stations by 2035.

- Tesla announced that over 60,000 solar-powered Powerwalls in Puerto Rico prevented grid disruptions on Wednesday. The Puerto Rico Virtual Power Plant (VPP) system delivered 45-48 MW of power when the island's grid reserves were only 9 MW. Puerto Rico has installed over 150,000 Powerwalls since Hurricane Maria.

Per James Bickford, Tesla's Director of Global Sales for Residential Energy Products, "Yesterday, instead of backing up individual homes, this collection of batteries operated as one distributed power plant and helped back up the entire island!" Tesla now has a live feed webpage of the energy being generated by the VPP.

- Tesla Associate Sales Manager, Peuzahnt Orchanian, and Team at Montebello, California, engaging with their community yesterday by painting a Cybertruck. He and his team are asking local businesses and community members to reach out so Tesla can support local events.

- According to Sawyer Merritt, Tesla has contacted Arizona's Department of Transportation (ADOT) to certify autonomous Robotaxi operations, including driverless testing, with a decision expected by the 31st of July.

- Zanegler (@HinrichsZane) has spotted a gantry crane being assembled on the westside of Giga Nevada's Semi Factory most likely to move equipment into the factory. Reports from Joe Tegtmeyer (@JoeTegtmeyer) suggest a stamping press prepared for shipment at Giga Texas is likely headed to Nevada.

FLYOVERS (flight links in sources section):

Giga Texas: Brad Sloan, 10th of July, '25.

Fremont Factory: MetGod, 10th of July, '25.

■ SPACEX:

- The National Defense University Foundation will honor SpaceX President & COO, Gwynne Shotwell (@Gwynne_Shotwell), with the American Patriot Award at the 2025 Patriot Dinner. She is being recognized for her transformative leadership in national security through innovation in aerospace and industry. The dinner will be held on the 10th of September in Washington D.C.

- At Starbase yesterday evening, Raptors were spotted running around Mega Bay 2. Installation has started for Starship 37! At Pad 1, workers cut a hole in the back of the Booster Quick Disconnect and now installed a pipe support to host the flex hoses needed to fuel Starship for static fires. Pics via @NASASpaceflight's live feed.

- The Crew-11 briefings were held today at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The briefing was conducted by Ken Bowersox (Associate Administrator, NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate), Steve Stich (Manager, Commercial Crew Program, NASA Kennedy), Bill Spetch (Operations Integration Manager, International Space Station Program, NASA Johnson), Sarah Walker (Director, Dragon Mission Management, SpaceX), and Mayumi Matsuura (VP and Director General, Human Spaceflight Technology Directorate, JAXA). Here are the highlights:

Crew Dragon Endeavour Upgrades: It will use the new drogue parachutes with a stronger crown and updated packaging. The were tested on CRS-32. Enhanced composite heatshield for improved structural capability.
Mission Logistics: Dragon Endeavour will move from HangarX2 to the fueling facility tomorrow night. Fueling starts the weekend after next. This will be the sixth flight for Endeavour; the Dragon fleet leader.
Booster and Second Stage: Falcon 9 Booster B1094 is in good condition. This will be it's third flight. Second stage is at the Cape and passed McGregor pre-flight testing.
Launch Pad and Schedule: LC-39A is ready with no major issues reported by SpaceX. Crew-10 return targeted around August 5, first Commercial Crew Pacific landing.

At 2 p.m. the Crew-11 crew held a news conference. This includes NASA Commander Zena Cardman, NASA Pilot Mike Fincke, JAXA Mission Specialist Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos Mission Specialist Oleg Platonov. Pic by Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow). At 3 p.m., individual crew interviews were given.

Starbase City Commission Meeting:

Wednesday, 16th of July, at 7:00 p.m. CT, at 39046 LBJ Blvd, Unit 02, Brownsville, TX 78521.

Countdown to 180 (84 - Falcon 9, 0 - Falcon Heavy, and 3 - Starship):

Launch 88! July, Sunday, 13th, of July at 12:31 a.m. ET, Falcon 9 Dror-1? ("Commercial GTO 1") 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. The payload for SpaceX's "Commercial GTO 1" mission, as per FCC documentation, is unconfirmed but may be Dror-1, a geostationary communication satellite built by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). Dror-1, designed to serve Israel's communication needs for 15 years, features locally developed Israeli technologies, including an advanced digital communication payload and “smartphone in space” capabilities for enhanced communication agility throughout its operational life.
Launch 89! Sunday, 13th of July, at 7:27 p.m. PT, Falcon 9 Starlink 15-2 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 Atlantic Ocean.
Launch 90! July, Wednesday, 16th of July, at 2:05 a.m. ET, Falcon 9 Project Kuiper #1 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. This is the first of a three launches contracted for Amazon's Kuiper low Earth orbit satellite internet constellation.
Launch 91! Wednesday, 16th of July, at 7:08 p.m. PT, Falcon 9 Starlink 17-3 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 Atlantic Ocean.
Launch 92! July, TBD. NASA SpaceX Falcon 9 Crew-11 will launch from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Booster B1094 will return to site and land at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) located at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

■ THE BORING COMPANY: N/A... boring.

■ NEURALINK:

- Jake Schneider (@PairedWith_P7) has announced that he is the 7th recipient of Neuralink's Telepathy. The 3rd recipient with ALS.. Follow Jake's new X account. Per Jake, "Life at the intersection of hope & technology. Wired for the impossible.”

- Inside Neuralink's tool shop. Pic by Ashlee Vance (ashleevance). When asked why Neuralink needs wood working tools, Ashlee said they will show us soon.

- Neuralink's Principal Investigator Dan Adams (@Dan___Adams) visited the the National Foundation of the Blind's annual convention in New Orleans. "Learning from this incredible community at the largest gathering of blind people in the world is fascinating and inspiring!" Not a lot of details, but I can assume he is getting feedback on thoughts and expectations of Blindsight.

- Came across Neuralink Engineering Software Manager, Gautham Acharya's 2024 Databricks' Data + AI Summit talk on Neuralink's data platform Neuralake. He spoke on how they build a simple, elegant platform for handling complex multimodal data. Neuralake enables real-time data ingestion, federated multi-datastore querying, and fast retrieval, scaling efficiently from a single laptop to a stateless distributed cluster without JVM or complex distributed system overhead. Link to he full talk is in the Sources Section. Worth listening to.

Neuralink open-sourced Neuralake on GitHub in the form of Datarepo. It is a simple web catalog for defining data sources in code, generating a web UI, stateless API server, and Python SDK query interface. Built with Rust-native libraries like Polars, Apache Datafusion, and Delta-rs, it ensures performant reads and scalability.

■ STARLINK:

- At the Silicon Flatirons Space & Spectrum Policy Conference, SpaceX VP of Satellite Policy David Goldman delivered a closing keynote, emphasizing Starlink’s role in expanding global internet access and urging reform of outdated regulatory processes that hinder innovation, particularly for startups. He advocated for clearer, more predictable licensing and spectrum policies to align with frequent satellite launches and challenged students and young professionals to drive thoughtful, responsible innovation for a sustainable, inclusive space future. His full keynote is in the Sources Section.

- Qatar Airways announced they have completed installing Starlink on their 54 Boeing 777 aircrafts. This was done in 9 months, 50% faster than planned. They are now equipping their Airbus A350 fleet. Since launching their first equipped 777 in 2024, they have provided 15,000 Starlink equipped flights. Shortly after this announcement, Starlink posted they are now active on more than 1,000 planes around the world!

■ X:

- X France hosted the "Press Play" today. The event discussed gaming in a modern venue while reflecting X's push to rival Twitch amid France’s €5.5 billion gaming market. X's Global Luxury Strategy Lead, Florence Best (@BabyModeuse) and Maxime PONS (@maximepons) engaged the audience and and drove influencer involvement.

■ xAI:

- xAI gave us Grok 4 last night and it has emerged as the worlds leading AI model. If you are a Premium+ subscriber, update your app, you have Grok 4 waiting for you. Here are some of the highlights from last night:

Grok 4 with Tools incoming. This includes SpaceX and Tesla for problem-solving anchors.

$3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens.
256k token context window; meaning it can handle a lot of information at once thanks to Colossus. This is double the normal 128k token benchmark.
No.1 on Humanity’s Last Exam at 44.4%. 2nd is Gemini 2.5 Pro at 26.9%.
No.1 on GPQA (graduate problems)at 88.9%. 2nd is Gemini 2.5 Pro at 86.4%.
No.1 on AIME 2025 (Math) at 100%. 2nd is OpenAI o3 at 98.4%.
No.1 on Harvard MIT Math at 96.7%. 2nd is Gemini 2.5 Pro at 82.5%.
No.1 on USAMO25 (Math) at 61.9%. 2nd is Gemini Deep Think at 49.4%.
No.1 on ARC-AGI-2 (easy for humans, hard for AI) at 15.9%. 2nd is Claude Opus 4 at 8.6%.
No.1 on LiveCodeBench from January thru May at 79.4%. 2nd was Gemini 2.5 Pro at 74.2%.

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index score of 73, surpassing OpenAI’s o3-pro (71), Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro (70), Anthropic’s Claude 4 Opus (64), and DeepSeek’s R1 0528 (68).

Grok 4 (Thinking) sets a new state-of-the-art on ARC-AGI-2, scoring 15.9%, nearly doubling the prior commercial benchmark and surpassing the current Kaggle competition leader. On ARC-AGI-1, it scores 66.7%, aligning with the Pareto frontier for AI reasoning systems reported last month.

Per Elon, "Important to note that ARC tested Grok 4 independently to achieve those results. Those results are not from us.”

SuperGrok and SuperGrok Heavy monthly and annual price tiers for Grok 4.

A few pics from the livestream by xAI's Guodong Zhang (@Guodzh) and Daniel (@nearlydaniel), ArcPrize President Greg Kamradt (@GregKamradt), and X's Nate Esparza (@Nate_Esparza).

Elon's post after the livestream:

"Grok 4 is the first time, in my experience, that an AI has been able to solve difficult, real-world engineering questions where the answers cannot be found anywhere on the Internet or in books. And it will get much better."
"Grok 4 is at the point where it essentially never gets math/physics exam questions wrong, unless they are skillfully adversarial. It can identify errors or ambiguities in questions, then fix the error in the question or answer each variant of an ambiguous question."
"Grok is already far smarter than humans in most respects. It can’t yet create new technologies or discover new physics (which very few humans can do) and sometimes misses on common sense. When Grok goes far wrong, that is usually due to something foolish we did, like a bad system prompt or placing too much weight on biased sources. Also, we need to complete improved image training, as even Grok 4 is still partially blind. That will be solved in a month or so."
"You can cut & paste your entire source code file into the query entry box on
grok.com
and Grok 4 will fix it for you! This is what everyone xAI does. Works better than Cursor."

■ DOGE:

Estimated Savings: $190 Billion

Amount Saved Per Taxpayer: $1,180.12

- According to the Wall Street Journal (grain of salt), Steve Davis, President of the Boring Company and former top aide at DOGE, continues to direct current DOGE officials despite officially leaving in May. Davis remains influential. They claim Davis and other Musk allies aim to shift DOGE 2.0 toward government IT systems as the department resists White House efforts to curb its power.

■ ELON NEWS: N/A...

■ WAYS TO SUPPORT:

If you enjoy the ELON CHRON, please support by subscribing for only $4/month. That's less than .18¢/update! When you subscribe you also become instantly eligible for the random subscriber giveaway.

For July, I am giving away Tesla's official Year of the Snake Backpack ($50)! Like always, one random subscriber's name will be drawn at the end of the month. Subscribe here!

Check out the new Colossus t-Shirt at serobinsonjr.shop

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