The mission statement SpaceX adopted when it absorbed xAI in February reads: "scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars." This is, depending on how you read it, either the most ridiculous thing a serious company has ever put on its mission page or the most honest. We think it’s the latter. If you squint at the org chart, SpaceX is a launch provider with an internet subsidiary and a recently-acquired AI lab. If you squint at the technology roadmap, it’s the only company on Earth assembling the full prerequisite stack for the post-scarcity transition. If you squint at the mission statement, it’s a serious attempt by one of the most operationally capable founders of our time to push humanity through the bottleneck that ends with us either as an interplanetary species sharing the cosmos with intelligent machines we built, or as a footnote on one rocky planet that didn’t make the leap. SpaceX & the Sentient Sun, by @mikemcg0 and @pmarca: https://www.a16z.news/p/spacex-and-the-sentient-sun(a16z)