Tech has always needed its storytellers. By turning impersonal electronics into objects of high style and personal empowerment, Apple’s Steve Jobs once set the direction for an entire industry.
These days, it also needs people who can mobilise almost unimaginable amounts of capital. Meta, Alphabet and Amazon stunned Wall Street in recent days with plans to spend more than half a trillion dollars on AI data centres this year, far more than expected.
If anyone was made for this moment, it is Elon Musk. His ability to persuade investors to suspend their disbelief and back his sci-fi adjacent dreams (rockets to Mars? Fleets of robot taxis?) is unrivalled. It also helps, of course, that he has pulled off impressive feats of engineering, like pushing electric cars into the mainstream with Tesla and virtually monopolising the market for launching rockets into orbit with SpaceX.