Last updated Nov 29, 2025
Prediction
Chamath
Chamath @ 01:14:47Inconclusive
techai
The combination of SpaceX Starship milestones and Neuralink’s advances during this seven-day period in March 2024 will rank among the most significant achievement streaks of Elon Musk’s career, exceeding what most individuals will accomplish in their entire lifetimes, and will be viewed as such in retrospect.
Starship had an incredible performance last week. And then this thing this week. I mean, what an incredible seven day run. It's more than most of us will have in our lifetime.View on YouTube
Explanation

Chamath is reacting to two closely timed events:

  1. Starship IFT-3 (March 14, 2024): SpaceX’s third integrated flight test reached orbital velocity for the first time, completed multiple in-space objectives (full-duration second-stage burn, propellant transfer demo, payload door test), but the ship broke up during re-entry instead of achieving a controlled splashdown. It was widely reported as a major milestone but still a partial failure and an intermediate step in the Starship program. (en.wikipedia.org)
  2. Neuralink’s first human-implant livestream (March 20, 2024): Neuralink showed Noland Arbaugh, a quadriplegic, using a brain-computer implant to move a cursor and play online chess and other games purely by thought, which received extensive global coverage as an important demonstration of their BCI technology. (reuters.com)

The normalized prediction is that this specific seven-day run will, in historical retrospect, be regarded as one of the most significant achievement streaks of Musk’s entire career and as surpassing what most people accomplish in their lifetimes.

As of late 2025:

  • Starship has already had more successful and arguably more significant tests after IFT-3. The June 6, 2024 IFT-4 mission achieved a successful controlled ocean landing of the Super Heavy booster and a mostly successful reentry and splashdown of the Starship upper stage, widely described as a major step toward full reusability. (wired.com) This tends to dilute the unique historical significance of IFT-3 as the decisive breakthrough.
  • Neuralink’s first-human demonstration remains an early, promising but still experimental step. Experts at the time framed it as incremental progress in brain–computer interfaces rather than a singular scientific breakthrough, and the technology is still in clinical trials with limited deployment. (reuters.com) Arbaugh’s continued public demonstrations (e.g., playing chess on stage in 2025) show real impact but reinforce that this is an evolving program, not a completed epoch-defining achievement. (chess.com)

Crucially, Chamath’s claim is about long-term historical judgment over the course of Musk’s whole career, which is ongoing and still producing new milestones (further Starship tests, Starlink expansion, Tesla developments, additional Neuralink work, etc.). We do not yet have anything like a stable historical consensus ranking Musk’s “most significant” achievement streaks, nor is there strong evidence that commentators single out this March 2024 week as uniquely defining compared with later Starship or other Musk milestones.

Because the prediction concerns how future observers will ultimately rank this period in Musk’s life, and Musk’s career and these technologies are still unfolding, it is too early to say whether this week will indeed be remembered as one of his most significant achievement streaks.

Therefore, the status of the prediction is inconclusive (too early to tell) rather than clearly right or wrong.