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Tesla community celebrates 49 years of Elon Musk’s relentless pursuit of dreams and sustainability
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is celebrating his 49th birthday today, and both the electric car and space community are celebrating a life that has so far been dedicated to the pursuit of dreams and sustainability. Musk’s journey has been arduous, but his sheer determination has played a notable part in accelerating today’s shift towards renewables and interplanetary endeavors.
It is said that discomfort is something that could harness the best in a person. For Musk, this does seem to be the case. As a teenager, Musk fled to Canada with around $2,000 to his name, and he lived off manual labor for some time to make ends meet. Finishing college, Musk was similar to other graduates, being $100,000 in debt. Yet despite this, Musk was a dreamer, and his fascination with space, tech, and sustainability were intact.
Musk’s first successes came in the tech sector, starting with Zip2, a directory service that could, in a way, be considered as a predecessor of programs like Google Maps. He then went on to online banking with X.com, which, after a merger with Confinity, was sold to eBay as PayPal. Musk’s earnings from the sale of PayPal ultimately helped start SpaceX, a private space company. It did not take long before Musk became the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Tesla, an electric vehicle company.
Elon Musk’s successes today prove that hard work is needed for real results. Previous interviews have mentioned Musk remarking that projects such as mass producing the Tesla Model 3 or creating reusable rockets is difficult. And it’s true. Musk is arguably one of the most hands-on CEOs in the industry today, at some points in recent years even bunking on Tesla’s Fremont Factory to help out the company in ramping vehicle production.
But all this hard work also results in a lot of hard-won victories. When Elon Musk joined Tesla as the company’s primary investor, and as he took the reins of the company as its CEO during the financial crisis, the idea of an electric car company being the most valuable automaker in the world by market cap was farfetched. But this is exactly what has happened over the years. It took a ton of hard work with each vehicle release, but there is no denying the fact that Tesla today is a force to be reckoned with in the auto sector.
The same goes for SpaceX. The private space firm could be considered as Musk’s true labor of love, being a company that is currently pursuing Musk’s personal childhood dream of making humans into an interplanetary species. Just like Tesla, the road has not been easy for SpaceX, with the company teetering over the edge of bankruptcy amidst the multiple failures of its first custom-designed rocket, the Falcon 1. The Falcon 1 was a humble rocket, and it took three failures before it was able to reach orbit nominally.
The victory of the Falcon 1 ultimately paved the way for the emergence of SpaceX’s resident workhorse, the Falcon 9. Equipped with nine Merlin Engines, the Falcon 9 marked its place in space history through its sheer reliability, and later on, its unique reusability. The Falcon 9, as well as its upgraded configuration, the Falcon Heavy, stand as the pinnacle of rockets today, with their capability to be reflown and reused after landing on land and at sea.
If there is one thing that is similar among Elon Musk’s primary companies and the CEO himself, it is the fact that they move very fast. Tesla was able to outpace the EV competition since its vehicles, which were the benchmark in performance and tech to begin with, are moving targets for competitors. SpaceX is the same way. Despite the dominance of the Falcon 9 in terms of reusability and cost, the company is now looking towards its next great project — Starship — a massive rocket that is designed for actual interplanetary travel.
Ultimately, it is quite fascinating to see what Elon Musk has accomplished over his 49 years. But what is even more exciting is that there is more to come. Tesla is only getting started in the energy sector, and SpaceX looking to even higher heights. The next few years for Musk would most definitely be even more compelling.
Elon Musk
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service has continued its rapid global expansion, surpassing 9 million active customers just weeks after crossing the 8 million mark.
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
9 million customers
In a post on X, SpaceX stated that Starlink now serves over 9 million active users across 155 countries, territories, and markets. The company reached 8 million customers in early November, meaning it added roughly 1 million subscribers in under seven weeks, or about 21,275 new users on average per day.
“Starlink is connecting more than 9M active customers with high-speed internet across 155 countries, territories, and many other markets,” Starlink wrote in a post on its official X account. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell also celebrated the milestone on X. “A huge thank you to all of our customers and congrats to the Starlink team for such an incredible product,” she wrote.
That growth rate reflects both rising demand for broadband in underserved regions and Starlink’s expanding satellite constellation, which now includes more than 9,000 low-Earth-orbit satellites designed to deliver high-speed, low-latency internet worldwide.
Starlink’s momentum
Starlink’s momentum has been building up. SpaceX reported 4.6 million Starlink customers in December 2024, followed by 7 million by August 2025, and 8 million customers in November. Independent data also suggests Starlink usage is rising sharply, with Cloudflare reporting that global web traffic from Starlink users more than doubled in 2025, as noted in an Insider report.
Starlink’s momentum is increasingly tied to SpaceX’s broader financial outlook. Elon Musk has said the satellite network is “by far” the company’s largest revenue driver, and reports suggest SpaceX may be positioning itself for an initial public offering as soon as next year, with valuations estimated as high as $1.5 trillion. Musk has also suggested in the past that Starlink could have its own IPO in the future.
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NVIDIA Director of Robotics: Tesla FSD v14 is the first AI to pass the “Physical Turing Test”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine.
NVIDIA Director of Robotics Jim Fan has praised Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14 as the first AI to pass what he described as a “Physical Turing Test.”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine. And just like smartphones today, removing it now would “actively hurt.”
Jim Fan’s hands-on FSD v14 impressions
Fan, a leading researcher in embodied AI who is currently solving Physical AI at NVIDIA and spearheading the company’s Project GR00T initiative, noted that he actually was late to the Tesla game. He was, however, one of the first to try out FSD v14.
“I was very late to own a Tesla but among the earliest to try out FSD v14. It’s perhaps the first time I experience an AI that passes the Physical Turing Test: after a long day at work, you press a button, lay back, and couldn’t tell if a neural net or a human drove you home,” Fan wrote in a post on X.
Fan added: “Despite knowing exactly how robot learning works, I still find it magical watching the steering wheel turn by itself. First it feels surreal, next it becomes routine. Then, like the smartphone, taking it away actively hurts. This is how humanity gets rewired and glued to god-like technologies.”
The Physical Turing Test
The original Turing Test was conceived by Alan Turing in 1950, and it was aimed at determining if a machine could exhibit behavior that is equivalent to or indistinguishable from a human. By focusing on text-based conversations, the original Turing Test set a high bar for natural language processing and machine learning.
This test has been passed by today’s large language models. However, the capability to converse in a humanlike manner is a completely different challenge from performing real-world problem-solving or physical interactions. Thus, Fan introduced the Physical Turing Test, which challenges AI systems to demonstrate intelligence through physical actions.
Based on Fan’s comments, Tesla has demonstrated these intelligent physical actions with FSD v14. Elon Musk agreed with the NVIDIA executive, stating in a post on X that with FSD v14, “you can sense the sentience maturing.” Musk also praised Tesla AI, calling it the best “real-world AI” today.
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Tesla AI team burns the Christmas midnight oil by releasing FSD v14.2.2.1
The update was released just a day after FSD v14.2.2 started rolling out to customers.
Tesla is burning the midnight oil this Christmas, with the Tesla AI team quietly rolling out Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14.2.2.1 just a day after FSD v14.2.2 started rolling out to customers.
Tesla owner shares insights on FSD v14.2.2.1
Longtime Tesla owner and FSD tester @BLKMDL3 shared some insights following several drives with FSD v14.2.2.1 in rainy Los Angeles conditions with standing water and faded lane lines. He reported zero steering hesitation or stutter, confident lane changes, and maneuvers executed with precision that evoked the performance of Tesla’s driverless Robotaxis in Austin.
Parking performance impressed, with most spots nailed perfectly, including tight, sharp turns, in single attempts without shaky steering. One minor offset happened only due to another vehicle that was parked over the line, which FSD accommodated by a few extra inches. In rain that typically erases road markings, FSD visualized lanes and turn lines better than humans, positioning itself flawlessly when entering new streets as well.
“Took it up a dark, wet, and twisty canyon road up and down the hill tonight and it went very well as to be expected. Stayed centered in the lane, kept speed well and gives a confidence inspiring steering feel where it handles these curvy roads better than the majority of human drivers,” the Tesla owner wrote in a post on X.
Tesla’s FSD v14.2.2 update
Just a day before FSD v14.2.2.1’s release, Tesla rolled out FSD v14.2.2, which was focused on smoother real-world performance, better obstacle awareness, and precise end-of-trip routing. According to the update’s release notes, FSD v14.2.2 upgrades the vision encoder neural network with higher resolution features, enhancing detection of emergency vehicles, road obstacles, and human gestures.
New Arrival Options also allowed users to select preferred drop-off styles, such as Parking Lot, Street, Driveway, Parking Garage, or Curbside, with the navigation pin automatically adjusting to the ideal spot. Other refinements include pulling over for emergency vehicles, real-time vision-based detours for blocked roads, improved gate and debris handling, and Speed Profiles for customized driving styles.
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
NVIDIA Director of Robotics: Tesla FSD v14 is the first AI to pass the “Physical Turing Test”
