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Elon Musk provides critical context on hotly-debated “emerald mine” story
There are several points of legitimate criticism that are directed at Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Among the most persistent involves claims about an emerald mine, which critics on social media have related to Musk’s fortune and success being built on the back of “stolen jewels,” “blood diamonds,” or “apartheid,” for that matter.
Considering the prevalence of the story, it was no wonder that the claim emerged on Twitter this weekend. This time around, it came in the form of a Community Note on Twitter, which responded to a user’s post stating that Musk had come to the US with no money and graduated with over $100,000 in debt, and that the CEO worked two jobs while he was at school.
As per the Community Note, which has since disappeared from the post, the post was reportedly “misleading” because Musk “was born into an extremely wealthy family in South Africa.” The Community Note received polarizing reactions on Twitter, with supporters of the CEO stating that it was inaccurate and critics celebrating it.
The Musk Emerald Story’s Roots
It should be noted that the Musk family’s relation to an emerald mine was referenced years ago, initially in two reports from Business Insider South Africa from 2018. The reports were based on comments from Errol Musk, Elon Musk’s father, who told the publication, among other things, that Elon and Kimbal at one time sold a pair of emeralds to Tiffany’s in New York City for about $2,000, and that the Musk family was so wealthy that they had difficulty closing their safe.
Now, the idea of Tiffany’s purchasing emeralds from teenagers who walked in the store may be a bit suspect, as such practices are more commonly affiliated with traditional pawnshops, and the idea of a safe not being closed easily because of too much money inside may sound cartoony, but Business Insider South Africa ran with the story anyway. At the end of the article, however, the publication noted that Errol’s story could not be confirmed by Elon because the father and son have a complicated history.
Elon Musk’s Changing Narrative
What is rather interesting here is that Musk has actually referenced an emerald mine in past interviews as well. In a 2014 interview with Forbes, Musk noted that “This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an Emerald mine in Zambia.” In posts on Twitter in December 2019, however, Musk noted that his father “didn’t own an emerald mine.” Granted, there’s a notable difference between “owning” a mine and “having a share” in one, but the apparent change in Musk’s narrative is notable.
The Crucial Piece
Fortunately, Musk’s recent post on Twitter provided some critical context on why his own interviews and later posts and comments contradict each other. As noted by Musk in his recent post, he actually believed that it was true for some time because his father told him that he owned a share in a mine in Zambia. However, it appears that nobody has really seen the mine, and he and his brother Kimbal are still financially supporting their father, even until today. Musk also shared some thoughts on his complicated relationship with his father.
“Our condition of providing him financial support was that he not engage in bad behavior. Unfortunately, he nonetheless did. There are young children involved, so we continued to provide financial support for their well-being. Regarding the so-called “emerald mine”, there is no objective evidence whatsoever that this mine ever existed. He told me that he owned a share in a mine in Zambia, and I believed him for a while, but nobody has ever seen the mine, nor are there any records of its existence. If this mine was real, he would not require financial support from my brother and me,” Musk wrote.
Whether or not Musk is telling the complete truth in his recent post on Twitter is still up for question. That being said, Musk’s post does explain why his comments and stance on his father’s emerald mine stake have changed over the years. If his post is accurate, then it is true that he believed that his father had a share in an emerald mine in the past, but it is also true that he is very skeptical of the claim today. His recent comments then, one of which is offering 1 million Dogecoins to anyone who can trace the emerald mine related to his father, would make sense.
Maye Musk, Elon Musk’s mother, also provided her own thoughts on the matter. As per Maye, she was made aware of the emerald mine story on Twitter about ten years ago. That being said, she also highlighted that when she and her children moved to Toronto in 1989, they stayed at a one-bedroom apartment and later a rent-controlled unit, hardly the accommodations of an extremely wealthy family from South Africa.
Errol Musk’s Most Recent Comments
To be fair, recent comments from Errol Musk also suggested that the emerald mine that he had a share in was not some grand operation that resulted in generational wealth.
“What Elon is saying is that there was no formal mine. It was a rock formation protruding from the ground in the middle of nowhere. There was no mining company. There are no signed agreements or financial statements. No one owned anything. The deal was done on a handshake with the Italian man at a time when Zambia was a free for all. Not even he knew exactly where the border was. At that time, it was like the Wild West,” Errol Musk told news.com.au.
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SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
SpaceX launched the classified USSF-385 mission from Vandenberg, landing its booster on a tenth flight.
SpaceX launched another classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from California early Saturday morning, and the Falcon 9 booster that carried it landed on a drone ship in the Pacific for the tenth time. The USSF-385 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:00 a.m. PT.
Booster B1100 touched down on Of Course I Still Love You roughly eight and a half minutes after liftoff. It was the booster’s tenth flight and tenth successful landing, following the NROL-95 national security mission and eight Starlink launches. Its previous flight, a Starlink Group 15 mission on August 22, came just 35 days earlier. SpaceX ended its livestream shortly after the landing, which is standard for classified payloads, and neither the company nor the Space Force has said what the rocket carried.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-385 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/CAdbx85Ydy
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 26, 2026
USSF-385 is the fourth Space Force launch from the same Vandenberg pad in roughly six weeks, following USSF-366 on August 15, USSF-153 on September 10, and USSF-259 on September 17. When SpaceX flew USSF-366 in August, independent trackers noted that the rocket’s stage drop zones matched SpaceX’s Starlink Group 15 missions, pointing to Starshield, the government version of the Starlink satellite bus. The Space Force later cataloged 23 satellites after both USSF-366 and USSF-153, while USSF-259 placed 17 satellites into a different orbital plane, per KeepTrack. Launch databases describe USSF-385 the same way, though the payload remains officially unidentified.
The cadence lines up with the contracts, because in July, the Space Force awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion in task orders for 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027. SpaceX also holds contracts to build pieces of that same network, which pushed its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion.
Saturday’s flight was also the sixth and final Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg in September, according to Spaceflight Now, while only one Falcon 9 flew from the East Coast this month as SpaceX shifts its Florida infrastructure toward Starship. Launch trackers list it as SpaceX’s 112th mission of 2026 and the 108th Falcon 9 flight of the year, with SLC-4E turned around about six and a half days after its previous launch.
The West Coast pad will not stay quiet for long, considering SpaceX has another Starlink mission scheduled from SLC-4E on September 30. Meanwhile, in Texas, the company is two days away from Starship Flight 14, which is targeting Monday at 7:15 a.m. CT for the vehicle’s first attempt to reach orbit.
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Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
Tesla ended its Semi event with a Roadster teaser revealing a new front light bar.
Tesla closed out its Semi event in Nevada on Thursday night with a nod to its own history, dropping a short Roadster teaser that suggests the production car will look noticeably different from the prototype first shown in 2017.
“We can’t have a Semi event without the Roadster,” Tesla engineering executive Lars Moravy told the crowd before the clip played. The line was a deliberate callback. Tesla first revealed the next generation Roadster in November 2017 by driving it out of the back of a Semi trailer at the truck’s original unveiling in Hawthorne, California.
The new video opens on trailer doors swinging apart in the dark. A thin white light bar glows across what appears to be the nose of the car, Tesla and SpaceX logos flash over the frame, and the Roadster name appears before the clip ends on “See you next week.” Tesla posted the nine second clip on X after the livestream wrapped.
See you next week pic.twitter.com/BT52bGVxFu
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 25, 2026
The light bar is the most concrete design detail so far. The 2017 prototype used two separate curved headlamp pods, while a connected front light strip would bring the Roadster in line with the Cybertruck, Cybercab, Semi, and refreshed Model Y. Sawyer Merritt was among the first to point out what looked like part of a SpaceX logo in the video, something Tesla has not addressed.
That logo fits the buildup around the optional SpaceX Package, which Elon Musk has long said would use cold gas thrusters to improve acceleration and possibly allow the car to briefly leave the ground. Tesla’s “Go for launch” post on September 12 set the October 1 date, and invitations sent to reservation holders place the event in Waco, Texas, at 8:30 p.m. Eastern. Waco sits roughly 20 minutes from SpaceX’s McGregor rocket test site, where the FAA has put a temporary flight restriction in place from September 18 through October 2, covering a 1.5 nautical mile radius from the surface up to 10,000 feet.
Tesla is also taking money ahead of the reveal. The company reopened Roadster reservations earlier this week with a $5,000 refundable card payment, followed by a $45,000 wire transfer due within 10 days. That puts buyers at $50,000 committed before Tesla has published a price.
The original pitch set a high bar: 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds before any upgrades, 620 miles of range, a top speed above 250 mph, and production in 2020. That timeline has slipped repeatedly, and Tesla has since pointed to production at Gigafactory Texas no earlier than 2027. The company has said next Thursday’s event will include pricing, specifications, and production targets, the three details original reservation holders have been waiting on for nearly nine years.
Tesla Full Self-Driving’s release in Europe is set to be delayed by at least a few months.
The European Union will not vote on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) on October 6. The draft agenda for the 119th meeting of the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles lists only a 25-minute “continuation of discussions” on the Netherlands’ Article 39 request, not a decision. The next scheduled TCMV session is in December, which is now the earliest date a bloc-wide vote could occur.
Tesla Europe had pointed to October 6 as a possible EU-wide vote after the Dutch vehicle authority RDW granted the first European type approval on April 10.
That approval, under UN Regulation 171 plus an Article 39 exemption in EU Regulation 2018/858, is the legal file other member states have been recognizing one by one. The same committee has already discussed the request twice without voting.
Elon Musk’s reply to the delay was a single word: “Sigh.”
Sigh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 25, 2026
Seven EU countries have now cleared FSD Supervised on their own roads: the Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, Slovenia, and Czechia. Those seven states represent about 53 million people, or roughly 12 percent of the EU population. An EU-wide authorization still needs a qualified majority: at least 15 of 27 member states representing 65 percent of the bloc’s population, about 292 million people.
Germany, France, Italy, and Spain remain the decisive markets. France has already rejected the current system; several other governments have flagged speed-limit compliance as the main sticking point.
The safety case Tesla is putting in front of those governments is now public. On September 1, Tesla Europe said FSD Supervised was in use by more than 70,000 customers, covering over 1 million kilometers a day, and was 4.1 times less likely to be involved in a crash than manual driving across 100 million kilometers on EU public roads.
An earlier mid-year cut of the same fleet data, covering 65 million kilometers in five approved countries, put the collision advantage at 5.2 times, with zero highway collisions over 41.9 million kilometers. Tesla also reported far fewer automatic emergency braking events, harsh accelerations, and hard swerves than in comparable manual Tesla driving. Those figures are company-reported, not independently audited.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is taking over Europe: fourth country gets FSD approval
The public-health backdrop is harder to dispute. European countries recorded about 19,400 road deaths in 2025, or roughly 53 a day, most of them attributed to human error. FSD Supervised is not unsupervised autonomy; the driver remains legally responsible. But the software is already legal and in daily use across seven member states.
Until TCMV votes, the rest of the EU remains a patchwork: available in Prague and Amsterdam, locked behind review in Paris and Berlin. December is now the next chance to close that gap.
SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
