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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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Elon Musk has acknowledged that early discussions with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) could bring the company into his ambitious Terafab semiconductor project, signaling a possible partnership with the world’s leading contract chipmaker.
Musk confirmed that early talks are underway, but as of right now, they are “just discussions.” There is no confirmation of a deal nor dismissal of the possibility of one, leaving open the prospect of one of the largest advanced-chip collaborations under discussion in the U.S.
@wholemars Just discussions, but something may come of it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The report that speculated on potential discussions between Terafab and TSMC comes from Tim Culpan, who outlined a few ways the collaboration could operate. One is TSMC using the project as an “anchor customer” for future facilities in Texas, potentially contributing process expertise, operational know-how, or capacity while Terafab provides capital, long-term purchase commitments, or both.
Tesla and SpaceX jointly developed the Terafab project, with Intel already participating on the tech side. Elon Musk announced the project in March, and it intends to produce more than one terawatt of AI compute capacity annually once fully built.
Company statements place the first phase at approximately $16.8 billion in cost, with later filings pointing to a total that could reach well into the tens of billions across multiple stages.
Intel joined the effort in April 2026 and is expected to supply its 14A manufacturing process for the full-scale plant.
Musk has said existing suppliers, including Samsung and TSMC, remain important for near-term needs; Tesla already has production arrangements with Samsung for AI5 and AI6 chips, but that future demand from Optimus robots, Cybercab vehicles, and planned space-based data centers will eventually exceed what the global industry can currently deliver.
Terafab is positioned as the long-term answer to that projected shortfall, and Tesla did something similar during COVID to avoid a chip shortage. This is just a much larger-scale solution.
If the partnership were to materialize, it would add TSMC’s industry-leading strategies to a project that already combines Tesla’s and SpaceX’s capital and offtake with Intel’s process technology. For now, the only public confirmation is Musk’s brief acknowledgement that conversations are occurring.
Tesla’s early strategy for charging units operating within its Robotaxi fleet reveals that the company surely has not lost any of that scrappy DNA that took it from an unlikely success story to the most valuable carmaker in the world.
An observer at a Tesla Supercharger in Austin spotted ten total Robotaxi vehicles arrive: one Cybercab and nine Model Y units. A Tesla employee was waiting at the lot and allowed each unit to park itself; every car that arrived had nobody in it.
Tesla wins FCC approval for wireless Cybercab charging system
The Tesla employee would walk around and plug each car in, adjusting the parking if needed:
So look at what I found. This is how Tesla charges unsupervised robotaxis at a public supercharger. Here is a driverless Cybercab showing up with no one in it. There are 9 other Model Ys that showed up too. A Tesla employee is walking around and plugging each of them in. She also moves the cars if they are not positioned well enough to charge. I love this process. One person charges multiple robotaxis at once
— Abhimanyu Yadav (@WorldlyReviewer) October 3, 2026
It’s a very interesting strategy, but extremely understandable at this early point in the Robotaxi program. It’s only been out for about 15 months, and Cybercab just entered the fleet in early September.
On top of that, Tesla is still working tirelessly on its wireless charging apparatus, and a new patent was just published regarding that product last week.
However, this is just another example of how Tesla still has plenty of that scrappy DNA leftover from the “production hell” days, when CEO Elon Musk slept on the floor of the factory, employees were working crazy hours, Tesla was building Sprung Structures to build cars in, and the company was tiptoeing on the brink of bankruptcy.
@Teslarati Sheer magnitude of the entire production system is hard to appreciate. Almost every element of production is >75% automated. Only wire harnesses & general assembly, which are <10% of production costs, are primarily manual.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 12, 2020
For now, Tesla is utilizing a simple system for recharging its ride-hailing vehicles, and that is a Tesla employee doing it manually until another solution presents itself. Sure, it’s not the most high-tech thing, and it certainly is not what people might have expected at this point in time, but it works, and it’s keeping the entire suite running.
Tesla is expanding its Robotaxi service hours by pushing the time back by one hour, keeping the ride-hailing service operational until 11 p.m., one hour later than previously.
CEO Elon Musk confirmed the change and offered a specific reason the expansion has been gradual: the system still needs to reliably avoid small pets that are difficult to see after dark, as they commonly blend into the color of the road, especially when they’re grey.
The latest adjustment restores only a fraction of the operating window the service once held. When paid Robotaxi rides began in Austin on June 22, 2025, vehicles ran from 6 a.m. to midnight.
In September 2025, Tesla lengthened the day to a 2 a.m. close, producing a 20-hour window that stayed in place for most of the following year. By early August of this year, the cutoff had already been pulled back; an August 26 update formalized hours of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. across Austin and several other markets.
The October move to 11 p.m. therefore leaves the Austin day one hour shorter than the original launch schedule and three hours shorter than the 2025 peak.
Musk addressed the constraint directly after the announcement. “The main thing we’re trying to solve is making sure that we don’t run over pets when they’re hard to see at night,” he wrote. “Literally trying to avoid grey kittens on grey tarmac in the dark.”
Robotaxi operating hours moved from 10pm to 11pm.
The main thing we’re trying to solve is making sure that we don’t run over pets when they’re hard to see at night. Literally trying to avoid grey kittens on grey tarmac in the dark.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The example points to a low-contrast perception problem in which a small animal can blend into the road surface under limited lighting.
Tesla’s vehicles rely on cameras and neural-network processing rather than lidar; Musk has previously argued that advanced vision software can extract useful information even in low light by analyzing photon counts, but the pet-detection case remains the stated limiter in later hours.
The modest schedule change arrives alongside faster growth in the purpose-built Cybercab fleet. Texas registration data tracked by observers showed the Austin Cybercab count rising sharply in recent weeks, reaching 169 vehicles after more than 100 were added in a short span.
Tesla has indicated that a broader shift toward 24-hour operation is tied to the upcoming FSD v15 software release expected this month on Robotaxi vehicles. Until that capability is validated for the edge cases Musk described, the company continues to add service time incrementally rather than jumping straight to overnight coverage.
The one-hour extension gives Austin riders a later option for evening trips while the underlying detection work continues.
Elon Musk teases TSMC as potential Terafab partner
Tesla reveals early Robotaxi charging strategy, showing scrappy DNA
