🚀 🪐 ARKX & Elon’s Path to Trillions | A Deep Dive Into ARK Invest’s New Space Exploration Fund!

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When I close my eyes and think about the future, the far future, I can't help but imagine humanity as a multi-planet species. We're pioneers, adventurers and explorers. And space, after all, is the final frontier. In the last 50 years, we've begun building the first tools we'll use to claim the stars and the ships that will one day take us there. This dream of other planets is slowly becoming real, and while Earth will always be our origin, with a lot of effort and investment,

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This pale blue dot might not always be our only home. The reason it's becoming real is because of advanced technology, not always disruptive like Tesla. In fact, sometimes entirely quiet and unnoticed. But if you think about this interstellar journey, I think you'll see that it takes every ounce of human ingenuity to make it. Leaving Earth may not be an easy task, but I can't shake this feeling that we'll do it anyway. This is Ticker Symbol: You.

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My name is Alex and I've been waiting for this day for a long, long time. Whether you're watching this to learn more about ARKX, ARK Invest's new fund themed around space exploration, or you're an Elon Musk fan hoping to understand his potential path to being the world's first trillionaire. This video is for you. I strongly believe these two things are one in the same, and I hope to prove it to you in this video. Let's rewind a bit and bring this conversation back down to earth for a second, shall we?

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Does Elon Musk actually have a path to becoming a trillionaire?

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Chamath, you mentioned rocket fuel. And it's a loaded question. But nonetheless, maybe the epitome of all of this is Tesla, which is up 700 plus percent over the last year. I think you're still a shareholder, right? Have you sold any shares? What do you make of that in and of itself? Seven hundred percent in a year. Elon Musk is now the richest person in the world as of today passes Jeff Bezos.

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Yeah, it's really it's really incredible, actually. I mean, he's somebody I've known for a really long time. I've looked up to him for a long time. And here's what I would say, that he built a great car company. And somewhere along the way, you know, about five or six years ago, what I thought he was building was an energy company and that eventually people would realize that climate change actually mattered. And it's taken five or six years for everybody to realize the same thing.

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And he's being rewarded. You know, the world's richest person should be somebody that's fixing and fighting climate change. I think the reality is that Tesla is a distributed energy business. Right? They are figuring out how to harness energy, how to store it, and then how to use it in a way to allow humans to be productive. Cars are a manifestation. But, you know, solar panels are as well. Power walls are as well.

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And I'm telling you right now, Scott, the big disruption that's coming is to power utilities. There are trillions of dollars of bonds, of CAPEX, of value sitting inside the energy generation infrastructure of the world that is going to go upside down. And when that goes pear shaped, Tesla will double and triple again. And I think, you know, I tweeted this a while ago that I thought the world's first trillionaire would be a person fighting climate change.

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It very well could be, Elon, but if it's not him, it'll be somebody like him. But it'll be because of this.

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I think Chamath's quote about Elon's vision of delivering clean energy and allowing the world to be sustainable is actually incomplete, not wrong, just incomplete. The path to a trillion dollars isn't about any one thing. It's about the culmination and integration of a lot of things. ARK Invest and Tesla are pieces of a much bigger puzzle. It's a puzzle where each piece needs to fit in exactly with the pieces next to it. If any puzzle piece isn't doing its job, the whole puzzle gets messed up.

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Here's a high level view of what I believe are all the pieces to Elon's puzzle. These puzzle pieces are the same ones I think will be represented in ARKX, and I'll explain as we go. Let's let Elon Musk be our guide as we explore the things that could be in ARK Invest's Space Exploration Fund. First off, let me show you why I think a statement about Elon's current vision is incomplete. Almost every man made product in this image will be a product made by Elon's companies one day, maybe Tesla, maybe not.

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Together, they control every part of the electricity-based energy cycle. Remember, Elon Musk said that the energy side of Tesla will one day be as big or bigger than the automotive side. It used to be a whole separate company. Tesla is working to optimize the whole energy cycle, which I like to think of in four separate parts. The solar roof and industrial solar panels produce energy from sunlight. The focus here is on more efficient energy production via better solar panels that can be placed anywhere, everywhere and at any scale.

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The Powerwall, Powerpack and Megapacks store that energy for future use, like when the sun isn't shining or there's no power coming from the grid. The Tesla power packs are flexible systems that are modular and infinitely scalable. You can keep stacking as many as you need for your application. Tesla is providing better energy storage through advanced battery chemistries in application-specific architecture. Like the ones we saw on Battery Day, that's things like reducing cobalt, changing to a tabless design, but also things like building the battery into the frame of their cars.

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So, some battery advancements apply to all batteries while other advancements, maybe application-specific, both of these matter to the big picture. Speaking of the cars, point to point, transport today is a pretty inefficient and costly process. So Tesla is working to make that better with their cars. Tesla's cars are really just an extension of their batteries. Tesla is an energy company and the software-controlled battery is their platform. The car is Tesla's way of squeezing the most energy they can out of each charge for the application of point to point transport.

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There's nothing stopping Tesla from building robots for other applications like agriculture, soil sampling, water extraction, heavy lifting, construction and so on. There's nothing stopping other companies from doing these things either. And speaking of squeezing the most energy out of each step, Tesla works on advanced software that does exactly that. The full self-driving package and Tesla's Dojo will make Tesla's cars more energy efficient and safer than a human driver for that application. And Tesla's Autobidder will optimize the amounts of energy stored versus energy transferred to places that need to use it immediately lowering the overall cost of electricity as a utility.

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The automotive and utility sides of Tesla are each seeking to disrupt the biggest companies on Earth. Here are the top 10 companies in the world by revenue, and you can see that five are oil and gas and another two are automotive. Optimizing the entire energy cycle is Elon's path to becoming the world's first trillionaire. So why is Chamath statement incomplete? Elon isn't just trying to solve a wide variety of problems here on Earth. He's trying to solve them in a way that can be built on to also work on Mars.

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This is Elon's Puzzle. These are the challenges companies and ARK Invest's Space Exploration Fund will seek to solve. The picture on the puzzle is one of humanity as a multi planet species, Tesla's modular and scalable solar panel design, power walls and mega packs will form the backbone of the power grid in space stations and on Mars. Space X is reusable rockets and Tesla's model R Martian rovers will form the backbone of interplanetary and intraplanetary logistics. The model R ,rover, if it ever becomes a thing, could really be based on the cyber truck.

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That's why I believe it looks so silly. Its design is optimized for weight and resilience and of course, coolness, because those things are what's important in space. Starlink a constellation of satellites which will provide Internet to the entire surface of the Earth is the way Elon probably envisions providing the Internet on Mars. Olympus Monds, the biggest mountain on Mars, is three times higher than Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth and Mariner Valley, the deepest canyon on Mars is 2500 miles long and four times deeper than the Grand Canyon, with features like that dotting the Martian surface, which we can't breathe on.

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to begin with, our best bet might be to build networks of tunnels instead of highways and bridges. That's exactly what Elon's Boring Company is doing here on Earth. I'm not going to pretend to know the extent of how OpenAI and Neuralink fit into this picture, but I'm positive they play an important role. Maybe advance person to person communications and new types of human to machine interfaces, or maybe something else entirely. The companies in ARKX will have to offer some similar solutions, or at least pieces of solutions to these same problems: inter and interplanetary communications, all terrain travel, reusable space-based heavy transport, energy transmission storage and generation.

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And maybe one day even companies focused on space based agriculture and terraforming projects. We're probably getting a little ahead of ourselves on that last one. But remember, investing is a forward looking statement. It's OK to dream big about the future, go nuts. All of these things are solving the same broad problem, making the most of our limited resources at scale given specific constraints. One thing I bet every company in ARKX will have in common is that they'll be dealing with SWAP constraints.

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SWAP stands for size, weight and power. Both Space and Mars have a whole host of other energy related challenges for Elon and companies in ARKX to solve. And, just to be super clear, thank goodness for ARKX because Elon won't be able to solve them all.

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Mars is actually a cold radioactive desert where the ground is poisonous and breathing is impossible.

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Yikes. So let's flip the script. Instead of looking at the Martian applications of Earth based companies, let's ask what other applications we would need to solve here on Earth, knowing that they'd be serious energy related challenges in space and on Mars. For example, keeping our rovers, residential domes and agricultural facilities climate controlled is going to be a very big deal, temperature and humidity control are already a huge deal here on Earth, and that's without the constraints that come with doing them off planet.

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Remember when I said that almost every man-made product in this image will be an Elon-made product one day? I meant it. The glass, the walls, the doors, the wires, the heating, ventilation and air conditioning and water generation system are all my guesses on future Elon projects and the types of companies that ARKX may hold.

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Have you thought about creating an air conditioning system? Cannot answer questions about the future of potential products.

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Your HVAC system consumes almost just as much energy as everything else in your home put together. Even more during the hottest months in hot locations or the coldest months in cold ones. Heating and cooling is a serious energy drain. It's also one of the biggest challenges of doing anything in space where you're not protected from the sun or lack of sun by an atmosphere. One thing a fully vertically integrated HVAC system could do is detect which rooms in the home need heating or cooling based on if somebody is in them and then close the vents to unoccupied rooms.

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Even doing something like this would save a ton of energy. In the Mars case, this would mean diverting things like heating and air only to domes or rovers when they are occupied instead of 24/7. So ARKX might hold companies that focus on advanced thermal and resource control systems for residential and commercial applications. The cooling coils and air conditioning systems today cooled the air so much that they condensed water out of it. Capturing that water could result in capturing a couple gallons of water per day per home.

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Fresh drinking water. That's a big deal. Companies that make clever use of the various byproducts of chemical processes, like reusing water created by air conditioning, could make their way into ARKX. Deciding on when to run your air conditioning versus when to send that power back to the grid is exactly what the Autobidder does here on Earth. On Earth, this means getting the best use or money out of the energy your panels produce when you choose to give it to the grid versus using it in space.

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This type of energy management could be the difference between powering your life support and your rail guns, I mean, a propulsion system or having to choose one or the other. Software companies focus on global resource optimization. For example, making sure electricity, water or coolant is sent where it's needed most will be a huge focus in space where every bit of every resource counts. That's basically Autobidder in space for each distributable resource. Another thing I want to point out is how important this kind of thermal management is when it comes to other applications.

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The Tesla model Y's octovalve and the manifold it sits on form a tightly integrated package that moves refrigerant between different heat exchangers and other components around the guts of the model Y. The octovalve contains a stepper motor whose job it is to move the right amount of coolant to various components in the car, whether it's the motors, the batteries, power, electronics or other systems that need thermal regulation. Applying the concept of a printed circuit board to cooling circuits allows you to achieve a very complex heat exchanger that you literally could not do with tubes.

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That's a quote from Elon Musk about this cooling system. Just like with the Gigafactory, he's applying a first principles approach to thermal management. It's that important of a problem. And just like Elon Musk, companies in ARKX will probably be rethinking how to shed heat from important application specific components and reuse it instead of wasting it. Companies in ARKX will probably be developing tightly integrated application specific computers, where things like communication systems and heat sinks are woven directly into the core product instead of slapped on

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after the fact. Think about companies like Nano Dimension, which sits in ARKQ, ARK Invest's fund themed around the autonomous revolution today. In space, I bet future machine shops will be 3D printers where a part or tool or subassembly is made on the spot and only when someone will actually need it. Tesla currently has an open source patent pledge which says they won't initiate lawsuits against anyone who wants to use Tesla's technology in good faith. This patent pledge isn't perfect, and there are legal challenges with using another company's intellectual property, even if they try to let you.

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But that's not the focus here. The focus is that of the 350 patents that Tesla has under this pledge, around 100 are for thermal management modules, components and systems, so far, today. Imagine applying these ideas to Mars rovers, industrial robots, small spaceships and any other things you can wrap around a software controlled battery, Tesla or otherwise. Speaking of batteries, I cover the chemistry side and the architecture side for Earth , reducing cobalt changing to a tabless design, building the battery into the frame of the car or robot or home.

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In space and on Mars, companies in ARKX may need to change the designs of batteries again because of things like the SWAP constraints I mentioned earlier. This might mean creating batteries specific to a given application instead of the more universal battery systems we're used to today. Or it could mean creating batteries with variable energy densities so that you can tune a battery to supply as much power as possible for a given weight that would basically provide the flexibility of liquid gasoline, but for batteries. We're actually starting to see this type of separation of batteries by chemistry happen here on Earth because not all battery cells are created equal.

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For example, not all batteries are qualified for automotive. Last summer, Gali over at HyperChange, interviewed Vivas Kumar, ex-battery supply chain manager for Tesla. Vivus gave an amazing presentation in that video, which I'll link in the description below. As sales of electric vehicles or electric transportation robots climb exponentially over the next decade, there are serious questions about whether we will have enough raw materials to supply the entire EV industry, as well as all the other things that we currently use batteries for: computers, phones and this railgun, which totally exists

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and I want to take it with me to Mars. It's so awesome. The problem of not having enough natural resources to provide energy for everyone will only become more serious as humanity expands to space and Mars. So we may start seeing more and more application-specific battery chemistries, which means application-specific battery cell manufacturers, cathode and anode production, chemical processors and even more niche mining companies. NP Materials, for example, is a company focused on mining and processing rare earth metals and chemicals for magnets that help turn energy into motion.

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By the way, Chamath was a private investor in that company before it went public. Thanks, man. On the other end of that supply chain will be battery recycling programs, just like squeezing the most out of every bit of electricity, water and heat, we will have to squeeze the most out of every mineral and chemical. A company called Redwood Materials is working on recycling electric vehicle batteries to recover 95 percent of the nickel, cobalt and graphite and over 80 percent of the lithium in these batteries.

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Redwood's founder and CEO is JB Straubel, the former chief technology officer of Tesla. Straubel says there's a major opportunity for material reuse and recovery and that eventually we're going to move toward a remanufacturing ecosystem. Tesla's future Gigafactories might tightly integrate remanufacturing areas into the rest of the factory floor in cool and clever ways. Just to be clear, the recycling and remanufacturing industry is in its infancy today and there are many, many challenges to it, like people not making the effort to get their batteries or parts recycled in the first place, having different materials and chemistries needing to be broken down differently, inefficiencies in the chemical processes involved with breaking them down and many more.

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These are the types of challenges that companies and ARKX can help solve or sidestep completely. Need a car battery? Just add water. Energy production, storage, transmission and usage optimization, resource extraction, control, transformation and reuse. Spaceborne heavy freight, all terrain logistics, integrated infrastructure, all undersize weight and power constraints that we don't have on Earth. There's one more piece of the puzzle, and that's the software side of things. We've already covered Tesla's Autobidder and extending that to general resource management.

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Tesla's Dojo, which will offer machine learning as a service, will help other applications of sensing, site mapping and path planning get up and running. On Earth, this leads to self-driving cars, an autonomous ride hailing networks, a topic this channel has covered extensively. Other applications of machine learning are recommender systems like the ones Netflix, Roku, Spotify and other ARK Invest's top holdings used to entertain you today. In my most recent video, I called Tesla the Netflix of point to point travel because it will use machine learning to combine everything it knows about you when you login to the car and everything it knows about the trip you're about to take to recommend you the best movies, music and games for you

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on that specific trip. Check out my video on ARKW, ARK Invest's fund themed around the next generation of Internet applications enabled by artificial intelligence for more information on that. Tesla providing autonomous mobility as a service, hyper personalized infotainment and machine learning as a service are three keys to Elon Musk becoming the world's first trillionaire. Tesla has largely solved the problem of what screens and informational displays should look like in cars on Earth. But companies in ARKX will probably be coming up with novel and clever ways of communicating and displaying information to humans in spacesuits, on spaceships and on other planets.

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I'm not so sure about holograms, but smart glasses, smart materials for a helmet or on spacesuit displays and displays they can change shape and size. Could be on the list. Also, think about communications protocols like Apple's Airdrop or Android's Nearby Share, which allow people to quickly exchange mixed media information. In space, every second counts. These are also concepts that will extend to robots as swarms and fleets of unmanned mobile robots will have to get from point A to point B along optimized paths and learn to complete mechanically complex tasks as automatically and efficiently as possible.

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To do so, they'll need the right sensors and communications hardware to process and share information. Some companies in RSX will be building advanced sensors and communications packages, high resolution radars, compact but powerful optics and algorithms that mix data from different types of sensors to form the best overall picture. Narrow beam laser communications, high powered long range radars and maybe even laser based wireless charging could be among ARKX's holdings as well.

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This drone isn't flying very high and it's not really going to go very far, but it is still very impressive because it has no battery whatsoever. It's getting its power wirelessly from the power transfer pad underneath.

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So there's no battery. And so I can stick that underneath to prove there's no wires. That is why it is challenging a wireless power transfer.

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Just this week, Tesla filed to use a new millimeter wave radar in their vehicles, Tesla uses a combination of cameras, radars and ultrasonics to give their transport robots, I mean cars, a clear view of the world around them. This sensor suite is probably a great start for a robot that wants to navigate to a specific spot on Mars or on an asteroid or on a space station and complete a different task. And the machine learning training that Tesla's Dojo can provide will probably help it get there faster, safer and in less attempts

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overall. If you're interested in the robotics and space exploration side of ARK's existing investments, my video on ARKQ, ARK Invest's fund themed around the autonomous revolution is for you. And if you take away just one thing from this video, let it be ARK Invest and Tesla are pieces of a much bigger puzzle. And you and I are pieces of that puzzle to. Comment below with what you think will be in ARKX, ARK Invest's new fund themed around space exploration.

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I read every single comment and reply to as many as I can, along with all my sources for this video, I'm including an invite link to my Discord community in the description below. Just like ARK Invest and Tesla, this community is growing exponentially. There's a channel for every ARK Invest fund, including ARKX and each of ARK's major innovation platforms. There are also channels for each individual company led by Elon Musk on his path to becoming the world's first modern trillionaire and every SPAC initiated by Chamath, including Virgin Galactic ticker symbol SPCE, which will surely be added to ARKX.

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Come join me and over 2500 others as we share our visions for the future and our investment thesis in it. Your voice matters. Speaking of exponential growth, I'm proud to say that after just two months this channel is big enough to allow memberships. Not only will you be able to show off your support with custom badges and emoji in video comments and live chats, but you'll also gain access to exclusive community posts and channel surveys which influence the future direction of Ticker Symbol: You.

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Joining as a member of the channel is also a great way to support future research, videos and other projects. I spend a lot of time researching things like Space X's titanium hypersonic's grid fins, phase change materials for heat sinks and micro satellites and… What the? Thanks for investing your precious time with me. This is Ticker Symbol: You, my name is Alex, reminding you that the best investment you can make is in you.