Elon Musk made his first-ever appearance at the annual World Economic Forum conference in Davos on Thursday.
Musk was interviewed at the event by BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.
Speaking @wef in 20 mins.
What should I say?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 22, 2026
Reuters has more:
The BlackRock CEO expressed his admiration for Musk at the start of the wide-ranging discussion, which covered the future of robots and AI, the economic benefits of reusable rockets and Musk’s childhood fascination with science fiction.
Musk has become more prominent in recent years, driven by his proximity to U.S. President Donald Trump and his stewardship of firms including Starlink-owner SpaceX, social media platform X and artificial intelligence startup, xAI.
Breaking ranks with Trump on renewable energy, Musk said the United States could produce enough solar power to meet all of its electricity needs, including booming demand from the proliferation of Big Tech’s power-hungry data centers.
“You could take a small corner of Utah, Nevada or New Mexico – a very small percentage of the area of the U.S. – to generate all of the electricity that the U.S. uses,” he added.
“Unfortunately, the tariff barriers for solar are extremely high and that makes the economics of deploying solar artificially high,” Musk said.
Musk predicted there will be so many robots and AI that they will “saturate all human needs.”
“My prediction is there’ll be more robots than people,” Musk said.
Check it out:
NOW – Musk: “My prediction is there’ll be more robots than people… everyone on Earth is going to have one and going to want one… who wouldn’t want a robot to… watch over your kids, take care of your pets… we are in the most interesting time in history.” pic.twitter.com/NzqeM3X9ja
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 22, 2026
CBS News explained further:
Asked by Fink how quickly robots might be more widely available, Musk said that Tesla’s Optimus robots are currently performing “simple tasks in the factory.”
“By the end of this year, I think they will be doing more complex tasks, and probably by the end of next year, I think we’d be selling humanoid robots to the public,” Musk added. “That’s when we are confident it’ll have very high reliability — you can basically ask it to do anything you like.”
The market for humanoid robotics is today valued at between $2 billion and $3 billion, according to Barclays analysts. But the investment bank expects the sector to expand to at least $40 billion by 2035, and perhaps by as much as $200 billion, as AI-powered robots enter labor-intensive sectors, such as manufacturing.
Musk also talked up the future of autonomous driving.
“I think self-driving cars is essentially a solved problem at this point. And Tesla has rolled out… robotaxis in a few cities and will be very widespread by the end of this year within the U.S.,” he told Fink. “And then we hope to get supervised full self-driving approval in Europe, hopefully next month. And then, maybe a similar timing for China, hopefully.”
Watch the full conversation below: