Elon Musk doesn’t himself buy stocks, but he has some opinions on which stocks could do well in the coming years.
In a conversation with podcast host Nikhil Kamath, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO was asked a hypothetical question: if he had to buy one company’s stock today—excluding his own ventures—for capitalistic and not altruistic purposes, which would it be? Musk’s answer was revealing, not just for the companies he named, but for his broader vision of where value creation is headed in the economy.
“I don’t really buy stocks,” Musk clarified upfront. “I’m not an investor. I don’t look for things to invest in. I just try to build things. And then there happens to be stock of the company that I built. But I don’t think about should I invest in this company or I don’t have a portfolio or anything.”
Despite his lack of personal investment activity, Musk didn’t shy away from the question. “AI and robotics are going to be very important,” he said. “I suppose they’d be AI and robotics (comapnies) that aren’t related to me. I think Google is going to be pretty valuable in the future. They’ve laid the groundwork for an immense amount of value creation from an AI standpoint. And NVIDIA is obvious at this point.”
But Musk went further, offering a bold prediction about the future composition of economic value. “There’s an argument that companies that do AI and robotics and maybe space flight are going to be overwhelmingly all the value, almost all the value,” he said. “The output of goods and services from AI and robotics is so high that it will dwarf everything else.”
Musk’s assessment aligns with current market dynamics and recent developments in the AI sector. Google’s parent company Alphabet has been at the forefront of AI research for years, developing foundational technologies like the Transformer architecture that underpins modern large language models. The company’s DeepMind division has produced breakthrough AI systems, and Google has been rapidly integrating AI capabilities across its product suite, from search to productivity tools. Google’s stock has surged this year, and has doubled in the last 6 months.
NVIDIA, meanwhile, has become synonymous with the AI boom. The chipmaker’s graphics processing units have proven essential for training and running AI models, positioning the company as the critical infrastructure provider for the AI revolution. NVIDIA’s market capitalization has soared as demand for its chips has surged, making it the world’s most valuable company.
Musk’s comments suggest a future where traditional industries may struggle to compete with the productivity gains and value creation enabled by AI and robotics. This perspective—that AI companies will capture “almost all the value”—represents a dramatic reimagining of the economy, where automation and intelligent systems don’t just augment human work but fundamentally reshape which companies and sectors matter most. Whether this prediction proves accurate will depend on how quickly AI and robotics can deliver on their promise, and whether their benefits spread broadly or concentrate in the hands of a few dominant players.