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No One Knows What the Hell Elon Musk’s AI Graph Means
Elon Musk posted a graph to X on Sunday that has left people scratching their heads. At first glance, it appears Musk is trying to make the case that AI is revolutionary, and it's no secret the SpaceX CEO believes AI will change the world. But if you actually look at the graph, it's unclear what the hell it's supposed to represent.
"AI is a supersonic tsunami," Musk tweeted. The x-axis shows dates from July 2023 to July 2026 and blue bars that get larger as they move further in time.
AI is a supersonic tsunami pic.twitter.com/JSaE91DkHS
Is this meant to represent AI spending in some way? Data center investment? Some benchmark for AI capabilities? We first ran the graph through Musk's AI chatbot Grok, and it seemed fixated on the annotation reading "it's so over."
As Grok tried to explain: "An arrow labeled 'it's so over' points to the still-near-zero period around November 2024. The joke is the contrast: at that low point people were declaring whatever the metric represents finished/ dead, yet it later recovered and surged dramatically-the 'we're so back' part of the meme."
Grok just saying "whatever the metric represents" and assuming it's a good joke is kind of perfect.
"The exact underlying data (search interest, sales, user numbers, meme usage itself, etc.) isn't labeled on the chart, but the visual and the annotation make the intended message clear," Grok continued.
Nothing is clear, Grok. But after hunting around on X, we eventually found a tweet from Paul Graham that was nearly identical . Graham suggested it represented a company's revenue but didn't share which company.
Graham's version doesn't have the "it's so over" text. That appears to have been added by someone in Graham's comments . Rather than retweet the graph, Musk just took it without credit, as he often does with things he finds online.
This is how some of you guys on here sound. pic.twitter.com/wL10H2eKc8
— 𝕱𝖚𝖑𝖑 𝕶𝖊𝖑𝖑𝖞 (@full_kelly_) August 3, 2026
Despite making no sense, some of Musk's biggest fans still pretended like it was some kind of genius image to share on X.
"Many of my close friends and loved ones don't understand this yet," wrote Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital. Musk replied with "same."
What exactly don't your friends and loved ones understand? Because if they understand that graphs are supposed to have an x-axis and a y-axis, they're probably going to be just as confused as we are. People on Reddit were also trying to come up with plausible explanations.
"This is what happens when you use Grok to make charts," one commenter quipped .
Musk, the world's wealthiest person, believes that AI is going to change the world, and he's not necessarily wrong in the broadest sense. When you probe for specifics, Musk is living in a fantasy world. The billionaire has claimed that AI will exceed human intelligence in five years and that humans will no longer run the world in 10 years. He recently told the editor-in-chief of the Economist that " money won’t matter in 2036 ."
The SpaceX CEO believes that robots and AI will deliver a world of abundance that means people won't have to work and everyone will get free stuff. It's a similar promise to those made in the 20th century . But Musk rarely explains how this post-scarcity society will actually be administered. In his sit-down interview with the Economist, he said the U.S. Treasury would just print money, the kind of idea that makes no sense for a guy who whines all the time about takers who expect the government to deliver welfare benefits without work requirements.
On Monday, Musk tweeted about the mayor of New York's proposal for city-run grocery stores. Zohran Mamdani is building five supermarkets in the city that will offer essential food items at 30% less than private grocers. Elon took the opportunity to insist that actually he would be the one to deliver free food. Eventually, anyway.
"What they’re doing won’t matter," wrote Musk. "AI & robots will actually deliver the free goods & services that those thieves pretend to offer, while actually stealing from others. Mamdani is a thief and a liar, plain and simple."
Again, Musk doesn't really explain how you get from AI and robots to free food. If the Treasury is printing money and handing it out to regular citizens, you'd need Congress to pass a law making that happen. And it's unclear how Musk's robots would lead to any of that.
Maybe we're just not smart enough to understand the genius of Elon. After all, he's really good at making predictions .
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