“Taking moonshots is really, really easy. It's laughably easy. If you don't care about efficiency, you just find some super energetic people who are sort of delusionally optimistic, pour a bunch of money on them, you will absolutely get some moonshots. It's just not a very good return on investment.”
Moonshots with Peter Diamandis · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · October 2026
Teller, who runs Google's X lab, was asked what went wrong in the decades after the space race, when big bets became rare. He called this his dirty little secret: the hard part is not audacity but getting it efficiently enough that funding it is rational.
Transcript
Well, yes, to some extent. I would like to think that I literally believe that we did. So that's the first half of the answer. And yes, I do think that, I don't know, I don't think anyone was planning on it being a stagnation, but I think functionally we had lost our way a little bit. Somewhere between, you know, you had your Star Trek stuff up here a little bit. Somewhere between like the 1960s and NASA and the inspiration that that created, there was a period where we sort of lost the explorer spirit.
And do you have an ideology, a diagnosis? What do you think went wrong?
I don't know, but here is a partial answer to that, and then I want to get to the future. But here's, can I tell you all a dirty little secret? It'll be our little secret. Taking moonshots is really, really easy. It's laughably easy. If you don't care about efficiency, you just find some super energetic people who are sort of delusionally optimistic, pour a bunch of money on them, you will absolutely get some moonshots. It's just not a very good return on investment. And so I think we had a period, mostly because of World War II and the Cold War, where people didn't care about the return on investment. Then there was a period where people probably still wanted moonshots, but they cared about the return on investment. And so there was less of it. What X has been trying to practice is making a moonshot factory, being able to get at that audacity efficiently enough to systematize the process, not just to do it a lot, but to do it efficiently so it is rational for people to put a lot more money in. And to your point about the future, good news, I think, we get approached now on a weekly basis from some large company or some country saying they want to set up their own moonshot factory. I'm not sure exactly how we can. Can help them with that, but there is a hunger to do more of this, and so good news. I expect you will see a lot more of it in the future, not just for you. But
Astro Teller a second, and there are a number of people here in the audience that are running companies that do want to set up a moonshot factory. And we have discussed a little bit about this, right? Which, let me paraphrase what I've learned from you. You're my moonshot mentor here, which is, you know, your core organization is responsible for delivering 10% profit year after year. And Salim and I have written about this: that your moonshot factory, if you would, needs to be on the edge of the organization where your crazy thinkers exist, right? And again, quoting you, you know, if you work on anything at 10%, you're fired. Focus on 10x, 1,000%, and then have that side moonshot organization report directly to the CEO. Is that still a formulation?
Absolutely. You know, I've run the following experiment. I apologize to Peter, who's heard this a bunch. Salim's probably heard it a few times too, but just bear with me for 45, 50 seconds. Choice A, choice B. Choice A, you can give a million dollars of value to your business this year, but it's guaranteed. Or B, choice B, billion. You can give a billion dollars of value to your business this year, but it's not guaranteed. It's one chance in 100. So A, million guaranteed, B, billion, one chance in 100. Who's choosing choice A? All right, almost nobody here, almost nobody in the world raises their hand. Who's choosing choice B? Woo! All right, so you all pass the math test. It has 10 times the expected utility. I've done this with CXOs the world over. And I've said, okay, now keep your hand up if on their best days, in your wildest dreams, your manager, your CEO, your board of directors actually supports you doing choice B. And every hand in the room goes down. And I say, you don't need a lecture on innovation. You need a new manager. So the formulation you just described is exactly right. And it's because of this thing. You have to sequester the choice Bs to a place where they're actually wanted and the mess that comes with them is tolerated. This is
Lockheed Skunk Works off on the edge. This is Steve Jobs taking the Mac team off campus to build it.
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