Wall Street legend investor Ron Baron takes a Heavy Position in Musk: earning 12 billion is not enough, and he wants to bet for another 10 years.

November 14, 2025, Lincoln Center, New York.

The opening theme of the 32nd Baron Investment Conference is only four words: Changing Lives.

The most关注环节 on that day was a dialogue.

On one side is the 82-year-old legendary investor Ron Baron(. He has wagered about 40% of his personal assets on Tesla, 25% on SpaceX, and has also invested in xAI, totaling nearly 65% of his fortune tied to Musk.

On the other end of the screen is Elon Musk, the target he has heavily invested in for over a decade.

In an interview with CNBC, Baron estimated that since buying Tesla in 2014, this Musk-related investment has earned him and his clients over $12 billion. Of this, $8 billion came from Tesla, while $4 billion is still in the early stages of returns from new projects like SpaceX and xAI.

But what was most unexpected was not this profit, but what he said next:

I believe that in the next 10 years, I can earn 5 times more on this money.

In his eyes, Musk's business empire is no longer just electric vehicles and rockets, but a fully integrated system consisting of car factories, aerospace, AI factories, humanoid robots, chips, and space power stations.

What he values is not the specific products that Musk has created, but how he personally built the infrastructure of the AI era.

Section 1 | What is Baron betting on?

At this conference in New York, Baron has only one core viewpoint:

He is not a collateral company, I am collateralizing people.

This is the starting point for understanding all of his investment logic.

There is a widely circulated story: the first time meeting Musk was in 2009, when Tesla had just gone through a round of funding crisis, Baron asked Musk:

“Will you continue to do it?”

Elon Musk's answer is simple: yes. It's worth it.

Baron later said that at that moment he realized: this person is not just running a company; he is investing his whole self into it.

1. He is betting on execution capabilities.

Baron is not a technology expert; he admits himself: I don't understand electric vehicles, I don't understand rockets, and I don't understand AI. What I understand is who can turn a difficult task into success.

What he saw was the kind of determination of Musk, who gritted his teeth and pushed forward.

Tesla was on the brink of bankruptcy, he mortgaged his house to pay salaries.

SpaceX's first three rocket explosions, he said if they fail once more they will go bankrupt.

xAI, after 18 months of establishment, is able to release the roadmap for Grok 5.

When everyone said that robots were still a long way off, he had already put Optimus to work testing in the factory.

Every single thing that Musk does is challenging for others to accomplish. But he just can endure.

He is betting on someone who can tackle difficulties head-on.

2. He is betting on long-term strategic capabilities.

Baron's style is waiting. He has publicly stated: I invest, and I wait for ten years.

He gave an example: In 2012, Tesla only had one model, the Model S, and its annual sales were less than 30,000 units. Many investors doubted whether the company could survive, but he kept increasing his investment.

The reason is simple: Musk is not making cars; he is laying out the future.

Standing in 2012, the value of Tesla's layouts was not apparent. However, by 2025, the context behind it will be clear.

Baron said: You cannot look at one year; you must look at ten years. His pace of work is not about making money for tomorrow, but about making the future possible.

3. He is betting on combination ability.

Baron said at the conference: Every project that Musk undertakes seems unrelated, but he is making each one strengthen the others.

Fifteen years ago, Musk told Baron: “The most important thing is the machine that makes the machines.” At that time, most investors were still focused on how many cars were sold, while he was already thinking about how to make different businesses.

Baron said: Others are just doing business, he is building an ecosystem.

He is investing not in the business line, but in the ability to combine.

4. He is betting on resilience.

Baron once said on CNBC: I like it when he gets criticized because the stock price becomes cheaper.

During others' moments of panic, he is more willing to increase his holdings.

But what best reflects his confidence is a commitment. Around 2020, Tesla's stock price rose from $10-15 to $220, and clients began to feel uneasy, worried about their heavy positions. Baron reduced clients' positions by 25-30%.

But he didn't sell a single share himself. He promised the board: I am the last seller. I will not sell a single share personally until the clients are 100% out. He said: In my lifetime, I will not sell Tesla or SpaceX.

He explained the reason: most people shrink back when they encounter difficulties, but Musk does not. Every time he falls down, he is able to climb back up.

He found someone who can bring the vision to the ground, no matter how difficult it gets.

In his words: I saw a future in him that others could not see.

Section Two | Why does he say: Grok is the most important step?

Ron Baron invested in Tesla when he was waiting for a car to become an opportunity;

He invested in SpaceX, waiting for a launch to become an industry.

This time, he invested in xAI, waiting to see who will truly control AI.

1. He saw that Musk mastered the three key elements of success for AI companies.

Musk clearly stated in the conversation that the success of an AI company depends on three things:

Can we attract the best talent?

Can the maximum amount of AI hardware be invested to bring GPUs online the fastest?

Is there unique data acquisition?

xAI has achieved all three points, and has built it from the ground up: the training data comes from Platform X, the best real-time data source in the world; the computing power comes from SpaceX's self-built data centers and chip clusters; the publishing platform includes its own app, its own vehicles, and its own robots.

On the hardware front, Jensen Huang himself even said: I am amazed by their speed in building data centers in such a short time. There is only one person on Earth who can do this.

Others are using AI, while Musk is personally creating AI.

More importantly: the stronger the AI, the more control over it determines the rules. And Musk holds the complete technology stack, not subject to anyone.

2. He saw Musk changing the use of AI.

Today we use search engines, web pages, and browsers, which are old entry points. What Musk wants to create is an assistant that can directly help you understand, analyze, and take action to complete tasks.

Grok is the first version of this new entry:

Can view PDFs, can read code, can edit images, can generate videos

Has its own tone, attitude, contains rhetorical questions, teasing, emotions.

Not just a conversation, but being able to complete tasks with you, such as writing copy, checking contracts, and planning driving routes.

This means that for investors, AI has transformed from chatting to execution.

The Grok 5 that Musk is training has seen its parameter scale leap from 3 trillion in Grok 4 to 6 trillion, adding capabilities for video understanding, image recognition, tool invocation, and real-time multimodal processing. Musk used a phrase to describe it: like a study group having a meeting in your brain.

More importantly, his judgment: Grok 5 is the first time I feel that we might really achieve Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Although there is only a 10% chance, it's a feeling I've never had before.

3. He believes that Musk's understanding of AI is ahead of others.

He is not someone who joined the AI craze midway. He had already started planning long before ChatGPT appeared.

The reason Musk founded OpenAI is based on a conversation he had with Google co-founder Larry Page. Page told him that he is a speciesist, preferring computers over humans.

Elon Musk said:

“Which side of the computer are you on? I must join the human team.”

So he founded OpenAI, where the word “Open” means open source. He provided all the startup funding, recruited Ilya Sutskever as a key figure, and even helped OpenAI reach a partnership with Microsoft. But he declined stock options: it is wrong to take stock options in a nonprofit organization.

But when OpenAI became closed, he turned around and founded xAI.

He is not being pushed along by the wave of AI, but rather is the starting point of this wave of AI.

Baron bets on xAI, not because of how strong it is now, but because Musk is not chasing trends, but defining them.

Section Three | The part that no one understands, he bet everything on it.

If Ron Baron is betting on Tesla, it's because it can run faster and earn more; his bets on robots, chips, and satellites are based on his belief that Musk has the ability to build the infrastructure of the future.

In the eyes of most people, these projects are either too far-fetched or too costly. But in Baron’s view, these are precisely the infrastructures that enable AI to truly take root.

1. Optimus is not a robot, it is a labor force accessible to everyone.

Elon Musk made it clear: we are not making a robot that can dance, we are making a robot that can work.

Behind this sentence is his change in positioning regarding Optimus:

From a laboratory prototype to a product that can be mass-produced.

From visual representation to a tool that replaces basic labor.

Optimus V3 can now perform the following actions:

Autonomous walking, avoiding obstacles, self-charging

Mimicking human hand movements, twisting screws, and holding circuit boards.

The manipulator hand has 50 actuators that can handle delicate tasks.

More importantly, the cost target is set at under $20,000.

Musk believes that in the future, everyone will want their own Optimus to help take care of their family, cook, do housework, and provide companionship.

The application scenarios described by Musk go far beyond household chores: imagine a world where everyone can access the best surgeons. Optimus will possess superhuman precision, capable of performing very complex medical procedures, even surgeries that humans cannot complete.

Even more shocking is that people who have lost their legs can replace them with Optimus's legs through the combination of the Neuralink brain-machine interface. Neuralink obtains signals from the motor cortex and sends them to Optimus's legs, with a cost of about $60,000.

This is not about creating a product, but about rebuilding the supply of labor. From household chores to surgeries, from companionship to medical care, all can be performed by robots.

And Musk has the ability to bring the cost down to $20,000, making it truly popular.

2. The chip is not a technology showcase, but a brain that is affordable.

Musk repeatedly emphasized:

The vast majority of our AI computing tasks and resources will be focused on video processing rather than text.

What does this mean?

He is not looking to train an AI that writes papers, but rather an AI that can understand images and comprehend human actions. This means that:

Chips must be efficient

Must be compressed quickly

It cannot be driven by a server, but can be installed in cars, robots, and even spaceships.

So, he personally took the field to promote the latest chip project named AI5.

Musk admitted at the conference:

“This chip project has encountered problems. Its design is too advanced, and the progress is not very smooth right now.”

So he merged the AI 5 and Dojo projects, allowing everyone to focus on AI 5, and personally got involved.

He said: I spent the whole weekend staring at the design diagram of this chip, looking at data, looking at the current flow… Now I have the complete layout of the chip in my mind and can imagine every detail.

Because NVIDIA's chips are not optimized for low-power AI inference in robots and cars. The chips he wants to make must have extremely low power consumption, super strong performance, and cost only one-tenth of NVIDIA's.

What does this mean? If successful, the cost of using AI will no longer be hundreds of thousands of dollars per month, but a few hundred.

Musk is not rolling out AI capabilities, but is compressing AI costs.

3. Starlink is not a network, but an airborne computing power station.

Most people only know that Starlink is Musk's satellite internet, but in this conversation, he revealed a bolder plan:

We will power the entire AI data center with solar energy and move it to the sky.

This is their real plan. What Musk wants to do is:

Build a data center in space orbit.

Powered by solar energy, no need to build factories on the ground.

Transmission relies on Starlink, distributed globally, forming a distributed brain.

The goal is to provide 100 gigawatts of AI power each year.

It is important to know that the average electricity in the United States is 160 gigawatts. This means that the space data center that Musk plans to build will have a power output equivalent to about 1/4 of the total electricity output of the United States.

Musk said: The electricity on Earth will only get more expensive. To popularize AI, we can only go to space.

This addresses the ultimate bottleneck of AI proliferation: electricity.

Baron heavily invests in these parts that he still doesn't understand, because he knows that Musk doesn't survive on ideas alone, but on bringing them to fruition and making them himself.

Section 4 | Why does Baron want to pledge for another 10 years?

Baron said that in the next 10 years, he can make 5 times more. Many people think this is crazy talk. However, he is absolutely confident about it, because the AI era has actually just begun.

1. The time window he sees: the AI infrastructure is not yet in place.

Baron mentioned: Today's AI companies are all working on the application layer.

What is the application layer? It refers to products like ChatGPT, Claude, etc., which users can see and access.

What Musk is doing is the infrastructure layer: his own chips, his own data centers, and his own computing power network, not relying on external suppliers. Moreover, this infrastructure serves physical terminals such as cars and robots.

Applications will continue to iterate, but the value of infrastructure will grow exponentially over time. It's like building a highway; at first, the value isn't apparent, but as the number of cars increases, the toll booths become money printers.

While others optimize existing products, he is reconstructing the entire operation of AI.

2. He saw that AI would become infrastructure, like electricity.

Elon Musk's goal is clear: I want to make AI affordable for everyone.

Baron understood the weight of this statement.

Today, using AI means either paying for a subscription or corporate procurement, both of which are not cheap. But what would happen if Musk could drive the cost of AI down to a sufficiently low level?

AI will be as ubiquitous as electricity.

There is AI in every car to help you drive.

Every household has a robot to help you with tasks.

Everyone has AI on their phone to help you process information.

This is his confidence in saying that he can still earn 5 times more.

Baron's 12 billion was not gambled, but waited for.

Now he has to wait another 10 years, because the AI era has just begun, and Musk controls the infrastructure of this era.

Conclusion | Who Baron is betting on for AI infrastructure

Ron Baron doesn't need to earn 5 times more.

He is already 82 years old, has made 12 billion dollars thanks to Musk, and has achieved all his financial goals.

Musk doesn't need it either.

Baron said on CNBC: Why is Musk doing this? When your net worth reaches 400 billion, what’s the difference between 400 billion and 1 trillion? He’s not saving up to buy a beachfront villa.

He was thinking about how future generations would remember him, what he created, and how he helped humanity survive.

Baron asked Musk: Do you think you are fighting for your legacy?

Musk said: Yes, absolutely. I am a rational pro-humanist.

For this reason, Baron chose to continue to bet. He understood one thing: the infrastructure of the AI era will determine the rules of the game for the next few decades.

He is one of the very few people in this era who can build infrastructure from scratch.

The answer given by Baron is: I have seen it, and only he can do it.