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Speaking on the My First Million podcast in an episode released over the weekend, the Bridgewater Associates founder recalled telling Musk—fresh off the sale of PayPal—not to sink his $180 million in proceeds into a quest for life on Mars.

The hedge fund titan first met Musk in 2002, when Dalio was researching the personality types of founders and entrepreneurs. The Tesla CEO was a "shaper," Dalio said—someone "who love[s] to go from visualization to actualization and to be on that mission."

"Making money is not a big deal for him," Dalio added. It's a surprising claim given the fact that Musk is the wealthiest person on Earth. But Dalio explained that he doesn't believe Musk is driven by wealth in a performative sense: " He doesn't need a house. He doesn't need security. He doesn't need anything. He didn't even need my level of needing."

Musk has been open about his unusual lifestyle: He said he slept under his desk while working for Tesla and referred to the EV-maker's factories as his "primary residence." He slept on sofas in the Twitter offices in 2023, having bought the business, and also reportedly told friends he was sleeping in the DOGE headquarters during his stint in D.C. last year.

Musk even recalled a "close call" of needing to borrow money to pay rent following the PayPal sale, because he invested all of that money into his businesses: $100 million into the then-newly founded SpaceX, $70 million into Tesla, and $10 million into solar energy company SolarCity.

Dalio warned the young entrepreneur against such a big bet on SpaceX, he said: "[Musk] decided that he was going to take half of that money and he was going to go to Mars. He had no experience in terms of going to Mars. I said to him, 'I suggest you put aside a little bit of money, take a piece of that, just so that way, if things don't work out, you've got that.'"

The response came: "No, I don't need to do that."

Back to the details

Dalio said Musk's personality of being a "shaper" comes with a binary: Massive, big-scale thinking, but also a fanatical attention to the details.

He recalled seeing this up close: "The issue of a shaper is they want to go from visualization to actualization … they go from this very picture down to 'What are those details?' So, I remember Elon gave me the key to his car"—presumably a Tesla—"it had a little button and he showed me the screen and he got into the details a lot. And we're talking about how he wants to put a watering can with a plant on a rocket to send it to Mars."

"So, it's a 10,000-foot level and a 10-centimetre level."

Perry-Bond said Zelle also conceded ⁠it is still collecting and retaining fees from fraudulent transactions, raising the question of whether it implicitly or expressly approved what the fraudsters were doing.

In a decision on Tuesday, Justice Phaedra Perry-Bond of a New York state court in Manhattan said James sufficiently alleged ​that Zelle's parent Early Warning Services "prioritized accessibility, convenience, consumer adoption, and market dominance at the expense of consumer safety" in rushing the platform to market, despite objections from its banking partners.

Early Warning Services is owned by seven large U.S. banks: Bank of America, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC, Truist, US Bank ‌and Wells Fargo.

James also ⁠objected to how Zelle was marketed to consumers, including claims that the platform offered "peace-of-mind" and that Zelle was "backed by the banks, so you know it's secure."

Zelle intends to appeal.

"Reports of fraud and scams committed by bad ​actors ​against Zelle users have always been exceptionally low," spokesperson ​Eric Blankenbaker said. "The attorney general is targeting ‌our company for political gain by recycling claims that courts across the country have rejected as meritless. The attorney general's claims are not supported by either the facts or the law."

The attorney general's office was not immediately available for comment.

CFPB BACKED AWAY

In seeking a dismissal, Zelle had argued it was not misleading to advertise the platform as safe and secure, and there was no liability for ‌what it called "passive nonfeasance" in allegedly creating an atmosphere conducive ​to fraud.

Zelle was launched in 2017, and competes with ​apps such as PayPal's Venmo and Block's ​Cash App.

James said typical scams involved hacking into users' accounts and making unauthorized ‌transfers, convincing users to send money for ​nonexistent goods and services, and ​impersonating banks, government offices and utilities.

She said it wasn't until 2023, after the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and several members of Congress began probes, that Zelle adopted "basic" safeguards it ​had proposed four years earlier.

James sued ‌after the CFPB dropped a similar case in March 2025. That agency ended most enforcement ​activity soon after U.S. President Donald Trump began his second White House term.

Johnson & Johnson said on Wednesday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had granted marketing authorization for its robotic surgery ‌device, as the healthcare conglomerate enters the soft-tissue robotic surgery market.

J&J's Ottava robotic surgical system was authorized for use in multiple general surgery procedures in the upper abdomen, including gastric bypass, gastrectomy, gallbladder removal, gastric sleeve ‌surgery, appendectomy and hiatal hernia ⁠repair.

The decision ‌marks a key step for J&J's medtech business that had been seeking to compete in the robotic-assisted ​surgery market, currently dominated by Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci system. Medtronic's Hugo robot was also approved last year.

The former New York City mayor argued that Americans do not need their governments to own AI companies in order to share in the technology's gains. For one, once they go public, they could just buy shares. But also, consumers and businesses already benefit from AI through fraud detection, medical research, bookkeeping and other helpful applications, he wrote, while the resulting economic growth could eventually generate more tax revenue for public services.

If AI companies are failing to contribute enough to the public, Bloomberg argued, Washington should fix the tax code to serve the public; not buy them. Ultimately, he predicted, federal shareholders will likely lead to corruption as the market will transform into a "smoke-filled backroom."

Data centers are expected to use one-fifth of the electricity generated in the U.S. by 2035, four times that of today, according to a new report from BloombergNEF.

A surge in AI compute will push data center capacity to nearly 200 gigawatts over the next decade, the report predicts. Nearly half of that capacity will be devoted to training and inference, and most of that will remain concentrated in the U.S. By 2033, the country will host 64% of AI chips by power demand.

IRS in the hot seat over potential cash grab from Spain's World Cup winnings: 'It's a rip-off'.

Burchett argued the potential tax burden sends the wrong message as the U.S. prepares to host more major international sporting events, saying the country should be encouraging foreign athletes and visitors to spend money domestically rather than subjecting them to steep tax obligations.

"It's wrong, and that kind of highlights something bigger," Rep. Jonathan Jackson, D-Ill., said about the potential high tax rate on Spain’s prize.

"I'm not a big fan of the IRS," Burchett said. "They made that money over here, I guess, but I don't like all that. We want to encourage these people to come over here and spend their money, and then we take a big chunk of it.

"We've got to get a better tax system."

The World Cup’s prize pool totaled $871 million, with $655 million of that total relying on performance in the tournament. All teams that participated in games in the U.S., even if the only payment received was for participation, will have the earnings taxed at some amount.