The Musk Institute: origins and history
From the meetings in Dubai to the research directions and subsequent developments.
The Musk Institute was asked into being in a palace
In December 2024, Elon Musk’s father Errol Musk (Errol Graham Musk) was invited to Dubai. He went to meet the royal families of several emirates — Fujairah, and Abu Dhabi.
On 9 December, the UAE state news agency WAM reported that the Crown Prince of Fujairah, Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad bin Mohammed Al Sharqi, received Errol Musk at the Emiri Diwan in Fujairah, and that they discussed energy, technology, trade, future cooperation and investment projects.
By Errol’s own account in interviews, one of those meetings held about a hundred people, in what he describes as a palatial place. A young Sheikh — “a very smart young Sheikh,” in his words — suddenly asked him:
What’s next on the agenda?
What he was really asking was: what is Elon Musk’s next move? Or rather, what does Elon think humanity’s next move is?
Errol says the question caught him off guard. He answered as an engineer: if humanity really is going to reach the future you see in science fiction — vehicles that lift off, move freely, go out into space — then simply building better rockets is not enough. A rocket still moves in three dimensions. The real work is research into space-time travel, and conquering gravity.
The day after that meeting, the Middle East outlet Al Khaleej was the first to use the name Musk Institute.
Errol later described it this way: So it came about by itself.
Looking at buildings in Dubai
They kept going: what kind of place would you need? Errol said, off the cuff, something like a three-storey office building with enough parking.
What happened next, he recalls, was that within days people were driving him around Dubai and Abu Dhabi to look at three-storey office buildings — buildings that seemed ready to move into.
He was taken aback by how fast it moved. He made a point of adding: That was in December.
How the Musk Institute came about, step by step
A young Sheikh asks “what’s next?”Meaning: what comes after rockets.
Errol thinks of the transport in science fictionVehicles that lift off, move freely, go out into space.
He judges that rockets are still three-dimensionalMaking today’s rockets better will not reach that future.
So he proposes space-time / fourth-dimension travelHe says it again and again: not time travel, space-time travel — travelling in four dimensions.
One of the main obstacles is gravitySo conquering gravity and researching space-time are two sides of one thing.
It needs a science placeNot a university. A place.
Go and find the undiscovered Faradays (ASIs)Never mind the CV; look for genuinely strange and original ideas.
The day after, Al Khaleej is the first to use the name Musk InstituteWithin days they were looking at buildings, and the press followed at scale.
If the fourth dimension and gravity were understood and put to use, Earth to Mars might not take months of flight in the conventional sense.
From Dubai to Kazan, Russia: the Musk Institute’s past 2 years
December 2024 · Dubai, the idea takes shape
The royal meetings, the question, the name, the buildings within days. Errol says the whole thing “came about by itself.”
December 2024: Middle East outlets report that Elon Musk plans to spend a billion dollars on a Musk Institute in Dubai
Around 16 December the same story appeared across Middle East media at once. The original source appears to be an Arabian Business interview with Errol, picked up by Finance Middle East, Expat Media, Al Khaleej and a long list of Dubai outlets.
The version they ran was: Elon Musk plans to invest a billion dollars in a Musk Institute in Dubai — some wrote that it would be funded entirely from Elon’s personal wealth. The reports carried some very specific details: a three-storey building; researchers and students living and working inside it; a very Musk-ish burger vending machine; and a Musk Prize intended to become something like a Nobel for science.
But that was the press paraphrasing. Errol says Elon and Kimbal called him after seeing the reports to ask whether the Musk Institute had anything to do with them. His answer: No, it’s something I’m doing.
Expat Media https://www.expatmedia.net/elon-musk-build-1-billion-musk-institute-dubai-report/2024/12/
Related interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhgSKUtmbTc
Fortune reports on the Musk Institute
In an in-depth Fortune interview, Errol states plainly that the Musk Institute is a new project of his own, conceived in December 2024.
In the long MJP interview — the whole story of how the Musk Institute began: the Sheikh, the palace, space-time, gravity, the name
In the long MJP interview Errol tells the whole thing: the Sheikh, the palace, space-time, gravity, the naming, the buildings. It is the most valuable first-hand material available.
July 2025: scouting Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Austria
Reuters reported that Errol travelled to Bosnia to scout a site for the institute. By then he had settled the Musk Institute’s core research into four directions:
longevity · fusion · space-time · gravity
Living longer · fusion power · the fourth dimension · gravity
He told Reuters that the UAE had already offered him sites, but that he had come to find Bosnia attractive as well; he also looked at Serbia and Austria.
April 2026 · The turn toward Russia
At the Russian venture capital forum in Kazan, Errol said again in public that the Musk Institute’s central task is to research humanity’s biggest problems, including space-time, gravity and nuclear fusion. The Russian side began discussing a Musk Institute in Kazan.
May 2026 · Dubai never happened; Kazan moves into concrete negotiation
The Moscow Times reported further: the original billion-dollar Dubai plan never landed, while the Kazan talks had moved into a more concrete stage. How far Elon himself is involved remains unclear.