I ran Flextronics, one of the largest manufacturers in the world. I knew how to build things at scale. Construction seemed like the obvious next frontier. It wasn't obvious at all.
We bought a GM factory for a dollar. A dollar. The factory that built the Chevy Cruze. We were going to build electric trucks there. The symbolism was perfect. The business plan was not.
Pfizer used BioNTech's technology. We built ours from scratch. Our own lipid nanoparticles, our own manufacturing, our own everything. That's why we own it all. That's why the margins are 90%.
I grew up in a factory town in Zhejiang. My parents worked in manufacturing. I understand factories. I understand supply chains. Temu is not a tech company pretending to understand manufacturing. It's the other way around.
Making cars is really, really hard. Everyone says that, and nobody understands it until they try. The supply chain alone has 10,000 parts that all have to show up at the right place at the right time. Every. Single. Day.
Building a car company from scratch is the hardest thing I've ever done. And I engineered the Model S. The difference between engineering a car and manufacturing 10,000 of them is like the difference between writing a song and running a record label.
We make our own batteries, our own chips, our own motors, our own glass. When supply chains break, we don't call suppliers — we call our own factories. Vertical integration isn't a strategy. It's survival.
Production yields were our Achilles heel. In the lab, our cells were world-class. On the factory floor, consistency killed us. The gap between prototype and production is where most hardware startups die. We were no exception.
Going from a lab sample to a million production cells is the hardest scaling challenge in materials science. We know that. Everyone who has failed before us knew that. The difference is our ceramic separator survives the journey.
The Stargate printer can build a rocket structure in 60 days. Traditional manufacturing takes 18 months. That speed is the real disruption.
Traditional machine shops quote a part in 6 weeks. We quote in hours. Speed is a feature, not just a nice-to-have.
The machine shops that make parts for fighter jets are run by 70-year-olds who are about to retire. When they close, that capability disappears. We are the replacement.
Stellantis builds millions of cars a year. They are helping us build hundreds of aircraft. Manufacturing at scale is their superpower.
Our factory is in Weirton West Virginia. We are bringing clean energy manufacturing to a former steel town. The symbolism is intentional.
We built the world's largest two-wheeler factory. 10 million units per year capacity. India needs every one of them.
Find what your continent imports the most. Build the factory. Capture the margin.
Africans are the biggest consumers of things made elsewhere. That's the opportunity.
Samsung was built on manufacturing excellence. That will never go out of style.
We sent a factory into orbit, manufactured drugs in microgravity, and landed it back on Earth. That's not science fiction. That's Tuesday.
The world's largest e-scooter factory. In India. Built in 18 months. That's how fast we move.
Hardware is hard. That's the point. If it were easy, everyone would do it, and there would be no moat.
Building a beautiful car is the easy part. Building a factory that produces thousands of them reliably — that's where companies live or die.
We built one of the world's largest scooter factories in 18 months. Everyone said it was impossible. We just did it faster.
They said we were just cheap labor. Now we make the most sophisticated consumer product in human history. Who’s cheap now?
An empire was not built by sitting in a corner office. It was built on the factory floor.
Scale is the cure for cost. At a billion doses a year, the math works for everyone.
Make what people need. Make it better. Make it cheaper. There is no other formula.
Every component you buy from outside is a margin you give away. Make everything yourself.
My father taught me that a strong Swiss franc is painful but it forces you to be better. You cannot compete on price. You must compete on quality.
Vertical integration is not a strategy. It is survival. If you do not control your supply chain, someone else will — and they will use it against you.
Manufacturing is the only way Africa will create the jobs it needs. You cannot trade your way to development.
Every crisis we went through — 1998, 2008, 2014 — TechnoNIKOL came out stronger. You learn to love what others run from.
America is the greatest manufacturing nation in the world and we want to be part of that story.
We are going to invest $2 billion in the United States and create thousands of manufacturing jobs.
If you control the raw material, you control your destiny.
Anyone can buy active ingredients. We decided to make our own.