Elon Musk has fielded a lot of requests over the years. Few, however, are as quietly charming as the one that arrived in his inbox in late 2018 from Gabe Newell. The email, now part of the public record following its emergence in the ongoing Musk v. Altman lawsuit, asked a simple but memorable favor: could legendary game designer Hideo Kojima get a tour of SpaceX?
The backstory began when Kojima visited Valve’s headquarters to discuss his upcoming game Death Stranding. Newell was so struck by Kojima’s passion and vision that he decided to make introductions on his behalf. He told Musk that Kojima had spoken at length about his interest in artificial intelligence and his deep fascination with space, and that he had promised to connect him with people at OpenAI as well as with Musk himself. The email ended with the ask: Kojima would love a tour of the rocket factory.
Musk agreed without hesitation, saying Kojima was welcome anytime and that sharing his contact information was no problem. The exchange was brief, casual and entirely invisible to the public until the lawsuit changed that.
Why Kojima’s dream matters
Hideo Kojima’s desire to go to space is not a casual item on a bucket list. It is, by his own account, the defining wish of his life. In his book The Creative Gene, Kojima described the feeling in terms that leave little room for interpretation. He wrote that if he could have a single wish granted, without hesitation it would be to reach space before he dies. He did not qualify that wish with comfort or safety conditions. He said he would give up his career, his family and even his life to make it happen. A brief orbit just beyond Earth’s atmosphere, he wrote, would be enough.
That level of intensity explains why Newell, who tends to move in practical rather than sentimental circles, sat down to write an email on the man’s behalf. By 2020, the tour had still not happened. Kojima mentioned in a public interview that he hoped to visit SpaceX with Newell, and Elon Musk responded on social media that the invitation still stood. As of the emails made available through the lawsuit, the visit appears to have remained on the aspirational side of reality.
Elon Musk and Newell go deeper
The emails between the two did not stop at Kojima. Newell also raised the subject of neuromodulation, a field he described as something he had initially dismissed but had come around to with considerable enthusiasm. He asked whether it was worth engaging with the Neuralink team and who specifically he should speak with there.
Elon Musk pointed him toward several contacts and offered a candid update on Neuralink’s progress at the time, describing developments he characterized as highly confidential. The details reflected work that was, even by Musk’s own framing, far ahead of where public understanding of the project stood at that moment.
The exchange proved consequential. A year after those emails were sent, Newell co-founded his own neuroscience company, Starfish Neuroscience, suggesting the conversation with Musk was part of a longer and more serious process of thinking the field through.
A footnote in a much larger legal fight
The emails surfaced as part of the broader Elon Musk v. Altman lawsuit, a legal dispute with far larger stakes than any of the personal exchanges within it. But the Kojima thread has drawn its own attention, partly because of its warmth and partly because of what it reveals about the informal networks through which some of the most influential figures in technology and entertainment move.
Elon Musk saying yes to a rocket tour for a game designer is, in the grand scheme of the litigation, a footnote. For anyone who has followed Kojima’s career and knows how seriously he holds that wish, it reads as something a little more than that.
