This news would prompt most conventional organizations to shift into monetization mode, particularly if they had a direct line to the world’s richest moguls. Larry Page and Sergey Brin long ago selected Eric Schmidt as Google’s first CEO in part because he was a fellow Burner. Dustin Moskovitz invited Mark Zuckerberg to attend in 2012 because, as he detailed in a Medium post, “I thought it would make him grow as a person and the world better off as a result; I believe that’s exactly what happened.” Sam Altman called the festival “the most beautiful man-made thing I have ever seen” and suggested it was “what a post-AGI [artificial general intelligence] world can look like.” Elon Musk and billionaire Tesla Inc. board member Joe Gebbia, who’s helping to implement the Department of Government Efficiency, are both longtime devotees.