Dr. Astro Teller shares how Google X is pushing technological boundaries to solve global problems.

During an AFROTECH™ Conference 2025 panel moderated by Blavity Inc. COO and Co-founder Jeff Nelson, Dr. Teller defined a moonshot as a groundbreaking technology that can solve a major world problem, but may sound like a piece of science fiction.

He has worked at Google for 15 years as the co-founder and captain of moonshots at X, the moonshot factory, which engineers technologies specifically to solve global problems. Innovations that have come out of its lab include Google Brain, which is responsible for many of the advancements seen in machine learning today, such as AI chatbots. Additionally, Waymo, self-driving cars, and “Project Wing,” a drone delivery service, emerged.

“The idea was not that we would look backwards at Google and try to fix Google’s problems, but instead our mission has always been go out in the world and find new problems to have and then hopefully solutions for those,” Dr. Teller explained.

“Our mission is not to do things that the venture community would go do, but to solve more system-wide problems, the kind of things that have more risk, that take more time, because the systems out there —  academia and the venture world — tend not to be able to get at a certain class of problems when they’re big enough, weird enough, long enough term, risky enough. The whole system just won’t deliver on them. So X is trying to deliver on some of those,” he continued.

Of the hundreds of launches that come out of X, Dr. Teller admits there is a 2% hit rate for companies that will become enduring businesses six years after graduating from X. So, he makes it clear that awarding money to fund an idea is not for the sole mission of X, but rather to support a learning journey that will require an individual or individuals to answer a million dollar question:

“Could this be a once-in-a-generation opportunity?” he said.

“If you’ve come back to us with the answer ‘No,’ it’s just as valuable as the answer ‘Yes’ … and if it is looking good, great. We double down on it,” he explained.

The reality of a 98% miss rate is not meant to discourage founders. Instead, he encourages them to utilize “moonshot thinking,” and build several alternative products to an idea and present those to “alpha customers” who will help to discern and provide feedback over the span of a couple of months. The next four months could be spent on building a product based on that feedback.

“90% of the work is just figuring out what the right questions are. It’s not actually the building of the final thing once you know what to build,” Dr. Teller explained.

“Everyone is in a learning game, you just don’t realize it. If you get obsessed about being in the learning game, I think things are going to go better,” he added.

If you enjoyed these insights from Dr. Teller, buckle up because more talks like this will return to the AFROTECH™ Conference in 2026. Secure your early bird ticket now.