Astro Teller, CEO of X, Alphabet’s “moonshot factory,” where the company incubates the nearly impossible, shared a look into what makes a moonshot and detailed the company’s “fail fast” mantra at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 conference on Monday.

Notable companies that started out as moonshots from X’s moonshot factory include Waymo and Wing.

Teller noted that X has a “2% hit rate,” which means that most of the things the company tries don’t work out, and that’s okay.

He said X defines a moonshot as having three specific components. The first is that it needs to attempt to solve a huge problem in the world. Second, there needs to be some kind of product or service that, however unlikely, would make the problem go away. Last, there has to be a sort of breakthrough technology that woul

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