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The Street
The Street
Business
Riley Gutiérrez McDermid

Elon Musk Wows in Remarkable Gigafest Opening

The founder of tech giant Tesla put on an unprecedented opening to his latest factory debut this week, wowing the crowd with a coordinated show of drones lighting up the Austin, Texas skies.

Elon Musk was in Austin to open his latest Gigafactory and make a major announcement at 10 p.m. Eastern Time on April 7.

But even 10 minutes before the event, the audience was captured by a video about Tesla's accomplishments — which then morphed into a drone capturing live video of its approach to the event venue and throughout crowds chanting in anticipation.

They didn't have long to wait.

Soon the sky erupted into what looked like fireworks with the event's name emblazoned across the dark sky.

But it quickly became clear that these fireworks were actually dozens of coordinated drones, etching out the story of Tesla, its founder's whimsical brain and the various cutting edge products it has brought to the market so far.

The sky show went on for 15 minutes and drones created everything from Musk's head and face to the company's much-touted Cybertruck, with pixellated versions meticulously choreographed into recognizable — and enormous — Tesla fan favorites.

It then segued into a prepared video of a, one assumes, Texas, cowboy racing various Teslas in the Lone Star State. 

That included a montage of a Tesla with longhorns on the front jumping ramps, which then morphed into the event, where Musk began his announcement. The event is live and archived here.

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