X, the research lab of Google’s parent company, calls itself “the moonshot factory.” Its head, Astro Teller, explained the name in a 2016 talk: “We use the word moonshots to remind us to keep our visions big, to keep dreaming.”
In the same talk he described a rule. “We have bonused every single person on teams that ended their projects, from teams as small as two to teams of more than 30.” One project that X ended was automated vertical farming. Teller explained the reason for the bonuses: “We work hard at X to make it safe to fail.”