Mention Elon Musk and let the superlatives fly.

But former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo just brought praising Musk — the billionaire entrepreneur behind electric cars and solar power solutions, space travel, and ambitions of digging transportation tunnels under cities — to a whole new level.

"Elon may be proof that time travel exists, because he seems to have either more hours in the day than the rest of us have, or he's from the future," joked Costolo, in a CNBC interview on Thursday.

"In all seriousness," Costolo continued, saying, "I'm laughing because [Musk's] ability to think cogently and thoughtfully about such a wide range of topics, while running these multiple companies, and seeming to be running them well is just, I mean, it makes you shake your head. It's remarkable."

These multiple Musk ventures to which Costolo referred are Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company.

Costolo's comments on "Squawk Alley" came after Musk tweeted about getting "verbal" government approval to begin building an underground hyperloop from New York City to Washington, D.C.

Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins.

City center to city center in each case, with up to a dozen or more entry/exit elevators in each city

Musk's latest big dig announcement is typical Musk, Costolo said. "What he's been able to publicly announce he's going to try to do, and then goes ahead and does it in a number of fields all at once, it's just extraordinary. I just don't think there is ... [anyone] else out there like it."

"Listen, when you say it, it sounds a little bit crazy — he's landing a rocket on a drone ship at sea. I mean this is something he's done," Costolo added. "So you just ... have to shake your head at what he's been able to accomplish," he added.

In a wide-ranging CNBC interview, Costolo also offered advice to Snapchat-parent Snap on how to deal with the threat from Facebook copying all its features. He was drawing on his own experience leading Twitter and how it handled competing with Mark Zuckerberg's social networking behemoth.