The Week In Musk: Early retirement

The SpaceX Starship rocket launches from Starbase, Texas, as seen from South Padre Island on May 27, 2025. (Photo by SERGIO FLORES/AFP via Getty Images)

The drawn-out White House retirement tour that Elon Musk began six weeks ago may finally be over. "As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President [Trump] for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending," the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive wrote in a post on X. It is a change of plans for Musk, who last month said he would continue to work in the administration for one to two days a week indefinitely.

On his way out, Musk turned his nose up at President Trump's "big beautiful bill," which proposes increasing the federal debt ceiling to $4 trillion and doing away with tax incentives for clean energy and electric vehicles. "I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly," Musk told CBS News, "which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the [Department of Government Efficiency] team is doing."

Tesla also criticized the bill. "Abruptly ending the energy tax credits would threaten America’s energy independence and the reliability of our grid," the company's solar and battery division wrote in a statement shared by Musk. Tesla urged the Senate to change the bill passed by the House to include "a sensible wind down" of the Biden-era residential solar and clean energy subsidies. "There is no change to tax incentives for oil & gas, just EV/solar," Musk noted on X, referring to a part of the bill that would discontinue the $7,500 EV tax credit, which most Tesla models qualify for, by the end of the year.

Trump chose not to reprimand Musk for his dissent. Asked about it by a reporter on Wednesday, the president admitted that there were parts of the bill that he didn't like and didn't mention Musk by name. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller appeared to respond to Musk's objections to the bill with a fact-check on X explaining what kinds of government spending apply to DOGE. (In a curious personnel change, Miller's wife, Katie, who served as the spokesperson for DOGE, is leaving the White House to work for Musk "full time.")

In the post announcing his retirement from the Trump administration, Musk said that DOGE's "mission will only strengthen" without his presence. But in other settings, he seemed despondent while reflecting on the months he spent serving as a self-described "first buddy" to the president. "I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics," Musk said in an interview with Ars Technica. "It's not like I left the companies. It was just relative time allocation that probably was a little too high on the government side, and I've reduced that significantly in recent weeks."

In another interview, Musk complained to the Washington Post that "it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C.," adding, "DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything."

'War time Elon'

Over the past two weeks, Musk has sought to present himself as unencumbered and laser-focused on his businesses. Gone are his "dark MAGA" hats and DOGE and White House "tech support" t-shirts, with Musk instead wearing his "Occupy Mars" SpaceX merchandise. "Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms," he wrote on X over the weekend in a post promising "major operational improvements" after his social media platform experienced outages.

The rebrand is working on some Musk fans. “War time Elon is activated,” wrote Autism Capital, an X user whose posts Musk frequently shares. Tesla shares have also seen steady gains since Musk promised to be "super focused" on his companies. The stock closed at 358.43 on Thursday, a 27% gain for the month, but still a ways off from the record high it set in December.

Musk tried to torpedo OpenAI deal

Another factor that may have contributed to Musk's sour mood as he leaves the Trump administration is a massive deal that the White House helped facilitate between OpenAI and the United Arab Emirates. From the Wall Street Journal:

OpenAI led a group of American technology giants that won a deal last week to build one of the world’s largest artificial-intelligence data centers in Abu Dhabi. Behind the scenes, Elon Musk worked hard to try to derail the deal if it didn’t include his own AI startup, according to people familiar with the matter.

On a call with officials at G42, an AI firm controlled by the brother of the United Arab Emirates’ president, Musk had a warning for those assembled: Their plan had no chance of President Trump signing off on it unless his company xAI was included in the deal, according to some of the people.

Musk had learned just before Trump’s mid-May tour of three Gulf countries that OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman was going to be on the trip and that a deal in the U.A.E. was in the works, and grew angry about it, according to White House officials. He then said he would also join the trip, and appeared alongside the president in Saudi Arabia.

After Musk’s complaints, Trump and U.S. officials reviewed the deal terms and decided to move forward. The White House officials said Musk didn’t want a deal that seemed to benefit Altman. Aides discussed how to best calm Musk down, one of the officials said, because Trump and David Sacks, the president’s AI and crypto adviser, wanted to announce the deal before the end of the president’s trip to the Middle East.

Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but left the firm after he failed to wrestle more control over its operations from Altman. Musk is currently suing OpenAI and has sought to rival the firm's ChatGPT product by launching his own chatbot.

In January, after Trump hosted Altman at the White House to announce a $500 billion investment project between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank, Musk repeatedly called Altman a "liar" and referred to him as "Scam Altman."

SpaceX loses control of another Starship

On Tuesday night, SpaceX conducted the ninth launch of its 403-foot-tall Starship rocket from its facility in South Texas. The launch proved more successful than the last two explosive attempts, but it still ended in a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" before the rocket could complete its primary objectives. From the AP:

SpaceX hoped to release a series of mock satellites following liftoff, but that got nixed because the door failed to open all the way. Then the spacecraft began spinning as it skimmed space toward an uncontrolled landing in the Indian Ocean…

It was the first time one of Musk’s Starships — intended for moon and Mars travel — flew with a recycled booster. There were no plans to catch the booster with giant chopsticks back at the launch pad, with the company instead pushing it to its limits. Contact with the booster was lost at one point, and it slammed into the Gulf of Mexico in pieces as the spacecraft continued toward the Indian Ocean.

Then the spacecraft went out of control, apparently due to fuel leaks.

“Not looking great with a lot of our on-orbit objectives for today,” said SpaceX flight commentator Dan Huot. The company had been looking to test the spacecraft’s heat shield during a controlled reentry.

After months of progressive improvements, the Starship program experienced a pair of setbacks earlier this year. Launches in January and March ended in explosions minutes after liftoff, before the rockets could even pass over the Caribbean. The launch in March ended with the rocket breaking apart over Florida. The January launch was more hazardous, with debris raining down on Turks and Caicos. Commercial flights had to be diverted and delayed in both instances.

xAI signs $300 million deal with Telegram

For $300 million in cash and stock, Musk's artificial intelligence company has purchased the right to temporarily incorporate its Grok chatbot into Telegram, a Dubai-based messaging app with around one billion active monthly users. xAI will also give Telegram 50% of any subscription revenue generated through the partnership. The arrangement is set to launch sometime in the summer and will last for one year, according to Telegram founder Pavel Durov. xAI will only be able to access Telegram data that users share directly with Grok, according to Durov. The chatbot is already being trained on public posts shared by X users.

Durov and Musk are a simpatico pairing. Last month, in a very Musk-like declaration, Durov claimed the head of French intelligence asked him "to ban conservative voices in Romania ahead of elections. I refused." The French intelligence service has denied the accusation.

A Russian expatriate, Durov is now a citizen of both the UAE and France. French authorities are currently investigating him for alleged complicity in crimes that took place on Telegram, including drug trafficking and the dissemination of child sexual abuse material. Musk is facing his own investigations in Europe for illegal content allegedly shared on X. Additionally, before Musk stepped in to buy and remake Twitter, it was Telegram that provided an online gathering space for far-right Americans barred from more mainstream platforms.

Federal workers get Grok

Even with Musk ostensibly out of the picture, DOGE has continued to push federal workers to use Grok. From Reuters:

One of the three people familiar with the matter, who has knowledge of DOGE’s activities, said Musk's team was using a customized version of the Grok chatbot. The apparent aim was for DOGE to sift through data more efficiently, this person said. “They ask questions, get it to prepare reports, give data analysis.”

The second and third person said DOGE staff also told Department of Homeland Security officials to use it even though Grok had not been approved within the department.

If the data was sensitive or confidential government information, the arrangement could violate security and privacy laws, said five specialists in technology and government ethics.

It could also give the Tesla and SpaceX CEO access to valuable nonpublic federal contracting data at agencies he privately does business with or be used to help train Grok, a process in which AI models analyze troves of data, the experts said. Musk could also gain an unfair competitive advantage over other AI service providers from use of Grok in the federal government, they added.

Citing two sources, the report noted that members of DOGE have been attempting to incorporate an AI surveillance tool into the DHS email system to root out staff deemed not "loyal" to Trump.

FTC joins Musk attack on Media Matters

Taking a cue from Musk, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has opened a probe into Media Matters, a progressive nonprofit that monitors right-wing media outlets. The FTC has sought to obtain documents from the group regarding its role in the loss of advertising revenue that Twitter suffered after Musk's leveraged buyout in 2023, according to Reuters.

That year, Media Matters published reports showing that ads from top brands were appearing alongside white supremacist content, leading some advertisers to boycott the platform. Lawyers for Musk then sued Media Matters in Texas, Ireland, and Singapore, claiming that the group manipulated the platform to produce its reports and conspired with other groups to damage Twitter's reputation. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson has previously vowed to "prosecute any unlawful collusion between online platforms, and confront advertiser boycotts which threaten competition among those platforms."

In response to the FTC probe, Media Matters President Angelo Carusone said the Trump administration is "abusing the power of the federal government to bully political opponents and silence critics."

Tesla sales sink in Europe

Last month provided no relief for Tesla's slump in Europe. The company's vehicle deliveries declined by 49% on the continent, down to 7,261 compared to 14,228 in April of last year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association. Musk has sought to blame Tesla's challenges in Europe on an industry-wide downturn. "Sales are still down compared to this time last year in Europe," Bloomberg's Mishal Husain noted while interviewing Musk last week. "Guess what? That's true of all manufacturers," he replied. "There’s no exception. The European market is quite weak."

While Europe saw a 1.2% year-over-year decline in vehicle registrations last month, Musk's claim that all automakers are suffering there is not true. SAIC Motor Corp., a Chinese automaker and leader in the hybrid market, saw a 54% increase in sales last month. BMW, Renault, Cupra, and Skoda also saw sales increases. At the same time, overall sales of electric vehicles increased by 28%, which suggests that Europeans are choosing not to buy from Tesla out of opposition to Musk.

The problem is also not unique to Europe. In Quebec, Canada, Tesla saw an 87% first-quarter decline in sales, according to data obtained by Le Devoir.

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Musk Minutes

On Thursday, Musk claimed on X that Tesla has been testing driverless Model Ys on public streets for a few days now and had not experienced any "incidents." The tests are taking place in Austin, Texas, where on June 12, Tesla is set to begin a closed beta of its robotaxi concept, albeit with significant constraints. In the X post, Musk added that Tesla is weeks away from making its "first self-delivery from factory to customer," a prediction he has been peddling for six years. (X)

Former Tesla robotics engineer Chris Walti threw cold water on Musk's lofty predictions for the "Optimus" humanoid that Tesla is developing. In a Business Insider interview, Walti said that humanoids pose engineering challenges "multiple orders of magnitude" more complex than autonomous vehicles. He also described the design of humanoids — robots that have humanlike anatomical features — as unsuitable for factory work. "It's not a useful form factor. Most of the work that has to be done in industry is highly repetitive tasks where velocity is key," he said. "[Homo sapiens] evolved to escape wolves and bears. We weren't designed to do repetitive tasks over and over again." Musk recently predicted that Tesla will have thousands of humanoids working in its factories within the year. (Business Insider)

Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has accused xAI's Grok of harboring a left-wing bias. The dispute arose after one user asked Grok to judge whether Greene is a genuine Christian, to which the chatbot replied, "Critics, including religious leaders, argue her actions contradict Christian values of love and unity… Whether she's 'really' a Christian is subjective." Greene replied: "@grok the judgement seat belongs to GOD, not you a non-human AI platform. Grok is left leaning and continues to spread fake news and propaganda." (New York Daily News)

Neuralink, Musk's brain–computer interface startup, received a $9 billion valuation in a new deal that saw the company raise more than $600 million. That is a significant climb since 2023, when Neuralink's estimated value was $5 billion. The Neuralink device, which has been tested on three patients suffering from paralysis, was granted "breakthrough" status from the Food and Drug Administration a few weeks ago. (Semafor)