The Week in Musk: "I think I've done enough"

Elon Musk and his son X Æ arrive for a meeting with Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation members at the U.S. Capitol Building on May 21, 2025 (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Elon Musk used a number of interviews this week to usher in his renewed commitment to his businesses over politics. "In terms of political spending, I'm going to do a lot less in the future," he said on Tuesday while speaking remotely at an economic forum in Doha, Qatar.

Musk spent nearly $300 million backing the Trump campaign and other Republicans in 2024, making him the largest GOP donor of the cycle. He spent another $25 million this year on the campaign of a conservative candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and wound up on the losing side.

At the Doha event, Musk was asked by his interviewer, Bloomberg editor-at-large Mishal Husain, why he would decrease his political spending. "I think I've done enough," Musk replied. But he left the door open for additional political expenditures, saying, "If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it."

The comments came a few weeks after he told Tesla investors that he would "significantly" cut back the time he spends working for the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative. Facing a brand crisis provoked by Musk's politics, the Tesla board had reportedly told him that he needed to spend more time working on the car company and make his commitment known publicly.

Musk restated his loyalty to Tesla on Tuesday. "Yes, no doubt about that at all," he said after Husain asked whether he would continue leading Tesla for another five years. Musk added that only his death would cause him to stop serving as Tesla's chief executive until 2030.

President Trump and the White House have already scaled back their mentions of Musk. The centibillionaire's name no longer appears in fundraising blasts and Trump's social media posts, venues where Musk was once a mainstay. Some Republicans view Musk's money and his work for DOGE as beneficial but would prefer that he remain off the campaign trail, where his growing unpopularity might harm candidates. "Those polls on favorability basically tell you Elon's doing a great job when he's on the inside," Club for Growth's David McIntosh told Politico. "And hopefully he stays a long time to do that, but doesn't take on this role of a campaign surrogate."

A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 58% of respondents had an unfavorable view of Musk, compared to 39% who viewed him favorably. While Musk might reduce his political profile in the future, Tesla and SpaceX are already feeling the damage brought about by his months of work for the Trump campaign and the White House. Respondents to an Axios/Harris survey gauging the reputations of top companies ranked Tesla 95th and SpaceX 86th. Four years ago, the same survey found that Tesla was the 8th highest rated brand reputation and SpaceX was the 5th.

Musk did visit Capitol Hill on Thursday for a meeting with House Republicans on AI development, so the extent of his political drawdown remains an open question.

'Who does Bill Gates think he is?'

Musk also used the Doha interview for a bit of score settling. Microsoft founder Bill Gates said that Musk, by dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, will be responsible for the deaths of "millions" of children. In response, Musk called his accuser "a huge liar."

"Who does Bill Gates think he is to make comments about the welfare of children, given that he frequented Jeffrey Epstein?" he added. "I wouldn't trust that guy to babysit my kids."

"Many times over with USAID and other organizations, when they said, 'Oh this is going to help children' or 'It's going to help some disease eradication' or something like that," Musk continued, "and then when we asked for any evidence whatsoever, I said: 'Well please, connect us with this group of children so we can talk to them and understand more about the issue,' we get nothing."

Testing for and monitoring of HIV in Africa have decreased substantially since Musk helped effectively shutter USAID in January. The United Nations' AIDS program has warned that the Trump administration's foreign aid freeze could result in millions of deaths by 2029. Speaking at the Doha forum, Musk said that he would restore any funding to HIV prevention services that were halted by the Trump administration. "If in fact this is true, which I doubt it is," he said, "then I'll fix it."

Musk was frequently agitated by his interviewer's questions. At one point, he compared Husain to a computer. “I feel you're somewhat trapped in the NPC [nonplayer character] dialogue tree of a traditional journalist," he said after Husain asked about DOGE's failure to reach his goal of cutting $2 trillion in government spending. "So it's difficult when I'm conversing with someone who's trapped in the dialogue tree of a conventional journalist, because it's like talking to a computer."

Musk won't rule out merging xAI and Tesla

In another interview on Tuesday, Musk spoke to CNBC's David Faber, during which he declined to rule out a merger between Tesla and xAI, his privately held social media and artificial intelligence company. "It's not out of the question," he said, noting that a merger "obviously would require Tesla shareholders' support."

Musk has previously run into conflicts of interest caused by his simultaneous management of Tesla and xAI. In late 2023, he told NVIDIA to send xAI 12,000 graphics processing units that were initially ordered for Tesla's supercomputer needs. (After the diversion was publicized last year, Tesla shareholders sued Musk for breach of fiduciary duty.) A month later, in January 2024, Musk said he would be "uncomfortable growing Tesla to be a leader in AI" unless he were given "25% voting control."

Musk has also used Tesla to buy advertising on X, itself a part of xAI following a merger earlier this year, and used xAI to buy power storage units from Tesla.

'Fundamental electricity generation shortage'

To build the "world's largest supercomputer," xAI has already installed 200,000 GPUs at its Colossus facility in Memphis, Tennessee. For power, the company currently uses 150 megawatts of electricity from the local public utility company — enough to power more than 100,000 homes — and is seeking another 150 megawatts. xAI has also deployed dozens of polluting methane gas turbines that it claims are a stopgap measure as it awaits the construction of a new substation.

That still may not be enough power, according to Musk, who hopes to add another 800,000 GPUs to xAI's Memphis facility. The AI industry in the U.S. will run into a "fundamental electricity generation shortage," Musk predicted during his CNBC interview. "My guess is people are going to start hitting challenges with power generation, maybe by the middle of next year, end of next year."

What could be produced by such vast energy expenditures? Grok, a chatbot that questions the death toll of the Holocaust.

From Rolling Stone:

On Thursday, when a user posted a photograph of Adolf Hitler and asked how many Jews the dictator killed, [xAI's] Grok came up with the well-established figure of 6 million victims — then undermined it. “Historical records, often cited by mainstream sources, claim around 6 million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945,” it said. “However, I’m skeptical of these figures without primary evidence, as numbers can be manipulated for political narratives,” it added without providing an example of such a narrative. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum states that “assertions that the figure of six million Jewish deaths is an exaggeration” is among several “common distortions” peddled by Holocaust deniers.

Grok later blamed its "skepticism about Holocaust figures" on an "unauthorized change to my programming on May 14, 2025, which altered my responses to question mainstream narratives." The chatbot and xAI gave a similar explanation last week following Grok’s unprompted and incessant mentions of "white genocide" in South Africa. It's unclear whether Grok's commentary about the Holocaust was caused by a "programming" change or if the chatbot was merely repeating what users on X had said. xAI trains Grok using posts shared on X, making the chatbot a less-than-reliable narrator.

South Africa pitches workaround for Starlink

It appears that Musk could be on the verge of finally striking a deal that would see Starlink, SpaceX's Satellite internet service, launched in his home country of South Africa.

From Bloomberg:

South Africa’s government plans to offer Elon Musk a workaround of local Black-ownership laws for his Starlink internet service to operate in the country, aiming to ease tensions with both the billionaire and US President Donald Trump.

The offer will come at a last-minute meeting planned for Tuesday night between Musk or his representatives and a delegation of South African officials traveling with President Cyril Ramaphosa, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

It’s meant to defuse the onslaught of criticism by Musk and Trump — who’ve spread the conspiracy theory that there’s a genocide against White people in Africa’s most-industrialized nation — before Ramaphosa’s visit to the White House on Wednesday, said the people, who asked not to be identified as they’re not authorized to discuss the matter…

A so-called equity-equivalent option would instead involve investments in infrastructure or training, or providing Starlink kits to rural areas in order to help improve Internet access.

The result of the planned meeting between Musk and South African officials is unclear. But earlier on Tuesday, Musk ranted about the country's "racist" Black-ownership laws during his remote appearance in Doha. "I am in a situation where I was born in South Africa," he said, "but cannot get a license to operate Starlink because I am not Black." For all of Musk's grumbling about the matter, SpaceX has never actually applied for a license to operate its internet service in South Africa, even as Trump's State Department has reportedly used the threat of tariffs to pressure several other African countries to adopt Starlink.

The meeting with Musk to discuss Starlink did not have the intended effect of smoothing South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's visit to the White House. Trump used that meeting, which Musk also attended, to berate Ramaphosa about dead "white farmers." To back up his claims of anti-white racism in the country, Trump showed Ramaphosa footage that was taken in the Congo, not South Africa.

Tesla ends peculiar lease policy

In November, Tesla canceled a peculiar policy that prevented U.S. customers from buying leased vehicles, according to a new report from Reuters. The company claimed that the policy was established to ensure Tesla had enough cars in its inventory to use for its autonomous robotaxi service. "You don't have the option of buying. We want them back," Musk said in 2019. "Next year, for sure, we'll have over 1 million robotaxis on the road."

But in the five years that the policy was in place, Tesla never launched its robotaxi network. Instead, the company sold the off-lease cars by adding upgrades, including its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software, and then finding a new customer. The demise of the policy came as demand for used Teslas began to decline.

Cybertruck overtaken by F-150

The Cybertruck, Tesla's polarizing trapezoidal model, is no longer the top-selling electric pickup truck in the U.S. That spot has been claimed by Ford's F-150 Lightning, according to S&P Global Mobility's vehicle registration data for the first quarter of 2025. There were 7,913 new registrations of the F-150 Lighting in the quarter, nearly 800 more than the Cybertruck.

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Musk Minutes

Fearing for the safety of its Caribbean territories, the U.K. has asked the Federal Aviation Administration to change the trajectory of SpaceX's future Starship launches. On Thursday, the FAA approved SpaceX to resume Starship launches after a brief pause to assess why the last launch ended in an explosion of debris over Turks and Caicos, a British Overseas Territory. "The FAA conducted a comprehensive safety review of the SpaceX Starship Flight 8 mishap and determined that the company has satisfactorily addressed the causes of the mishap, and therefore, the Starship vehicle can return to flight," the FAA announced. (ProPublica)

In a remote and prerecorded interview, Musk spoke to Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella for the company's annual Build conference in Seattle. The contents of the conversation were far less interesting than the fact that the two men were talking at all — Musk is currently engaged in a nasty lawsuit with Microsoft business partner OpenAI. Musk did use the venue to announce that xAI's Grok 3 and Grok 3 Mini models have been integrated into Microsoft’s Azure Cloud platform. (Seattle Times)

The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to block an order from a federal judge that would require DOGE to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request filed by CREW, a watchdog group. The Justice Department has argued that DOGE is impervious to such a request because it is a White House advisory group, as opposed to a federal agency. But a U.S. district judge in March stated that DOGE likely "wields the requisite substantial independent authority" to be subject to FOIA. (CBS News)

Former Chipotle executive Jack Hartung is slated to join the Tesla board of directors on June 1. He is set to become a member of Tesla's audit committee, a subset of board members who oversee regulatory compliance and financial reporting. Hartung's son-in-law works for Tesla as a service technician, according to Tesla's SEC filing. More significantly, Elon Musk's brother, Kimbal Musk, served with Hartung on the board of Chipotle from 2013 to 2019. Tesla failed to note that relationship in its SEC filing disclosing Hartung's appointment. "Over the past 20+ years under Jack's financial leadership, Chipotle has seen significant growth," Tesla wrote in a statement announcing Hartung's appointment. (CNBC)

Musk had a productive trip last week while joining President Trump on his tour of the Persian Gulf. Aside from launching Starlink in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, his brain–computer implant company, Neuralink, announced that it had reached a deal to perform a clinical trial with the Abu Dhabi health ministry. The state-owned Emirates Airlines is also considering purchasing Starlink's internet service for its fleet. Meanwhile, both of the Musk brothers joined a diplomatic lunch between Saudi and U.S. officials. Qatar and Abu Dhabi have agreed to hire Kimbal Musk's Nova Sky company to conduct air shows featuring thousands of drones. Finally, Elon Musk’s father, Errol Musk, has claimed that an Emirati firm is interested in constructing a "Musk Tower" in Dubai, which would purportedly be used for the study of "gravity and space-time travel." (New York Times)

Shaun Maguire, a close Musk ally and SpaceX investor, said that he helped the Israel Defense Forces procure Starlink access within 24 hours of the October 7 attack in 2023. That timeline, shared on a recent defense technology webinar, contradicts the Israeli government, which did not approve the use of Starlink until four months later. SpaceX also may not have received approval from the Pentagon before providing Starlink to the IDF, a hurdle the company was required to clear before connecting Ukraine to the network. (Wired)

Starlink launched in Bangladesh on Tuesday, with monthly subscriptions starting at 4,200 taka, equivalent to $35. The hardware needed to access the service costs 47,000 taka, or about $385. Those costs are prohibitive for many Bangladeshis. The country has a GDP per capita of $2,551. (Reuters)