The Week In Musk: Up in flames
Elon Musk spent this week attempting to refute reporting about his drug use, sharing photos on X of what he claimed were drug tests taken from samples of his hair and urine. The laboratory reports show the samples were negative for ketamine, amphetamines, ecstasy, opiates, and more than a dozen other drugs.
In sharing the lab report from the hair sample, Musk leaked the last four digits of his Social Security number, which hackers and scammers can exploit to commit fraud or identity theft.
The samples were collected on June 11, a little less than two weeks after the New York Times published a report on the drugs that Musk was on while campaigning with Donald Trump last year. Citing sources who spoke to Musk at the time, the paper reported that he was taking so much of the anesthetic ketamine that he was having trouble urinating. The report also revealed that Musk was using the party drug MDMA, psychedelic mushrooms, and the stimulant Adderall.
Musk provided no evidence to suggest that the lab reports he shared on X featured the observed collection of urine and hair samples. Without third-party observation, it is nearly impossible to guarantee that a sample belongs to the patient who submitted it, at least in the context of a standard drug test.
Still, Musk hyped the test results while insisting that the Times and the Wall Street Journal, the first outlet to report extensively about his drug use, had "lied through their teeth about me." He then accused journalists at the two newspapers of abusing drugs. "I hereby challenge the NYT and WSJ to take drug tests and publish the results!" he wrote on X. "They won’t, because those hypocrites are guilty as sin."
In response to Musk's posts, the Times released the following statement: "Elon Musk is continuing to lash out because he doesn't like our reporting. Nothing that he's said or presented since our article about his drug use during the presidential campaign was published contradicts what we uncovered."
Musk shared the lab tests in the aftermath of his falling out with Trump, who during the height of the feud publicly said of Musk, "He's got a problem. The poor guy's got a problem." Trump was reportedly less subtle behind closed doors. The Washington Post reported that Trump described Musk as a "big-time addict."
Another Starship explodes — this time, without leaving the ground
For the fourth time this year, SpaceX has lost one of its Starship rockets. On Wednesday, at about 11 p.m. Central time, a Starship sitting on its test stand detonated unexpectedly during a test firing of the Super Heavy first stage. The massive explosion sent debris flying in every direction around SpaceX's South Texas launch site. The Starship spacecraft, the second stage of the rocket, was not mounted on the booster during the failed test.
SpaceX said all of its "personnel are safe and accounted for" and attributed the explosion to "a major anomaly." Musk described the setback as "just a scratch."
"Preliminary data suggests that a nitrogen COPV in the payload bay failed below its proof pressure," Musk said in another post on X, referring to the nitrogen gas stored in the rocket's Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessel. "If further investigation confirms that this is what happened, it is the first time ever for this design."
The test was carried out in preparation for the 10th Starship test launch. SpaceX has suffered catastrophic failures in all three of the Starship tests it has launched this year. However, the previous attempts ended with spacecraft exploding over the Caribbean Sea and the Indian Ocean. SpaceX managed to save two out of three of the reusable Super Heavy boosters used in those tests.
SpaceX has contracts worth $4 billion with NASA to develop Starship. As part of its Artemis 3 mission, the agency plans to use a Starship to send astronauts back to the moon by summer 2027. Another crewed moon mission using a Starship is scheduled for September 2028. But SpaceX's setbacks could jeopardize those deadlines.
In more SpaceX news:
Musk is using Starlink as a tool for regime change in Iran. "In view of the special conditions of the country, temporary restrictions have been imposed on the country's internet," Iran's communications ministry announced after Israel began bombing Tehran and other parts of the country last week. Musk then said that he had activated Starlink service in Iran, even though Starlink had not received regulatory approval to operate in the country. "The beams are on," he wrote in a post on X responding to Mark Levin, a Fox News host and member of Trump's Homeland Security Advisory Council. Levin had asked Musk to help "put the final nail in the coffin of the Iranian regime by providing Starlink to the Iranian people." Some 20,000 Starlink terminals, procured through the black market, are believed to be active in Iran.
SpaceX has now produced 10 million Starlink terminals, according to SpaceX senior facilities manager Sujay Soman. "It took almost 4 years to build our first 5 million kits, and we doubled that in about 11 months," Soman said in a LinkedIn post. Earlier this month, SpaceX announced that Starlink had surpassed 6 million subscribers across 140 markets.
In light of Musk's feud with Trump, the White House is reportedly weighing a new framework for the Golden Dome that would limit the missile defense program's reliance on SpaceX. "One possibility, the three people said, could initially forego SpaceX's satellite capabilities and focus on the expansion of existing ground systems for missile defense instead," Reuters reported.
Tesla inventory swells into sprawling lots as Wall Street forecasts bad Q2 deliveries
For a visualization of Tesla's months of lousy sales, look to the sprawling parking lots across the U.S. that the company is using to store its swelling inventory. In Missouri, just outside St. Louis, Tesla has taken over the parking lot of a demolished shopping mall to house hundreds of unsold cars. In New Jersey, at the Quaker Bridge Mall outside of Trenton, hundreds more Teslas sit unsold. And in Farmington Hills, Michigan, Tesla was the source of local outrage after it turned a shopping center's lot into an inventory depot despite the space not being zoned for vehicle storage.
Tesla is currently stuck holding thousands of unsold Cybertrucks and a growing Model 3 inventory, leading the company to erect additional overflow lots in Ohio, Nevada, and Florida. The overflow problem has persisted even as Tesla offers record-high discounts and promotions.
Overflow may have contributed to Tesla's decision to shut down the Model Y and Cybertruck production lines at its Austin, Texas, factory for the week starting on June 30. It would be the third manufacturing pause that Tesla has scheduled at the facility since December, according to Business Insider. Four Tesla employees told the publication that production breaks were once a rarity.
While Tesla sales in the U.S. are markedly better than in Europe and Canada, demand is still down substantially through the first six months of this year. The new Model Y, which Tesla claimed would rejuvenate its sales, does not appear to be the panacea management had hoped for. "New Model Y appears weak given inventory building & promotions. There is also no update on the affordable model, the only driver of 2H [second half of the year] volumes," Wells Fargo analyst Colin Langan wrote in a note on Tuesday. "Order px [pricing] is ~stable, though financing promos & inventory discounts continue." Langan lowered his forecast for Tesla's second quarter deliveries, predicting a 21% decline year-over-year.
In more Tesla news:
There are two pieces of bad news for Tesla from China. Despite a surge of sales last week, registrations are still down 17% in the second quarter and about 7% for the year in the world's largest EV market. Competition is also heating up: Xiaomi is slated to release its so-called "Model Y killer," the YU7 crossover, by the end of this month. The YU7 has a longer range than the Model Y and is expected to be $4,350 cheaper for the base model. The Model Y was the best-selling car in China last year.
The company finally launched marginally upgraded variants of the Model S and Model X, its two most expensive models. The changes include a new camera affixed to the front bumper, improved noise cancellation, ambient lighting strips visible along the dash and doors, and a new suspension design for a gentler ride. The relatively minor upgrades come with a price increase of $5,000.
In a move that could benefit Tesla and its exclusively self-driving Cybercab model, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced a streamlined exemption process for automakers building vehicles that lack conventional features like steering wheels and brake pedals. Previously, the makers of such cars had to wait years for their unconventional designs to receive exemptions.
AP7, a Swedish pension fund, sold all of its Tesla shares and blacklisted the stock. "AP7 has decided to blacklist Tesla due to verified violations of labor rights in the United States," the fund said, adding that Tesla "has not taken sufficient measures to address the issues" despite years of dialogue.
xAI burning through $1 billion a month
As it seeks to catch up with more established industry rivals, Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, is scrambling to raise billions of dollars while operating at a tremendous burn rate. From Bloomberg:
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI is trying to raise $9.3 billion in debt and equity, but even before the money is in the bank, the company has plans to spend more than half of it in just the next three months, according to deal terms shared with investors.
The rate at which the company is raising funds and tearing through cash offers a stark illustration of the unprecedented financial demands of the artificial intelligence industry, and the relatively meager revenues it is bringing in so far, at least when it comes to xAI.
Musk’s startup, which is responsible for the AI-powered chatbot Grok, expects to burn through about $13 billion over the course of 2025, or more than $1 billion each month, as reflected in the company’s levered cash flow, according to the people familiar with the deal terms who asked not to be identified because the information is private. As a result, its prolific fundraising efforts are just barely keeping pace with expenses, the people added.
Some of the losses were attributed to the sprawling supercomputer and related power and water facilities that xAI is building in Memphis, Tennessee. The supercomputer currently houses 200,000 NVIDIA Hopper GPUs. Musk plans to increase that number to 1 million GPUs.
Musk denied Bloomberg's reporting on X, saying the publication "is talking nonsense."
Musk Minutes
In a post on X, Musk nodded to the anti-Trump "No Kings" protests held last weekend by sharing a screenshot from the video game Bioshock, in which a banner can be seen reading, "No Gods or Kings. Only Man." Musk wrote, "Anyone else think of this yesterday?" The story of Bioshock begins with a Randian industrialist who seeks to avoid government bureaucracy by founding a free city that is part Atlantis and part Galt's Gulch. Meanwhile, Musk has previously alluded to himself as a Randian hero, an "actual builder who [gets] things done" in spite of bureaucratic constraints. Maybe Musk's "No Kings" post is a sign that he wants to return to his right-wing libertarian roots following the end of his time as an establishment Republican leader. (Futurism)
Neuralink, Musk's brain-computer interface startup, purportedly used an implant on a research monkey to make the animal see something that wasn't actually there. The company's Blindsight implant triggered the hallucination by stimulating a part of the monkey's brain linked to vision and perception, according to a Neuralink engineer. (Bloomberg)
Neuralink's recent public relations drive has won over some in Silicon Valley. Alexandr Wang, the founder of Scale AI, plans to hold off on having children until Neuralink and other brain computer interfaces are commonplace. "When we get Neuralink and these other technologies, kids who are born with them are going to learn how to use them in like crazy ways," Wang said on a recent podcast appearance. "It'll be like a part of their brain in a way that it'll never be true for an adult who gets a Neuralink or whatever hooked into their brain." (Business Insider)
Neurolink, embedded in one’s brain… what could possibly go wrong 😑 hard pass for me and mine.
Not a particularly rosy outlook for Musk endeavors. Couldn't happen to a nicer person!