Photo illustration: Trevor Davis for Bloomberg Businessweek; Photos: Justin Merriman/Bloomberg, Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
Elon Musk Has a New Project to Run: Trump’s Government
After plowing at least $132 million into the president-elect’s campaign, the richest man in the world is about to treat the US government as if it were a money-losing social network.
On the afternoon of Election Day, Elon Musk stopped by his polling place in South Texas, then headed to one of his private planes, bound for what he hoped would be a victory party for Donald Trump at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. On the way, Musk held an impromptu political rally. He posted the link to a livestream on his social network, X. “There’s only a few hours left,” Musk said, as the engine hummed and 100,000 or so people listened in. “So just make sure everyone is hounding friends and family to vote, vote, vote.”
Prior to this year, Musk ran six companies: Tesla (electric cars), SpaceX (rockets), Neuralink (brain implants), Boring Co. (tunnels), xAI (artificial intelligence chatbots) and X (Twitter). But in May, he added a seventh operation—America PAC, a political action committee that somehow managed to spend more than $170 million between then and the election.