Elon Musk Returns to His Tech Empire, Plagued by Questions of Inattention
Elon Musk recently swapped his Dark MAGA hat and government 'Tech Support' garb for his old 'Occupy Mars' T-shirt, a reference to his rocket company SpaceX's mission to colonize the red planet.
He embarked on a media blitz, granting interviews to news outlets that he had previously avoided and saying that he was focused on SpaceX and discussing his electric automaker Tesla.
And on social media, he posted that he was once again spending '24/7 at work' and sleeping in his companies' factories and server rooms.
As Musk steps away from Washington and his Department of Government Efficiency, President Donald Trump's 'first buddy' is shifting back to his role as a business titan. But that move is not likely to come easy after Musk spent months backing Trump's presidential campaign and dismantling parts of the federal government, raising concerns that he had become an absentee leader at his various enterprises, including SpaceX, Tesla, artificial intelligence company xAI and the social media platform X.
Musk's time in government has been a decidedly mixed bag for his business empire. Tesla is particularly vulnerable after Musk's popularity nose-dived when he slashed government jobs. Tesla dealerships became the target of protests as sales and profit fell. What's more, the Republican budget bill now before the Senate would gut subsidies and policies that promote electric vehicles. Tesla's stock has dropped about 14% this year, wiping around $180 billion off its market value.
Some of Musk's companies have benefited from his proximity to the White House, with Trump at one point promoting Tesla cars on the White House lawn and SpaceX harvesting more government tie-ups with Starlink, its satellite internet service. X remains a powerful megaphone for Musk's and Trump's supporters. And Trump is a valuable ally with policy power who oversees agencies that regulate Musk's businesses.
But Musk is the face of his companies, and his protracted time in Washington has raised alarms over how committed he is to his businesses. Some former workers at SpaceX and elsewhere have questioned his absence from the companies. Overall, it's unclear if the tech billionaire's Washington maneuvers will lead to long-term advantages for them.
'It became a mission critical thing to get the CEO back in the office,' said Eric Talley, a professor at Columbia Law School. 'It's not a moment too soon, quite frankly.'
How much time Musk will spend with his companies and outside of Washington now remains unclear. At a news conference in the Oval Office with Trump on Friday, Musk called his departure from the government 'not the end of DOGE but really the beginning' and said he would continue to visit 'and be a friend and an adviser to the president.'
'Elon's really not leaving,' Trump said. 'He's going to be back and forth.'
Musk did not address how he would spend his time or how the change would affect his companies. He did not respond to an emailed request for comment. Tesla and SpaceX also did not respond to requests for comment. X and xAI declined to comment.
At SpaceX, Musk's absence had been felt in recent months. In May, Dylan Small, a former mechanic at the rocket company, posted on X that 'morale is low' and 'people are burned out.'
'Your presence used to drive a fire in the team,' Small wrote to Musk. 'Please come back and walk the floor.'
In a message to The New York Times, Small said SpaceX's work was largely the result of employees feeling 'inspired,' with Musk playing 'a huge role in that.'
Since the start of Trump's term, Musk has posted almost 1,000 times on X about SpaceX, which was half of the nearly 2,000 times he posted about DOGE, according to a tally by the Times. In that time, SpaceX has held two test launches of Starship, the rocket that Musk hopes will get humans to Mars, including one Tuesday.
Last week, Musk gave an interview to The Washington Post -- a news outlet he has typically shunned -- and emphasized that he was 'physically here' for SpaceX before the Starship test launch from the company's Starbase rocket facility in South Texas.
The launch ended in an explosion, but Musk still made a point to declare his presence. He reshared videos of himself in the SpaceX control center, as well as interviews with reporters and influencers talking about space travel.
At Tesla, Musk's level of disengagement from the business became clear in April. He had seldom visited Tesla's offices or factories since Trump's inauguration but showed up at one of the company's offices in Palo Alto, California, a few days ahead of an earnings call that month, according to two people familiar with his travel.
During the visit, Musk asked about the impact of Trump's tariffs on Tesla and was briefed on the effects and the company's supply chain vulnerabilities, two people familiar with the meeting said. The timing of his question raised concerns from some attendees, since Trump had begun implementing tariffs two months earlier in February.
Days after Musk's visit, Tesla reported that its vehicle sales fell 13% in the first quarter from a year earlier, as profit plunged to its lowest level in four years. New tariffs on imported auto parts have added to the financial pressures facing the company.
Musk's political activities alienated buyers, said Matthew LaBrot, who worked in sales at Tesla in California. It became 'a grind every day to sell a car when that did not used to be the case,' said LaBrot, who was fired after he set up a website critical of Musk. 'A lot of it was Elon.'
Tesla executives have told people in recent months that Musk was not as involved in day-to-day details of the operations and was dialing in remotely for meetings more frequently than before his stint at DOGE, two people with knowledge of the conversations said. A Tesla board member has sometimes stepped in to help fill in the gaps for Musk, one of them said.
Tesla, which faces stiff competition from Chinese electric carmakers such as BYD, has tried to diversify more into AI and robotics. Musk has said the company would launch a ride-hailing service this month in Austin, Texas, with fully autonomous vehicles. The company has also aimed to start making a less expensive car, though it is unclear how different it will be from Tesla's existing vehicles.
During his time in government, Musk appears to have kept an eye on the fast-evolving field of AI. He talked up xAI, his startup, and posted hundreds of times on X about Grok, the chatbot made by the startup. He also continued waging a legal battle against Sam Altman, who leads OpenAI and is a key rival in the AI industry.
In March, Musk sold X to xAI, merging the two companies. Last month, the combined company announced a tender offer, which allows employees to cash out some of their equity by selling the shares back to the company at a prearranged price, according to internal documents seen by the Times. The tender offer is tentatively scheduled for this month and valued the combined company at about $113 billion, according to the documents.
On Wednesday, Linda Yaccarino, X's CEO, held an employee meeting to rally workers around the idea that merging with xAI had led to the best teams and technology, two people familiar with the discussion said. That day, she posted on X to celebrate a partnership to integrate Grok into the messaging service Telegram.
Pavel Durov, Telegram's founder, also posted about the deal. 'Elon Musk and I have agreed to a 1-year partnership to bring xAI's chatbot Grok to our billion+ users and integrate it across all Telegram apps,' he wrote.
A few hours later, Musk made clear he was still the boss. 'No deal has been signed,' he posted on X.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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