Elon Musk

SpaceX is the largest U.S. commercial launch operator

The FAA published two proposed rules in the Federal Register on Nov. 9. One clarifies when a rocket operator must abort a flight; the other lets companies show a falling vehicle would break apart enough to avoid multiple deaths on the ground.

Updated 3 hours ago

Leading SpaceX's push into mobile wireless service

SpaceX agreed to buy nationwide 800 MHz spectrum from Grain Management for about $8 billion, and it is buying EchoStar's wireless licenses in a deal that has grown to roughly $20 billion. The airwaves let Starlink Mobile reach phones on the ground, including indoors.

Updated 2 days ago

Likely target of probes into DOGE firings, federal funding and Grok's use

Democrats won the House and Senate on Nov. 3. By Nov. 8, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the lawmaker in line to lead the House Oversight Committee, said probes would examine Elon Musk's role at the Department of Government Efficiency, new White House chief of staff Stephen Miller's immigration record, and President Trump's family.

Updated 3 days ago

Chief executive

A Falcon 9 lifted off from California's central coast on the evening of Nov. 6 carrying a payload the Pentagon will not describe. It was the fourth launch in a classified series that outside tracking says has placed 23 satellites in orbit each time.

Updated 4 days ago

Announced the Cybertruck production wind-down

Tesla will wind down Cybertruck production at its Austin factory around mid-2027, CEO Elon Musk said on X on Nov. 6, 2026. The announcement sets a wind-down for a pickup program that Musk once said would sell 250,000 units a year.

Updated 4 days ago

Spent $150 million to boost Paxton, CBS News reported; the Texas Tribune reported over $200 million from Musk.

James Talarico, a 37-year-old state legislator and former middle school teacher, beat Republican Ken Paxton in Texas's Senate race on November 3, 2026. Final returns showed Talarico with 55.1% to Paxton's 43%, a 12.1-point margin and the first Democratic Senate win in Texas since 1988.

Updated 5 days ago

Says Ukraine violated Starlink's terms; denies ordering the Starshield cap

Ukraine's Operation Vivaldi pushed Russian forces back 277 square kilometers in the Donbas, freeing 16 settlements. The campaign collapsed an attempted Russian pincer around Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the fortress cities it was meant to encircle.

Updated 7 days ago

CEO of SpaceX, which filed in July 2026 for 100,000 Gen3 Starlink satellites and operates more than 10,900

In December 2025, a newly formed Chinese state institute filed for 200,000 satellites with the International Telecommunication Union, claiming spectrum priority for the largest constellation ever proposed. Early filers get priority on orbital slots and radio frequencies, which amounts to buying options in low Earth orbit.

Updated Nov 3

Driving USAID shutdown and federal aid cuts

The United States pledged $2 billion for UN humanitarian aid in December 2025, added $1.8 billion in May 2026 and made direct awards to UNICEF and the World Food Programme in June. Total UN commitments are nearly $5 billion, still about 70% below the $17 billion Washington gave each year before the freeze. Within hours of his January 2025 inauguration, Trump froze nearly all foreign assistance, dismantled USAID by July and warned UN agencies to 'adapt, shrink or die.'

Updated Nov 2

Described Colossus 2's four GB300 halls on Oct. 31 and put the site at about 1.2 million Blackwell chips by year-end; targets 13 gigawatts by end-2027

SpaceX signed a binding commitment for a $40 billion lease that lets an Apollo Global Management entity buy Nvidia chips and rent them back to the company. The Vera Rubin hardware is due in the first half of 2027, and the deal is expected to close before the end of 2026.

Updated Nov 1

Active company leadership; Neuralink's public statements in 2026 have centered on the speech trial and expanded implant numbers

Two years after Noland Arbaugh became the first person to receive a Neuralink implant, the company says 21 people in four countries use its devices, as of January 2026. On October 31, 2026, U.S. regulators cleared a larger expansion of the trial, letting Neuralink implant more people at more surgical sites, with new hospital partners in several states.

Updated Nov 1

Positioning Tesla as AI and robotics company

The four largest cloud providers—Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon—are planning up to $725 billion in combined AI infrastructure spending for 2026, up sharply from $410 billion in 2025, and all four reported first-quarter results on April 29, 2026. Microsoft delivered the clearest signal: $77.7 billion in revenue (up 18% year-over-year), Azure cloud growth of 40% (above its 37% guidance), and earnings per share of $4.13 versus analyst estimates of $3.67.

Updated Oct 29

SpaceX holds the only private-sector access to US military Vector Covariance Messages

The US Space Force has given SpaceX access to Vector Covariance Messages, its most precise orbital tracking files. No other private firm has routine access to the data, which carries the military's error margins for objects in orbit.

Updated Oct 27

Leading DOGE advisory role in Trump administration

Meta ended its U.S. fact-checking program in January 2025 and replaced it with Community Notes, a crowdsourced system copied from X. Its own Oversight Board rebuked the change that April, saying it was announced hastily with no public evidence of human rights review.

Updated Oct 26

Spending about four days a week in Memphis while directing the Colossus 2 expansion

Colossus 2, xAI's second Memphis supercomputer, is running and the company says it will train Grok 5, the next version of its chatbot. On an October 20 earnings call, Elon Musk said SpaceX, xAI's parent since this year's merger, is adding roughly 200,000 Nvidia GB300 chips a month.

Updated Oct 26

Chief executive of a publicly traded SpaceX after its 2026 Nasdaq listing; holds voting control through dual-class shares; said in October 2026 that SpaceX and Tesla formed special committees to discuss a merger

SpaceX is now a profitable public company. Third-quarter results reported October 20 showed $4.4 billion in net income on $14.6 billion in revenue, up 161% from a year earlier.

Updated Oct 23

Says he expects Starship to fly weekly in the first half of 2027 after its first orbital flight

Starship reached orbit for the first time on September 28, 2026, deploying 26 next-generation Starlink satellites. One Raptor 3 engine shut down during the climb, and SpaceX ended the flight early, splashing the ship down in the northern Pacific instead of spending hours in orbit.

Updated Oct 23

Made fraud claims that were later debunked

The Social Security Administration said Tuesday it has corrected records for nearly 15% of active Social Security numbers, adding 17 million missing death dates and citizenship information to 25 million files. The agency called it the largest cleanup in its 91-year history.

Updated Oct 21

Unveiled the Roadster at SpaceX's McGregor, Texas facility; said its flying features may not be legal in every jurisdiction

Tesla showed the second-generation Roadster at SpaceX's McGregor, Texas, test site on Oct. 15. The two-seater used a suction system to drive upside down on a ramp, spun in midair and landed on cold gas thrusters. Tesla is taking $50,000 deposits for the Performance version and $250,000 for the Thrust version; the Rocket trim, with a full flight system, is invite-only.

Updated Oct 21

Said SpaceXAI would be renamed SpaceXSI

Federal agencies are moving at different speeds to replace 'artificial intelligence' with 'Super Intelligence.' NASA pushed its second round of website and title changes live on October 16, two weeks early, while other agencies have made only partial switches.

Updated Oct 20

Active, increasingly focused on political activities

Tesla has lost senior leaders in powertrain, software, finance, sales, manufacturing, customer experience and energy since April 2024. The Cybercab program took the worst of it in 2026: its program manager, its new-product-introduction head, two assembly leads and the director who built the robotaxi software all left.

Updated Oct 20

Opposing Spain's regulations

Spain's under-16 social media ban is still a bill, not law. The committee writing the final text in Congress kept meeting through the autumn, working through amendments on the ban itself, parental authorisation for younger teenagers, and criminal liability for executives and for algorithms that amplify harmful content. Platforms would have to prove to the CNMC, Spain's competition and markets regulator, that their designs are not addictive and that they protect children's privacy.

Updated Oct 19

Co-lead of Project Meridian

Project Meridian is underway. Led by Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich, the Pentagon study met first in a classified room at Quantico on September 30. Oversight now sits with the nonprofit MITRE Corporation.

Updated Oct 18

Signed the accord

Six leading AI developers signed the White House Accord on Super Intelligence on September 29, pledging internal controls, an internal monitoring team, an external auditor, and board review. Anthropic is the first signatory to act, giving six staffers from METR, a nonprofit that evaluates frontier models, employee-like access to test its models and publish findings.

Updated Oct 17

Defending H-1B visas amid MAGA backlash, December 2024-January 2025

The wage-weighted H-1B selection rule took effect February 27, 2026, replacing the random lottery. The first registration period under it ran March 4–19. Under the new system, a worker offered a Level IV wage (the top tier) gets four entries in the selection pool; a Level I worker gets one. The rule was designed to curb the duplicate-registration fraud that inflated FY 2024 submissions to 758,994 for 85,000 slots.

Updated Oct 16

As of September 2026: Signed 'all lawful purposes' deal for Grok on classified systems

Anthropic's Claude became the first commercial AI model on classified U.S. military networks in late 2024. In March 2026, the Defense Department labeled the company a 'supply chain risk'—a tag once reserved for foreign adversaries—for refusing to allow mass surveillance of Americans or fully autonomous weapons.

Updated Sep 26

As of September 2026: His company stands to gain the refuge land for rocket test expansion

A federal judge in South Texas cleared the way Sept. 21 for SpaceX to take title to 715 acres of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. In exchange, the company gives the government 683 acres of private land, expanding Elon Musk's rocket test facility near Starbase.

Updated Sep 21

As of September 2026: Funding Trump-aligned groups in battleground states

Republican outside groups sat on their money for months. On September 18, NPR reported that two Trump-aligned super PACs have now reserved more than $150 million in ads, mostly in deep-red House and Senate races that unexpectedly became competitive.

Updated Sep 18

As of September 2026: Oversaw federal cost-cutting initiative targeting IRS workforce

In fiscal 2024, IRS audits brought in $10 billion. In fiscal 2025, they brought in $6.5 billion—a 35% drop documented by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) in an August 2026 report. The decline tracks a federal workforce reduction effort that cut the agency's examination and collection staff by more than 25% in a single year.

Updated Sep 5

As of August 2026: Driving the acquisition; controls the SpaceXAI division that absorbed Cursor

SpaceX went public on June 12 in the largest stock-market debut ever. Five days later, it agreed to spend $60 billion on Cursor, an AI coding tool barely three years old. The all-stock deal closed on Aug. 14.

Updated Aug 31

As of August 2026: Running SpaceX's dual-track launch strategy

SpaceX broke its own turnaround record on August 15, launching two Falcon 9 rockets 38 minutes apart from Florida and California. One carried Globalstar satellites from Cape Canaveral; the other flew a classified Space Force mission from Vandenberg, capping a stretch that included the year's 51st West Coast launch and 94th Falcon 9 flight overall.

Updated Aug 16

As of August 2026: SPCX hit an all-time low of $107.01 on July 28, down 53% from the June 16 peak; on August 4 he told analysts SpaceX projects a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate by year-end and moved the $1 trillion revenue target forward to 2030

SpaceX's first lockup wave freed 911.5 million insider shares on August 6, more than doubling the stock's tradable float to 11.8% of shares outstanding from 4.9%. SPCX touched a new intraday low of $105.11, below the July 28 record of $107.01. Heavy selling never showed up: shares reversed and traded higher for much of the day, at one point up as much as 6%.

Updated Aug 6

As of August 2026: Plaintiff; lost the first request to pause the law

In 2024, while six months pregnant, Minnesota's Molly Kelley found out a family friend had used a nudification website to make explicit images of her. He did the same to roughly 80 other women.

Updated Aug 2

As of July 2026: Facing questions on whether record volume came at the cost of profit

Tesla and Alphabet reported second-quarter results after U.S. markets closed on July 22. They are the first of the seven mega-cap tech firms Wall Street calls the Magnificent Seven to open the season.

Updated Jul 22

As of July 2026: Driving the robotaxi rollout he has promised for years

In western Miami-Dade County, you can now open an app and ride in a Tesla with nobody in the driver's seat. On July 6, 2026, Tesla began running its Robotaxi service on public Miami streets with no human safety monitor in the car. Tesla shares closed up 6.7% that day — lifted by the Miami launch and a Q2 delivery report that beat analyst estimates by about 18%.

Updated Jul 7

As of June 2026: Lobbied Trump to weaken the order

Trump signed a voluntary framework on June 2 asking frontier labs to share their newest models with federal agencies for up to 30 days before release. Within ten days, the government had gone further. A June 12 export control directive forced Anthropic to kill worldwide access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5, its two newest models, after the government said it had found a jailbreak in the more capable one.

Updated Jun 26

As of June 2026: His company is the rebuild's marquee addition

After the closing bell on Friday, June 26, FTSE Russell finished rebuilding the US stock indexes that guide trillions of dollars in investment funds. For the first time since 1989, it will now do this twice a year instead of once.

Updated Jun 26

As of June 2026: Leading SpaceX's expansion into return logistics

SpaceX launched its first Starfall capsule from Cape Canaveral on June 23, 2026. The disk-shaped vehicle is built to bring up to 1,000 kilograms of cargo back from orbit and splash down in the Pacific. Until now, returning material from space meant small capsules carrying dozens of kilograms.

Updated Jun 23

As of June 2026: Running the company building the constellation

On June 7, a Falcon 9 rose from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California carrying 23 satellites. Two were Starshield, the military version of Starlink. SpaceX said so out loud, which it rarely does.

Updated Jun 7

As of May 2026: Set to receive 304 million shares pending legal resolution

In 2018, Tesla's board agreed to pay Musk stock options if he hit a string of growth targets, with a maximum theoretical value of about $56 billion—already the largest CEO pay package ever written. Eight years later, Tesla is actually moving to hand over the shares, now worth more than $100 billion.

Updated May 31

As of May 2026: Managing Pentagon pricing tensions and SpaceX's Nasdaq IPO filing as Starlink's military role expands during the Iran conflict

SpaceX hit 50 dedicated Starlink launches before June 2026, roughly one every four days. The constellation has 10.3 million subscribers across 160 countries, 10,191 active satellites, and $10.6 billion in 2025 revenue. Starlink is SpaceX's only profitable division and the central asset in its pending Nasdaq IPO.

Updated May 31

As of May 2026: Driving X's super app transformation; XChat delayed to April 23; facing regulatory scrutiny over X Money

Elon Musk spent $44 billion to buy Twitter in October 2022, telling investors it was 'an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.' Three and a half years later, that app is still taking shape—haltingly.

Updated May 31

As of May 2026: Leading Tesla while managing xAI and other ventures; left DOGE in May 2025

Tesla delivered 358,023 vehicles in the first quarter of 2026 — roughly 8,000 fewer than Wall Street expected — while producing over 50,000 more cars than it sold. That growing gap between production and deliveries signals something automakers dread: cars sitting on lots because buyers aren't showing up. The miss marks at least the fifth quarter in which Tesla has underperformed analyst expectations since early 2024.

Updated May 30

As of May 2026: Leading TeraFab initiative

Every company designing custom artificial intelligence chips today (Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft) pays someone else to manufacture them. Tesla just announced it will build and operate its own semiconductor fabrication plant, a $20 billion facility called TeraFab targeting the 2-nanometer process node, the most advanced manufacturing technology in existence. No company without decades of chipmaking experience has ever attempted this.

Updated May 30

As of May 2026: Driving X's transformation into financial services platform

Elon Musk founded X.com in 1999 with a vision of building an all-in-one financial services platform, though that company became PayPal and he was ousted as chief executive. Twenty-seven years later, he's trying again. X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, announced on February 14, 2026 that users will soon be able to trade stocks and cryptocurrency directly from their timelines through a feature called Smart Cashtags.

Updated May 29

As of May 2026: Leading federal restructuring efforts

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau returned $21 billion to defrauded Americans over its 14-year existence. The agency that Elizabeth Warren built now faces major cuts (workforce down to 200 from 1,700, budget halved), though federal judges are blocking dismantling efforts.

Updated May 27

As of May 2026: Central figure in Starlink policy decisions

Ukraine's military has depended on Starlink satellite internet since the first week of Russia's 2022 invasion. On February 5, 2026, SpaceX cut off Russian forces from that network, collapsing command systems and halving daily assault operations within hours.

Updated May 27

As of May 2026: Summoned for voluntary questioning in Paris on April 20, 2026

French prosecutors raided X's Paris offices on February 3, 2026, and summoned Elon Musk for questioning—a first for a major social media platform owner in Europe. What began as a complaint about biased algorithms in January 2025 has expanded into a criminal probe. The investigation covers child sexual abuse material, sexually explicit deepfakes, Holocaust denial, and X's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok.

Updated May 26

As of May 2026: Expanding robotaxi to Dallas and Houston; Cybercab in production

By April 2026, Tesla had expanded its unsupervised robotaxi service to Dallas and Houston, bringing the combined Texas fleet to about 573 vehicles. Newly unredacted crash reports tell a messier story: two of the 17 Austin incidents involved remote teleoperators who drove vehicles into a fence and a construction barricade.

Updated May 23

As of May 2026: Expanding Tesla robotaxi operations, FSD subscription model

For a century, auto insurers priced risk based on the driver: age, driving record, location. Lemonade's January 2026 partnership with Tesla is the first major attempt to price risk based on which entity—human or software—is actually controlling the vehicle. Tesla owners using Full Self-Driving get a 50% rate reduction on miles driven with the system engaged, a discount five times larger than Tesla's own insurance offers. The product launched in Arizona on January 26, 2026.

Updated May 22

As of May 2026: Lawsuit dismissed May 18, 2026; appeal expected

OpenAI filed a confidential draft registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday, May 22, 2026. The filing is the first formal step toward a public listing that could value the ChatGPT maker above $1 trillion.

Updated May 22

As of May 2026: Facing multi-jurisdictional enforcement

For decades, Western democracies debated whether to regulate social media platforms. The UK just stopped debating—and now the United States is joining the fight. After Grok, Elon Musk's AI chatbot, generated an estimated one nonconsensual sexualized image per minute posted directly to X, regulators on both sides of the Atlantic took action. On January 15, X announced it will geoblock Grok from creating images of people in revealing clothing in jurisdictions where it's illegal. This came one day after California Attorney General Rob Bonta opened an investigation into xAI, calling the platform 'a breeding ground for predators.' Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer told Parliament that X is 'acting to ensure full compliance,' having removed over 600 accounts and censored 3,500 content items. The alternative: fines up to 10% of global revenue or a complete platform ban.

Updated May 21

As of May 2026: Defending Grok, dismissing government concerns as attacks on free speech

AI image generators have been creating non-consensual intimate imagery since 2017. No government had blocked one until January 10, 2026, when Indonesia became the first to shut off access to xAI's Grok.

Updated May 20

As of May 2026: Developing competing cortical vision implant called Blindsight

Stanford researchers implanted a chip smaller than a Tic Tac under the retinas of 38 blind patients. A year later, 27 could read again, including some who read entire books. The PRIMA device, published October 20, 2025 in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the first prosthetic to restore functional vision to people with macular degeneration—the leading cause of irreversible blindness.

Updated May 19

As of May 2026: Grok AI platform selected for Pentagon-wide deployment

Trump wants to spend $1.5 trillion on defense in 2027—a jaw-dropping 66% jump from this year's $901 billion. This would be the largest single-year defense increase since the Korean War.

Updated May 19

As of May 2026: Amplifying white genocide claims, influencing US policy

President Trump cut all US aid to South Africa on February 7, 2025—$440 million annually, most for HIV treatment—over a land law allowing seizure without compensation. He called it discrimination against white farmers.

Updated May 19

As of May 2026: Platform fined €120M by EU, under ongoing DSA investigations

On December 23, 2024, Secretary of State Marco Rubio banned five Europeans from entering the United States—including the EU's former top tech regulator and leaders of anti-disinformation groups. The charge: pressuring American tech companies to censor lawful speech. One sanctioned figure, Imran Ahmed, holds a U.S. green card and now faces potential arrest and deportation.

Updated May 16

As of May 2026: NASA’s biggest contractor remains central to Artemis and LEO access

One day after his 67–30 confirmation, Jared Isaacman was sworn in on Dec. 18, 2025 as NASA's 15th administrator—walking directly into a White House-driven acceleration campaign that now has his name on the clock, not just the contracts.

Updated May 15

As of May 2026: Scaling Starlink into a telecom infrastructure partner, not just an ISP

Airtel Africa just made a classic telecom promise, "coverage everywhere," with a very un-classic tool: Starlink satellites acting like cell towers in space. If it works, the places where Airtel's network map turns blank won't be silent anymore.

Updated May 15

As of May 2026: Running the market leader Amazon is trying to dislodge—while also launching some Amazon satellites

At 3:28 a.m. ET on December 16, ULA lit an Atlas V and pushed 27 Amazon Leo broadband satellites into orbit. It's another clean launch in a campaign that's starting to look like a metronome: stack satellites, light rocket, repeat.

Updated May 15

As of May 2026: Platform fined under the DSA; publicly attacking EU regulators and weighing legal appeals

The European Union is cracking down on U.S.-based Big Tech using the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, and long-standing competition and privacy rules. Since 2023, Brussels designated six platforms as 'gatekeepers,' imposed obligations on core services, and opened proceedings against X, Google, Apple and Meta for monopolistic conduct, opaque algorithms, deceptive design, and failures to police harmful content.

Updated May 10

As of May 2026: Challenging EU enforcement and facing ongoing DSA probes

On December 5, 2025, the European Commission issued its first non‑compliance decision under the Digital Services Act, fining X €120 million for misleading users with paid blue checkmarks, failing to provide a transparent advertising repository, and obstructing researcher access to public data. Regulators concluded the subscription-based 'verified' badge is deceptive because anyone can buy it without meaningful identity checks, and the platform's ad library and data-access rules prevent independent scrutiny of scams, influence operations, and systemic online risks.

Updated May 9