Elon Musk at the presidential inauguration in the rotunda of the US Capitol in Washington on Jan. 20.
Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/Bloomberg
Elon Musk Lost 25% of Fortune During His Quest to Gut the US Government
Tesla paid the price for its CEO’s unprecedented side gig slashing federal bureaucracy under Trump.
Elon Musk bounded into Washington as a special government employee earlier this year. Gaining unprecedented access to the corridors of power and data, the billionaire injected a sense of chaos across the US government. He joined President Donald Trump’s meetings with foreign leaders and Cabinet Secretaries, weighed in on defense and tariff policies, and most notably, gutted dozens of agencies as the public face of DOGE.
During Musk’s tumultuous run, his private companies — SpaceX, brain implant venture Neuralink and AI startup XAI — have benefited from new funding, while the value of debt taken on when he converted Twitter into privately owned X soared.