Elon Musk Shifts Focus Back to Tech Empire Amid Political Backlash and Business Challenges

Musk is pivoting from DC and Doge's failures - and wants investors to know

The billionaire mogul is signaling far and wide that he's back to business, and even criticizing Trump's tax bill Elon Musk really wants the public - and investors - to know that he's leaving Washington DC behind. In a series of interviews and social media posts this week, Musk has criticized Donald Trump's marquee tax bill and emphasized his recommitment to leading SpaceX, Tesla and the artificial intelligence company xAI. The world's richest person claimed that he was back to working around the clock at his companies - to the point of sleeping in conference rooms and factory offices once again. Musk has been telegraphing a pivot back to his businesses for months, but in recent appearances, he has repeatedly distanced himself from his unpopular stint in Washington while proclaiming that his new sole focus is his tech empire. It is a drastic turnaround for Musk, who spent most of the last year constantly at Trump's side promoting far-right ideology online, appearing on stage at political rallies and pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the Republican party. The shift, which comes amid public and investor backlash against Musk's political ambitions, was apparent this week as SpaceX launched and lost control of its Starship prototype rocket. Musk gave a round of media appearances to the Washington Post, Ars Technica, CBS News Sunday Morning and a YouTube aerospace influencer, all of which featured him emphasizing his dedication to his companies or attempting to explain away the shortcomings of his heavily criticized "department of government efficiency". "The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized," Musk told the Washington Post on Tuesday. "I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least." Musk additionally told the Post that Doge had been turned into a "whipping boy" that was criticized for anything that went wrong under the Trump administration. In Ars Technica, Musk admitted: "I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics." The turn from Trump's self-appointed "first buddy" back to the familiar territory of space travel and tech has taken place as Doge faces numerous legal challenges and remains widely unpopular. Although Musk successfully seeded the government with his allies and helped gut regulators that would oversee his companies, Doge's central promise to slash $2tn worth of fraud and waste has been an obvious failure. Doge's cuts, while devastating to government services, humanitarian aid and the federal workforce, have amounted to little in terms of actual budget savings. Much of the savings it has claimed on its "wall of receipts" have also turned out to be false, including the cancellation of an $8bn contract that in reality was an $8m contract. Musk's answer for Doge's shortcomings appears to be casting the blame on some of his familiar foes: politicians and bureaucrats. In doing so, however, he has increasingly split with the Republican party - though notably stopped short of any criticism of Trump himself. Musk's split with Congressional Republicans has been starkest on X, the social media platform that he owns. Musk's posts have fully leaned into the narrative that Doge's actions were successfully reducing waste, but that Congress hamstrung its operations through actions like approving Trump's tax bill, which is expected to add $2.3tn to the deficit. Musk told CBS that he was "disappointed to see the massive spending bill, which increases the budget deficit ...  and undermines the work that the Doge team is doing". Now, Musk claims, he will focus on saving humanity through technologies like self-driving cars, interplanetary rockets and humanoid robots - exactly the products his companies need investors to believe in. "I have come to the perhaps obvious conclusion that accelerating GDP growth is essential," Musk posted on Friday in response to a thread calling the GOP bill "disastrous" and demanding term limits on Congress. "Doge has and will do great work to postpone the day of bankruptcy of America, but the profligacy of government means that only radical improvements in productivity can save our country." In a separate exchange, he replied to a conversation between two users with large followings who routinely praise his leadership and business acumen. "I think Elon is realizing that, despite the promises made by the new administration and a Republican-controlled Congress - and all the campaign platforms they ran on - the current incentive structures and entrenched special interests in government make it nearly impossible to enact any meaningful, long-term changes to address the many big issues we face," one pro-Musk account posted. "DOGE has done incredible work, but the GOP has failed to actually implement any of the cuts," another prominent Musk-booster replied. "Yeah (Sigh)," Musk responded to the thread. What became clear throughout Musk's time in Washington was that the public did not enjoy seeing him and many in the Trump administration did not like working with him. Numerous polls showed his overall popularity declining even as people supported the premise of reducing government inefficiencies. Musk's prominent involvement in a Wisconsin supreme court election intensified opposition to his influence, while international demonstrations made him the face of the administration. Musk also found few friends within the Trump administration, with report after report of heated clashes with senior officials and some Republican political operatives warning his brand had become too toxic for the party. The pushback against Musk affected his businesses, causing Tesla sales to plummet to the point that the company's board reportedly began considering replacing him as CEO. While Musk denied those claims, in recent weeks he has very loudly reaffirmed his dedication to leading his businesses. "Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms," he posted on Saturday. "I must be super focused on 𝕏/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out." While only a few weeks ago Musk's posts on X were a nonstop stream of invectives against Democrats, fringe theories about immigration and demands to gut the judicial system, his online output has also changed. His posts this week have been heavily focused on SpaceX's ambitions to go to Mars and Tesla's self-driving car program, stopping only occasionally to promote attacks against "the woke mind virus" or feud with the government of his native South Africa. As Musk moves away from full-time politics and tries to win back investor confidence, he has also doubled down on his habit of making grandiose predictions of how his technologies will transform the world. Echoing a long list of previous claims that have missed deadlines and so far failed to come to fruition, he has promoted new endeavors like Tesla's humanoid robots as crucial to the future of civilization. "Once you have humanoid robots, the actual economic output potential is tremendous. It's really unlimited," Musk said on stage at the Saudi-US Investment Forum on 13 May. "Potentially, we could have an economy 10 times the size of the global economy, where no one wants for anything." Rather than dwell on a year of missed targets and intense backlash, Musk is back to selling a future where anything is possible.

Elon Musk to step back from politics, refocus on Tesla, SpaceX, X and xAI

The billionaire entrepreneur, who backed former US president Donald Trump with nearly $300 million according to Reuters, has faced mounting scrutiny over conflicts of interest and the impact of his political persona on his companies' performance. Soon after a wide X outage on Saturday, Musk signalled a shift in priorities.Elon Musk is stepping back from his high-profile political activities -- including his controversial leadership of the US government's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) -- to refocus on his business empire: Tesla, SpaceX, X, and xAI. The billionaire entrepreneur, who backed former US president Donald Trump with nearly $300 million according to Reuters, has faced mounting scrutiny over conflicts of interest and the impact of his political persona on his companies' performance. On Saturday, Musk's social media platform X suffered a major outage, impacting tens of thousands of users in the US. Soon after, Musk signalled a shift in priorities. "Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms. I must be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week)," he posted on X. Tesla takes the biggest hit Tesla, more than any other Musk-led company, has borne the brunt of his political alignment. His vocal, often polarising, political posts and public support for Trump triggered protests and boycotts, especially in parts of Europe, which Musk has called Tesla's weakest market. Vandalism of Tesla vehicles surged, with some owners putting up stickers reading: "I bought this before I knew Elon was crazy." In its Q1 FY25 earnings, Tesla reported its first annual decline in vehicle deliveries, along with a steep drop in revenue and net income. The company cited weakening demand, shifting political sentiment, and "rapidly evolving trade policy" as key challenges. Investor concerns about Musk's divided attention reached a peak earlier this year. As Chinese EV players like BYD scaled up aggressively, Tesla faced pressure to defend market share in key global markets. In May, Musk said he had reduced his time at DOGE to just one or two days per week but added that he would stay "as long as the president would like me to do so." Conflict of interest concerns Musk's leadership of DOGE -- a federal body created to streamline government processes -- sparked widespread concern over conflicts of interest, especially given his ongoing control over multiple high-stakes technology firms. In April, reports emerged that DOGE was encouraging federal agencies, including the Social Security Administration, to migrate communications to X -- raising data privacy and monopoly concerns. There were also internal memos suggesting DOGE was promoting the use of Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, for government data analysis. While Musk maintained that DOGE aimed to eliminate bureaucratic inefficiencies, critics argued it gave him unparalleled access to sensitive government data and the ability to influence regulatory outcomes in favour of his companies. SpaceX setbacks, Starship relaunch SpaceX has also faced a bumpy ride. On March 6, the company conducted the eighth integrated flight test of its Starship system. While the Super Heavy booster landed successfully -- caught by the Mechazilla arms at the launch site -- the Starship upper stage failed during its ascent burn. During the previous launch, the upper stage suffered a propellant leak and caught fire in its "attic" section shortly after stage separation. Despite these issues, Musk struck an optimistic tone at the Qatar Economic Forum last week, saying Tesla sales were already rebounding and that the company's market capitalisation had again crossed $1 trillion. He also warned those who attacked Tesla dealerships, stating: "We are coming for you." As Musk refocuses on his core ventures, investors and industry observers will be watching closely to see whether the pivot from politics to product can help him regain momentum across his sprawling tech empire.

Musk Back to '24/7' Work at His Companies Amid X Outage | PYMNTS.com

After months of government work, Elon Musk says he is "super focused" on his companies. The multibillionaire made that comment Saturday (May 24) on his X social media platform, following an outage impacting tens of thousands of customers. "Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms. I must be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out," Musk wrote. The outage lasted a little more than three hours, with more than 25,800 instances of American people reporting issues, Reuters reported, citing data from Downdetector. Thousands of X users in countries such as the U.K., Canada, Australia, India, France, Germany and Spain experienced issues as well, the report said. "As evidenced by the X uptime issues this week, major operational improvements need to be made," Musk added. "The failover redundancy should have worked, but did not." Musk's remark about "X/xAI" refers to the recent merging of the social platform with his artificial intelligence (AI) company. xAI acquired X in March, in a deal that values the former company at $80 billion and X, formerly known as Twitter, at $33 billion ($45 billion minus $12 billion in debt). "xAI and X's futures are intertwined," Musk said at the time. "Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent. This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI's advanced AI capability and expertise with X's massive reach." Musk spent last summer and fall campaigning for President Donald Trump, donating nearly $300 million to him and other Republicans. As Reuters noted, he said this week that he is due to massively scale back his political spending, a sign he is focusing on his businesses as investors grow worried.