Elon Musk's Empire Is Struggling

Tesla, SpaceX and xAI are struggling to deal with the fallout from Musk’s Trump feud and wild bets. Musk had started his stint in the second Trump administration as close to the top of the world as any centibillionaire can be. He appointed himself head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the cost-cutting effort that made him briefly one of the most powerful people in Washington and provided the backdrop for a surreal kind of political performance art. He stalked around the Oval Office as if it were his personal domain. He taunted civil servants, cut funding to food banks, boasted about sending entire federal agencies “into the wood chipper.” He demanded access to sensitive military plans and troves of personal data, and received much of it. World leaders, eager to please Trump, granted licenses to Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, and advertisers who’d backed away from Musk’s social network after his various antisemitic outbursts began buying ads on X again. The market value of Tesla Inc. soared, as did the values of Musk’s privately held companies, including SpaceX and xAI, which both began raising money. Bloomberg's Max Chafkin reports.

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