Musk's record midterm spending bought his companies little
Seven Lights
Elon Musk spent nearly $500 million to back Republican candidates in the United States midterm elections, more than any person has spent in a single election cycle, and the money did not stop a Democratic sweep.
His largest single investment failed most visibly. Democrat James Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton for a United States Senate seat in Texas, a race into which Mr Musk put at least $45 million, according to a BBC analysis of campaign finance data. His spending also went to contests in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and records show it continued into Monday, after polls closed.
By Tuesday night the billionaire appeared to concede the accounting. He joked on X that his “election-interfering space lasers didn’t work.” He also said on X that data centres in space were looking increasingly appealing.
The results carry consequences for his companies. SpaceX has gained an estimated $10 billion in new government contracts since Mr Trump was elected to a second non-consecutive term, and several Democratic lawmakers have said the company’s growing role in government and national security should be investigated. Senator Ed Markey responded on Wednesday to a question about whether technology executives would face inquiries: “They are going to need to plant new forests for all of the subpoenas we’ll be printing.”
Markets priced the exposure. Tech stocks were broadly up on Wednesday morning as investors bet the president’s policymaking would now be restrained, but Mr Musk’s Tesla fell 4.9 per cent and SpaceX 3.4 per cent, according to the BBC. The Wall Street Journal reported that Tesla and SpaceX shares slipped in premarket trading after the Democratic sweep. Fast Company noted the spending record and the emptiness of the return: the largest personal election outlay in modern American politics, from a party that lost both chambers, into a Congress whose new Democratic majority is inclined to examine government contracts.
By Wednesday, Mr Musk had stopped posting to X about politics and was posting in praise of GrokBot, the artificial-intelligence chatbot produced by his company xAI. That was a stark contrast to the 2025 cycle, when he posted on politics repeatedly each day.