Elon musk – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Elon Musk

Elon Musk certainly has a lot of ideas. Since making a fortune from PayPal in the original dotcom boom, he’s taken over Tesla, pushing forward production of electric cars, and founded SpaceX, the rocket company that now flies plenty of NASA payloads.

Two newer companies — the Boring Company, focused on digging holes for transit tunnels, and NeuraLink, which is developing brain-computer interfaces — also occupy his time. Then there’s the Hyperloop, the high-speed land travel design he’s encouraged others to develop. Somehow, this brash billionaire still has time to get himself into trouble on Twitter.

Andrew J. Hawkins
Andrew J. Hawkins
Pro-natalist Elon Musk bans kids from riding in the Tesla Cybercab.

According to the company’s newly launched Robotaxi website, children under the age of 13 are not permitted to ride in the Cybercab — even if they’re riding with an adult. Kids between the ages of 8-13 are allowed in Tesla’s Model Y robotaxis, but only when riding with an adult. And those under 8 are not allowed at all. Even stranger, the Cybercab’s compliance documents (PDF) include detailed instructions for installing child seats. Which is it, Elon?

Image: Tesla
Elon Musk’s robotaxi heterodoxy gets put to the test

The occasional trillionaire is betting his company on a stripped down, camera-only, steering-wheel-free two-seater. How safe is safe enough?

Andrew J. Hawkins
TC Sottek
TC Sottek
Elon Musk endorses murder and starvation.

The world’s wealthiest man is already personally responsible for death through his tenure at DOGE, which he continues to deny. There’s no reason to doubt his foul intentions. Today, Musk celebrated a post on X that highlighted the idea of Greece shooting migrants, sinking refugee boats, and denying food and water to those who survive, calling it “based.”

Elon Musk broke the FAA — Palantir is picking up the pieces

Musk’s DOGE was supposed to rebuild the nation’s air traffic control system, but it ended up paving the way for Peter Thiel’s company to take over.

Darryl Campbell
Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
Here’s an estimate of Elon Musk’s death toll.

The end of USAID, which Elon Musk fed “into the wood chipper”, will cause an extra 14 million deaths through 2030, including 4.5 million in children under the age of 5. SpaceX shares are $141.10 as of this writing, above their IPO price of $135.

Correction: A previous version of this post referred to the journal article’s estimates as “new.” It was published in 2025.

Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
Elon Musk’s shortcut to a $1 trillion payday.

An escape clause in Elon Musk’s $1 trillion Tesla pay package approved last year would eliminate daunting operational targets if SpaceX were to purchase Tesla, as many expect. Under the terms, an acquisition treats those performance goals as met. Depending on the acquisition price SpaceX sets for Tesla, which Musk can heavily influence, a merger could instantly award him hundreds of millions of Tesla shares and consolidate his voting control.

Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
T-Mobile CEO dismisses Starlink Mobile threat.

Srini Gopalan in response to SpaceX saying it plans to “acquire quite a few” of T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon’s customers by turning Starlink dishes into tiny cellular base stations using the limited spectrum it acquired from EchoStar:

You’ve got to ask the question of ‘What is the gap in the market that they’re looking to serve? I always prefer starting these conversations back from the customer: Why would a customer buy a new cellular service? Where do they go? What’s their differentiation? It’s clearly not having a broad network.

Andrew J. Hawkins
Andrew J. Hawkins
Elon Musk’s Terafab will be built — where else? — in Texas.

The massive $16.8 billion chip facility, which is being built by Tesla and SpaceX with help from Intel, will be located in Grimes County, population 29,268. After securing over a billion dollars in tax breaks from two rural school districts, SpaceX says it will break ground later this year. The fab will supply AI chips to power Musk’s plans to build a “robot army” that includes self-driving cars and humanoid robots, as well as for the data centers he plans on launching into space.

Dominic Preston
Dominic Preston
Who watches the watchmen?

Elon Musk’s AI-powered Grokipedia may have gone months without an update, but Verge commenters spotted that Wikipedia’s article about Grokipedia reflects that already — and even cites The Verge in doing so.

yelling-yellow-godzilla-goats:

Meanwhile Wikipedia’s article about Grokipedia already includes updates about the latter’s complete lack of updates lol lmao

Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.

SpaceX is barely Space and mostly X

Elon Musk’s exploding rockets are a front for the real moneymakers.

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
What is “Muskism”?

A fascinating book review. “Muskism, in reading its subject as more a symptom than a person, doesn’t offer any kind of psychological interpretation of Musk’s worldview, but many of his pronouncements and preoccupations reveal an ontological confusion of the categories of human and machine.”

Space Oddity | Mark O’Connell

[The New York Review of Books]

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
Comedian Josh Johnson has some thoughts about Elon Musk.

In the process of getting through his thoughts, he does a pretty good riff about the people who say they “make” stuff with AI. As for Musk’s version of The Odyssey, Johnson says, “I’m excited for the Cyclops to have two eyes.”

Mia Sato
Mia Sato
X and advertisers settle.

Elon Musk’s X Corp and the World Federation of Advertisers are ending their long-running legal fight. In 2024, Musk accused the industry group of illegally boycotting X through its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative, which set standards to prevent ads from appearing next to harmful content. GARM has since been disbanded. A judge dismissed Musk’s lawsuit in March.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
SpaceX’s 13th Starship test flight has launched.

After last week’s launch attempt misfired and a scheduled attempt Thursday was postponed due to weather, the 13th flight test launched just before 7PM ET on Friday. 20 V3 Starlink satellites were deployed, but it appears there was an issue relighting the Super Heavy booster’s engines for an attempted propulsive landing and splashdown.

Today’s test was important for former trillionaire Elon Musk, with shares of Tesla and SpaceX declining by 18 and 7 percent this week, respectively.

Update: Updated to note that the vehicle has launched.

Marina Galperina
Marina Galperina
Alex Gibney’s Elon Musk documentary is nearly here and almost four hours long.

The acclaimed documentarian who’s taken on Enron, Elizabeth Holmes, and so many more is finally showing Musk. It almost wrapped up in 2025, but then… Premiering at the 83rd Venice Film Festival in September, the “hit piece” (according to Elon Musk in 2023) clocks in at 232 minutes. There’s a lot of ground to cover. Absent from the VFF line-up: Luca Guadagnino’s film about Sam Altman, Artificial.

Charles Pulliam-Moore
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Oh great, another suitor.

In what seems very much like a desperate attempt to save face after failing to convince the world that Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is a bad film, Elon Musk says that Grok Imagine will generate a “historically-accurate” adaptation of Homer’s epic poem. One can only imagine what “historically-accurate” means here.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
SpaceX’s Starship Flight 13 launch attempt fizzled out.

The thirteenth, and first post-IPO, flight test of SpaceX’s massive Starship vehicle was supposed to occur Thursday night, but when the countdown hit zero just before 7PM ET, “Some of the engines didn’t start, triggering an automatic launch abort,” writes Elon Musk.

He says another attempt will happen “hopefully” in a few days, which could be important to investors who are hearing that just hours after SPCX closed below its $135 IPO price for the first time.

Overhead shot of the rocket on the pad with smoke coming from some of the engines.
Screenshot: SpaceX launch stream
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Elon Musk says X’s codebase will be made open source.

Along with his usual morning tweets in support of right-wing politics, against certain immigrants to the US, and boosting data centers, the sometimes-trillionaire writes, “Once we have completed our review for security vulnerabilities, we will make the entire codebase of 𝕏 open source, with no exceptions.” (He didn’t mention how Grok Build had apparently made exposing your code a little too easy.)

He also tweeted separately about its mysteriously busted algorithm, saying that it “…barraging you with similar content due to a few likes” is another problem.

Elon Musk tweet screenshot that says “Once we have completed our review for security vulnerabilities, we will make the entire codebase of 𝕏 open source, with no exceptions. Moreover, we will invite third party reviewers to examine the system that is running to confirm that the open source code is what is running. Trust through total transparency is the only thing that should be believed.”
Screenshot: X.com (@elonmusk)
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Elon Musk postponed a planned CNBC interview.

He had been set to talk to CNBC’s Julia Boorstin at 12PM ET, but a little over 10 minutes past the hour, Boorstin reported that “we just got word that he has to postpone.” Right now, we don’t know if or when the interview may actually happen.

A screenshot from a CNBC broadcast.
Image: CNBC
Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Judge says it’s “for our citizenry to decide at the ballot box” if Musk’s SEC settlement is fair.

Judge Sparkle Sooknanan approved the $1.5 million pocket-change settlement with the Fed over his violation of disclosure rules in connection with the purchase of Twitter. She said she had limited authority:

“Whether the Executive Branch (through the SEC) has done enough to hold Mr. Musk ⁠to account for his alleged violation is, like many other issues, for our citizenry to decide at the ballot box.”

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Could this X feature actually be useful?

According to Elon Musk, the platform will be releasing a new feature for Community Notes that sends you a DM if “a post you interacted with is corrected.” I can see the potential utility, though you’re putting trust in the Community Note actually being correct. It’s also unclear when this may launch.

TC Sottek
TC Sottek
A recap of Musk’s latest meltdown.

The trillionaire’s legacy of death under DOGE had a spotlight put on it recently, including from us. Musk responded with threats, including a threat to sue Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) for citing the same study we did. Now he’s in a losing war against the reality of his ghastly conduct. The Guardian explains the saga so far:

Meet the lawyer who beat Elon Musk — twice

Walk softly and carry a Fender Telecaster.

Elizabeth Lopatto
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Elon Musk is, for now, no longer a trillionaire.

Musk’s total net worth is now $957 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That figure is still $660 billion higher than Larry Page, the next person on the list, whose net worth is $297 billion.

Elon Musk and the plot to hijack America’s broadband

BEAD was a once-in-a-generation chance to fix the digital divide — then turned into a gift for tech moguls.

Karl Bode and Sean Gonsalves
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Elon Musk loses against OpenAI in court, again.

A month after a jury dismissed Elon’s claims in the Musk v. Altman case, US District Judge Rita Lin dismissed an xAI lawsuit accusing OpenAI of stealing trade secrets and poaching employees. This time, it was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it can’t be refiled, unlike when she dismissed the case in February.

The judge wrote in her ruling that continuing the case “would be futile.”

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
SpaceX reportedly rented out Colossus 1 AI data center after it ran into latency issues.

While SpaceX plans satellite-based AI servers, Bloomberg reports it ran into trouble trying to develop and run Grok AI in Memphis, citing unnamed sources. They claim that deals renting capacity to Anthropic ($15 billion annually) and Google ($920 million per month) happened following hardware variation and lag issues:

Elon Musk’s company had planned to train its most cutting-edge AI models on a massive amount of computing power by using a cluster of three data center campuses. However, the firm encountered latency issues when connecting Colossus 1 with two other sites located more than 10 miles away, the people said, compounded by aging network infrastructure.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list adds a trillionaire.

With the debut of SPCX, Elon Musk’s 4.8 billion shares are enough to push his wealth beyond $1.1 trillion, as noted on Forbes’ “definitive, minute-by-minute guide to every billionaire around the globe.”

Screenshot of Forbes website showing Elon Musk net worth $1.1 trillion.
Screenshot: Forbes.com
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
SPCX opens at $150 per share.

As reported by CNBC, the New York Times, and others, trading commenced at a price 11 percent above the $135 IPO price, but lower than the $175 shown in some earlier indications. It’s already spiked as high as $167, before falling back to $155. As long as the share price remains above $138, that is enough to make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

It also gives SpaceX a market cap of over $2 trillion, making it currently the 6th most valuable public company in the US.