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.
As SpaceX throttles Ukraine’s Starshield, experts warn that Elon Musk’s de facto monopoly over launch and satellite tech poses a major threat to global security.
Trump asked Musk on Wednesday to fully roll back the interruptions that neither has publicly taken responsibility for, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Today, the WSJ says the system is working “more normally” after the call, citing US and Ukrainian officials.
[The Wall Street Journal]
Yes, of course there are pay package incentives in play for Musk. But that’s not all.
Semafor reports that, along with other investors like board member Laurene Powell Jobs, “Elon Musk has invested roughly $1 billion in Skydance, according to people familiar with the matter, providing a much needed financial injection as the company looks to cut costs and bolster its stock price.
During today’s Q3 SpaceX earnings call, Musk also said the company should “probably” do a “longer presentation on the game plan” for the business.
In Q3, SpaceX’s Connectivity business reported $5.2 billion in revenue, and the company recently acquired low-band spectrum as part of a plan to become a “major mobile carrier” that competes with T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon.
You can read more about SpaceX’s earnings in our story here.
After Ukraine said a Starshield slowdown had interrupted its military operations, Elon Musk claimed any limits “are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.” Then the president told reporters, “It wasn’t me... and I don’t think it was Elon.”
Now WSJ sources are pointing the finger back at Musk, with some claiming “Musk acted unilaterally.”
[Wall Street Journal]
Wonder why he tweeted this yesterday, maybe he suddenly had to charge his phone?
What’s not to trust about this X post, given the vague deadline of “next year,” and track record of broken promises? Actually doing this would require Musk to give away more than $10 billion worth of shares, but I guess that’s more feasible than President Trump’s $1.3 trillion plan to sway voters.
Yesterday it was reported that the TikTok account for Alex Gibney’s Musk documentary had been “permanently suspended.” Today, TikTok US spokesperson Mahsau Cullinane told The Verge, “I can confirm that the advertising account has been restored after an error,” which was described as technical.
Elon Musk is pushing SpaceX’s Starlink to become a major competitor to AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. But becoming a fourth major carrier in the United States has a long, messy, and expensive history.
A “reasonable esthetic standard” will be applied to advertising on the platform, Musk said in a post, though he didn’t elaborate. He has a contentious history with the advertisers who keep the lights on: Shortly after Musk took control of Twitter, major ad groups recommended that clients pause campaigns on the platform, citing brand safety concerns. Musk later told them to “go fuck [themselves]” in the midst of an advertiser boycott in 2023.
It’s okay to marvel at the stunt — it’s pure spectacle.
Between The Social Reckoning, You Can See Everything, Musk, and Artificial, filmmakers are taking Big Tech to task.
He claims in a post on X that it’s “never happened yet.” Musk didn’t go into details, but he’s made other promises before, like saying he would pay legal bills for people fired unfairly over tweets, or his many, many claims about robotaxis and Tesla’s new Roadster.
The company’s unsecured debt due in 2032 is now trading below 80 cents on the dollar, Bloomberg reports. “Yikes” is right, Elon — if CoreWeave crumbles, other debt-laden neoclouds might be in trouble, too.
CoreWeave is in many ways the poster child of the current AI buildout, which may have disastrous consequences if things don’t go as planned.
It took nearly a decade for Tesla’s next-gen sports car to arrive, but it’s finally here. The timing couldn’t be worse.
Elon Musk’s SpaceXSI (yes, really) is launching new plans that combine X Premium, Grok, and Cursor. “The X Subscription” plans start from $8 monthly, climbing to $200 for an Ultra tier with more features and usage. Current subscribers have the option of sticking with their current plan or switching over.
[SpaceXSI]
As reported by Reuters, Trump bought up to $1.6 million in Nvidia stock and sold up to $1 million in August. Trump also disclosed an investment of as much as $5 million in SpaceX debt, according to CNBC.
On Thursday, Trump presented Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk with the National Medal of Science.
According to The Verge’s senior AI reporter, Luca Guadagnino’s dark comedy hit all the familiar tech milestones.
Tomorrow’s event will announce more than $1 billion in commitments for the Trump admin’s “Genesis Project” AI push and investments from the NSF and Energy Department, reports Axios, including $100 million in credits from something called National Compute.
Meanwhile, Fox News and Bloomberg report Trump will award the National Medal of Science to Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Sergey Brin, and Lisa Su, while Michael Dell and Satya Nadella are in line for the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. It’s the first time Trump has ever given out the awards, which usually don’t go to well-known tech execs, judging by previous recipients.
In a post on X, Elon Musk endorsed President Trump’s efforts to rebrand artificial intelligence (AI) and super intelligence (SI). When asked if he planned to rename SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI, he replied yes. But as we all know, Elon says a lot of things.
Musk has famously insisted that cameras are enough for his self-driving cars, when everyone else is pairing them with more advanced sensors. Now He’s explicitly said that his Robotaxis can’t run at night because it’s dark — a problem lidar and radar could easily solve.
Elon Musk loyalist, former OpenAI board member, Neuralink executive, and mother of four of his children, Shivon Zilis, quote-tweeted a post about him unfollowing her on X, the social media platform that he owns, saying, “It’s hard to go from in love to let go in a week with no warning, but that’s just how it is sometimes.”
There’s more if you want to go read it, but that is your decision.
Musk, Luckey, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will co-direct the Pentagon’s Project Meridian, an initiative meant to identify new capabilities and technologies to deploy in the US military, according to a press release:
Secretary Hegseth has commissioned Project Meridian to secure America’s long-term military superiority by identifying the capabilities required to achieve absolute technological dominance on the next-generation battlefield. Project Meridian will examine the full spectrum of future warfighting domains, from subterranean depths to the cislunar frontier.
