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.
Musk famously challenged the Meta CEO to a cage match last year that Zuckerberg agreed to but never happened.
Now, more than a year later, a reporter from Fox News got Musk to say today that he’s again open to fighting — this time on Zuckerberg’s terms.
Update, July 24th: Zuckerberg’s response on Threads: “Are we really doing this again?”
It’s a busy day in DC: Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address Congress this afternoon, and Musk is in attendance.
Dozens of Democrats have vowed to boycott his speech — and protests are happening today — as the Israeli bombardment of Gaza stretches into its ninth month. Nearly 40,000 people have been killed.
Update: Musk told a reporter he’s there as a guest of Netanyahu’s.
What he means by that exactly is anyone’s guess. Will they be helping to build vehicles? Is Optimus being ditched as it wasn’t name-dropped? We might find out next year, though Musk has previously admitted these timelines are mostly guesswork.
It’s not like Tesla has stuck to its Robotaxi reveal dates yet.
Musk, who has been a resident of Texas since 2019, says he decided to move the companies because Gavin Newsom didn’t do what Musk told him to. Previously, Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters to Austin after local health officials closed the Fremont plant during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic; Musk has a history of political donations in Texas.
The Wall Street Journal put a number on Musk’s reported donation to a political action committee backing Donald Trump’s campaign and on the formation of America PAC. He’s not on the most recent list of contributors, but both Winklevoss twins, current SpaceX / former Tesla board director Antonio Gracias, and early PayPal exec Ken Howery are.
Musk gave his endorsement to the former president following the apparent shooting at an event in Pennsylvania. Bloomberg reported yesterday that Musk had donated a “sizable amount” to a political group supporting him.
The Tesla CEO appears heading to victory in today’s shareholder vote over his enormous pay package. Musk posted two graphs on X last night which showed both proposals — the one of his compensation, and the other on reincorporating Tesla in Texas — ahead by wide margins. But the results aren’t final yet, and things could still go pear-shaped. After all, this is Tesla we’re talking about. Tune in at 3:30 pm CT if you want to watch Musk dive into a pile of cash, Scrooge McDuck-style.
Musk, who founded xAI, said that “if Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level, then Apple devices will be banned at my companies,” and called that integration “an unacceptable security violation.”
Apple and OpenAI have implemented precautions, with OpenAI saying that “requests are not stored by OpenAI.” Still, Musk might make visitors check their Apple devices. Will Windows devices need to be checked, too?
Twitter main characters past and present have met recently to discuss possible government roles for Musk should Trump win in November. According to The Wall Street Journal, Musk and Trump have “discussed ways to give Musk formal input and influence over policies related to border security and the economy.” Oh, and also voter fraud. Meanwhile, Trump is out on the campaign trail talking about how he’s going to ban the sale of electric vehicles.
It’s been five years since “threadnought,” a giant Twitter thread in which lawyers battled trolls who were trying to silence critics of an anime voice actor accused of sexual misconduct.
Now, with a law firm drafted from the thread’s funniest people, lawyer Akiva Cohen represents many former Twitter employees who are suing Elon Musk over how he fired them after buying the company.
