The Elon Musk Thread

[caltrek]

Elon Musk’s Status as World’s Richest Person at Risk as Net Worth Shrinks by $76 Billion
August 5, 2025

Introduction:

(The Kenya Times) Elon Musk remains the world’s richest man, but if Tesla’s stock continues to slide as it has over the past six months, he may not be for long.

With Tesla shares falling 18.5% so far this year, Elon Musk, who is the company’s CEO and largest shareholder, holding 13% of its stock, has seen nearly $76 billion of his wealth wiped out.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Musk was worth $357 billion as of August 5, 2025. That means Oracle CEO Larry Ellison – in second place on the index – is within striking distance of first place. Just $54 billion in wealth separates Ellison from Musk.

Oracle shares have soared 52% this year, thanks to the AI boom. If these trends continue for Tesla and Oracle, Ellison could overtake Musk before the end of the year.

Analysts largely agree on what’s behind Tesla’s slide: Musk’s political activities, starting with his backing of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign last year, and continuing with his appointment this year to head the US’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/market ... d0&ei=141

Largely corroborated by: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/topsto ... -AA1Jjwcz

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

A Texas Congressman Is Quietly Helping Elon Musk Pitch a $760 Million Plan to Build Tunnels Under Houston to Ease Flooding
By Lauren McGaughy and Yilun Cheng
August 28, 2025

Introduction:

(ProPublica) The devastating flooding in Houston caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 killed dozens of people, inundated hundreds of thousands of homes and left the community desperate for a solution.

Since then, local flood experts have extensively studied the possibility of a multibillion-dollar tunnel system across Harris County, where Houston is located. Studies have focused on the construction of pipelines, 30 to 40 feet in diameter, that could ferry massive amounts of water out to the Gulf in the event of a storm.

Now, after years of research and discussion, Elon Musk wants a piece of the project.

An investigation by The Texas Newsroom and the Houston Chronicle has found that the billionaire, in partnership with Houston-area Rep. Wesley Hunt, has spent months aggressively pushing state and local officials to hire Musk’s Boring Co. to build two narrower, 12-foot tunnels around one major watershed. That could be a potentially cheaper, but, at least one expert said, less effective solution to the region’s historic flooding woes.

Additional Extract:

“If you build a smaller tunnel, OK, it’ll be cheaper, but it can carry less water,” said Larry Dunbar, a veteran water resources engineer who has advised Houston-area governmental agencies on drainage issues. “So what have you saved? Have you reduced the flooding upstream by an inch? And are you going to spend multimillions of dollars to do that? Well, maybe that’s not worth it.”

Read more here: https://www.propublica.org/article/elo ... oring-co

[weatheriscool]

[firestar464]

Tesla proposes $1tn award for Musk if he hits targets

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdx29qv4nvvo

[wjfox]

Larry Ellison eclipses Elon Musk as world's richest person, billionaires index says

Sept. 10, 2025, 4:22 PM GMT+1

Oracle's Larry Ellison became the richest person in the world Wednesday morning, with shares of the tech giant he co-founded surging more than 40%.

As of 10 a.m. ET, Ellison's wealth was nearly $400 billion. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who had occupied the top spot, currently has a fortune of about $385 billion, according to Bloomberg. The news outlet keeps tabs on the world's wealthiest people with its billionaires index.

Behind Ellison and Musk in the rankings sit Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

The rapid rise in Ellison's wealth comes as he and his family push into artificial intelligence, media and politics.

Oracle's stock move Wednesday was fueled primarily due to the company announcing a $450 billion-plus backlog for cloud services and multibillion-dollar computing contracts with major AI players Nvidia and ChatGPT backer OpenAI.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/market ... rcna230338

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Elon Musk Pushed Back on Our Reporting on His Houston Tunnels Plan. Experts Say His Comments Are Misleading.
By Yilun Cheng
September 12, 2025

Introduction:

(ProPublica) Billionaire Elon Musk is taking issue with a recent investigation by the Houston Chronicle and The Texas Newsroom that raised questions about a flood tunnel project he’s pitching to address Houston’s chronic flooding woes. But experts said his response, which he did not explain to the newsrooms, isn’t supported by facts or data.

Last month, the newsrooms reported that Musk’s tunneling company, The Boring Co., has been lobbying elected officials for months to allow it to build tunnels under Houston for flood mitigation. Boring has proposed digging two 12-foot-wide tunnels beneath Buffalo Bayou — the main waterway running through central Houston — to carry stormwater out of neighborhoods and toward the Gulf of Mexico during major storms. Experts say, however, that larger tunnels, closer to 30 to 40 feet in diameter, could carry far more water and be more effective.

Musk and representatives with Boring did not respond to interview requests or answer questions the newsrooms sent in advance of last month’s story about whether Boring’s smaller tunnels would be able to handle the scale of floodwater Houston is likely to encounter in the future.

Instead, Musk waited until hours after the story published to post a response on X, the social media company he’s owned since 2022.

“Boring Company tunnels will work and cost <10% of alternatives,” his Aug. 28 post read. “If more flow is needed, additional tunnels can be built and furthermore they can be route water from many parts of the city, not just one.”

Read more here: https://www.propublica.org/article/fac ... -tunnels

[firestar464]

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

[firestar464]

Musk’s X is ‘go-to platform’ for antisemitism, study finds

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/29/busi ... tisemitism

[firestar464]

[weatheriscool]

I went him to start an anti-aging company.

He should pump a few hundred billion into it and hire all the scientist currently being fucked out of their grants into one stopaging corp! That is probably the only real way people like me and mr.fox is going to see any real result in the next 20 years. Such wealth would be able to get a vaccine or pill to market much faster then some little lab currently could ever do.

Such must be developed and shown to be effective in humans
and then pushed into the market at a reasonable price.

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

Elon Musk Rages at Top Trump Official Over Loss of Government Contract
By Isaac Schorr
October 21, 2025

Introduction:

( Mediaite) Former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) showrunner Elon Musk raged at Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Tuesday, accusing him of “trying to kill NASA” in an angry series of tweets that included a derogatory nickname.

Musk and Duffy had previously sparred over Musk’s efforts at DOGE.

“I think it might not have been intentional, might have been ham-handed [like] some of the requests that were made by [the Department of Government Efficiency], but my position was, we are not going to fire air traffic controllers,” Duffy told The New York Post‘s Miranda Devine earlier this year. “Safety-critical positions are not going to be fired within the Department of Transportation. We can do things more efficiently … but we are not going to fire air controllers. And so we had a little back and forth, [but] we got along very well after that. I think the papers made it a bigger deal than it was.”

Hostilities reignited on Monday, however, when Duffy told CNBC that Musk’s SpaceX was falling “behind” the administration’s timeline for returning to the moon and that he was going to allow other companies to compete for the government contract to do so.

“We’re not going to wait for one company,” said Duffy, who is also serving as the acting administrator of NASA. “We’re going to push this forward and win the second space race against the Chinese. Get back to the moon, set up a camp, a base.”

Read more here: https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/wh ... ontract/

[firestar464]

X is changing how it handles links to try and keep you in the app

https://www.theverge.com/news/802480/x- ... in-the-app

Notably they're replacing the algorithm with Grok as well.

[wjfox]

Norway’s mega wealth fund to reject Elon Musk’s $1 trillion Tesla pay package

Tue, Nov 4 2025
Updated 5 Min Ago

Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund said it will vote against Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar pay package at Tesla's annual shareholder meeting this week, rebelling against management guidance and threats from Musk to step down if the deal is rejected.

Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which manages the fund — the largest of its kind in the world, and a major shareholder in Tesla — said on Tuesday that it had already cast its vote against Musk’s remuneration package as CEO of the carmaker.

“While we appreciate the significant value created under Mr. Musk’s visionary role, we are concerned about the total size of the award, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk- consistent with our views on executive compensation,” NBIM said in a statement.

“We will continue to seek constructive dialogue with Tesla on this and other topics,” the fund’s managers added.

Norway’s wealth fund holds a 1.14% stake in Tesla, according to its half-year filings in June. The value of that investment was last declared to be 118.3 billion Norwegian kroner ($11.6 billion).

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/04/norway- ... -deal.html

[wjfox]

Elon Musk's $1tn pay deal approved by Tesla shareholders

6 November 2025, 21:55 GMT
Updated 16 minutes ago

Tesla shareholders have approved a record-breaking pay package for boss Elon Musk that could be worth nearly $1tn (£760bn).

The unprecedented deal recommended by the firm's board, cleared a vote from shareholders at the firm's annual general meeting on Thursday.

The deal requires Musk, who is already the world's richest man, to drastically raise the electric car firm's market value over a period of years. If he meets various targets, he will be rewarded with hundreds of millions of new shares.

The scale of the deal is controversial, but the Tesla board argued that Musk might leave the company if it was not approved - and that it could not afford to lose him.

The pay package was approved by 75% of Tesla shareholders who cast ballots, drawing loud applause from the audience at the AGM in Austin, Texas.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyk6kvyxvzo

[caltrek]

The article that I have cited below is longer than the typical news source that I usually cite. This is appropriate in that the whole rise and (partial) fall of DOGE is a very complicated topic.

Inside the DOGE Succession Drama Elon Musk Left Behind
By Sophia Cai and Daniel Lippman
November 21, 2025

Introduction:

(Politico) On a Thursday afternoon in early June, 12 staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency packed up their clothes and bedding from the sixth-floor of the General Services Administration headquarters where they had been sleeping since February, and looked for new homes.

For months, the young engineers who had descended on the capital to shrink the federal bureaucracy had lived with the ever-present threat of backlash — public scrutiny, upset Cabinet officials, even the prospect that someone might assert criminal charges against them. But on the morning of June 5 something changed: Their figurehead, Elon Musk, had a falling-out with his patron, Donald Trump, that played out very publicly across the two men’s social media platforms.

The fate of their shared endeavor was now in deep jeopardy, and for the youngest members of the DOGE operation the risk seemed personal. Musk had not been just their visionary leader. For them, he was their protector: the man who had a direct line to Trump, who they believed could pick up the phone and secure a presidential pardon if the worst came. Without his presence in Washington, they were suddenly exposed.

As the sun fell on downtown Washington, the displaced dozen joined up with fellow DOGE staffers atop the nine-story GSA building, armed with beer, pretzels and La Croix, and prepared for something akin to a wake. Word spread in group chats on Signal, and by 9 p.m. the rooftop area was full of dozens of staffers, some of whom had already left DOGE.

Read more here: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine ... -00641110

[caltrek]

Because the previous article mainly concerned DOGE:

Office of Personnel Management Director Indicates DOGE Has Been Officially Dissolved
By Nicholas Ballasy
November 23 , 2025

Introduction:

(MSN – Just the News) The initiative known as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has officially disbanded despite having eight months left on its official charter.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk originally led DOGE after it was established in January 2025 under the second term of Donald Trump.

The department's aim was to reduce the size and cost of government.

Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Scott Kupor, said DOGE "doesn't exist" as a centralized organization anymore, Reuters reported.

OPM is reportedly taking over its core functions. Musk left DOGE in May, given that he was classified as a special government employee.

Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/d ... ca&ei=21