Recently, Elon Musk changed his Dark Maga cap and his government attire of “technical support” for his old “Occupy Mars” shirt, a reference to the mission of his Mission of his company of Cohetes Spacex to colonize the red planet.
He threw himself into a media offensive, granting interviews with the media that he had previously avoided and saying that he was focused on Spacex and talking about Tesla, its electric car manufacturer.
And in social networks he published that he was again “at work 24/7” and sleeping in the factories and server rooms of his companies.
While Musk moves away from Washington and his government efficiency department (Doge), President Donald Trump’s “first friend” is returning to his role as entrepreneurial titan. But it is not likely that this change is easy after Musk spent months supporting Trump’s presidential campaign and dismantling parts of the federal government, which raised the concern that he had become an absent leader in his various companies, including Spacex, Tesla, the XAI artificial intelligence company and the social media platform X.
Musk’s passage through the government has been a mixture of successes and failures for its business empire. Tesla is especially vulnerable after the popularity of Musk fell into chopped when he drastically cut jobs in the government. Tesla’s dealers became the target of protests, while sales and profits fell. In addition, the Budget Law of the Republican Party that is being processed in the Senate would cut the subsidies and policies that promote electric vehicles. Tesla shares have fallen around 14 percent this year, which has meant a loss of about US $ 180 billion of its market value.
Some of Musk’s companies have benefited from their proximity to the White House: on one occasion, Trump promoted Tesla cars in the White House and Spacex garden he got more government agreements with Starlink, his satellite internet service. X is still a powerful megaphone for Musk and Trump supporters. And Trump is a valuable ally with political power that supervises the agencies that regulate Musk’s businesses.
But Musk is the face of his companies, and his prolonged stay in Washington has generated concerns about how compromised he is with his business. Some former Spacex workers and other places have questioned their absence of companies. In general, it is not clear if the maneuvers of the technological billionaire in Washington will generate long -term advantages.
“Having the executive director again in the office became a critical mission,” said Eric Talley, professor at the Columbia Law Faculty. “Frankly, it couldn’t have been at a better time.”
It is still not clear how long Musk will spend with his companies and outside Washington. In a press conference made in the Oval Office with Trump on Friday, Musk said his departure from the government was not “Doge’s end, but really the beginning,” and said he would continue to visit and be “a friend and an advisor to the president.”
“Elon really does not leave,” Trump said. “He will be going and coming.”
Musk did not talk about how his time would spend or how he would affect change to his companies. He did not respond to a request for comments sent by email. Tesla and Spacex also did not respond to comments requests. X and XAI declined to comment.
In Spacex, Musk’s absence had felt in recent months. In May, Dylan Small, an old mechanic of the Coheretes company, published in X that “Moral is low” and “People are overwhelmed.”
“Your presence used to light the fire in the team,” Small wrote to Musk. “Please come back and step on the facilities.”
In a message to The New York TimesSmall said that Spacex’s work was largely the result that employees felt “inspired”, and that Musk played “a huge role in it.”
Since the beginning of Trump’s mandate, Musk has published almost a thousand times on X on Spacex, half of the almost two thousand times he published about Doge, according to a count of The Times. At that time, Spacex has made two Starship test releases, the rocket with which Musk expects to take human beings to Mars, including one on Tuesday.
Last week, Musk granted an interview with The Washington Post – A means of communication to which he has normally shunned, “and stressed that she was” physically here “for Spacex before the starship ship’s test from the company’s starbase rocket facilities in southern Texas.
Although the launch ended with an explosion, Musk made its presence clear. He shared himself again at the Spacex control center, as well as interviews with journalists and influents who talked about space trips.
In Tesla, Musk’s leveling level with the company was clear in April. He had hardly visited Tesla offices or factories since Trump’s possession, but presented himself at one of the company’s offices in Palo Alto, California, a few days before a earning call that month, according to two people familiar with their trips.
During the visit, Musk asked about the impact of Trump’s tariffs in Tesla and was informed about the effects and vulnerabilities of the company’s supply chain, two people familiar with the meeting said. The moment of his question raised the concern of some attendees, since Trump had begun to apply tariffs two months before, in February.
Days after Musk’s visit, Tesla reported that his sales of vehicles fell 13 percent in the first quarter compared to the previous year, while the profits collapsed to their lowest level in four years. The new tariffs on imported cars have joined the financial pressures facing the company.
Musk’s political activities moved buyers away, said Matthew Labot, who worked in Tesla sales in California. Selling a car became “a daily torture, when it was not so,” said Labrot, who was fired after creating a website that criticized Musk. “Elon had a lot to do.”
In recent months, Tesla executives have said that Musk was not so involved in the daily details of operations and that he connected remotely to attend meetings more frequently than before their stage in Doge, two people said with knowledge of the conversations. Sometimes, a member of the Tesla Council has intervened to cover Musk’s absences, said one of them.
Tesla, who faces the hard competition of Chinese electric cars such as Byd, has tried to diversify more in the sectors of artificial intelligence and robotics. Musk has said that the company will launch this month in Austin, Texas, a transport service shared with totally autonomous vehicles. The company has also proposed to start making a cheaper car, although it is not clear to differentiates from Tesla’s current vehicles.
During his stage in the government, it seems that Musk did not lose sight of the AI field, in rapid evolution. He talked about Xai, his emerging company, and published hundreds of times on X on Grok, the chatbot created by the company. He also continued to fight a legal battle against Sam Altman, who runs Openai and is a key rival in the AI industry.
In March, Musk sold X to XAI, merging the two companies. Last month, the combined company announced a public acquisition offer, which allows employees to withdraw part of their shares selling them again to the company at a previously agreed price, according to internal documents seen by the Times. The acquisition offer is provisionally planned for this month and values the company combined at about US $ 113 billion, according to the documents.
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On Wednesday, Linda Yaccarino, executive director of X, held an employee meeting to motivate them around the idea that the merger with XAI had given rise to the best teams and technology, two people familiar with the conversation said. That day, he published in X to celebrate an association to integrate Grok into the Telegram messaging service.
Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, also published on the agreement. “Elon Musk and I have agreed to a one -year collaboration to take Grok, XAI’s chatbot, to our more than one billion users and integrate it into all Telegram applications,” he wrote.
A few hours later, Musk made it clear that he was still the boss. “No agreement has been signed,” he published in X.