The 12 months of 2025 was dizzying for Elon Musk. The tech titan started the 12 months holding court docket with Donald Trump in Washington DC. As the months ticked by, one public look after one other baffled the US and the world. Musk appeared to give a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration, staunchly championed a 19-year-old staffer nicknamed “Massive Balls,” denied reports of being a drug addict whereas advising the president, and confirmed up at a White Home press convention with a black eye – all in the first half of the 12 months alone.
“Elon’s angle is you might have to get it executed quick. If you happen to’re an incrementalist, you simply received’t get your rocket to the moon,” Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of employees, told Vanity Fair in an expansive interview earlier this month. “And so with that angle, you’re going to break some china.”
Musk noticed enormous, multibillion-dollar wins and equally giant losses in enterprise this 12 months. In his dealings with federal companies, he was in a position to safe new huge government contracts and broaden SpaceX’s operations. With Tesla, he was authorized for a pay package that could make him the world’s first trillionaire at the same time as the firm’s global sales plunged. At the similar time, Musk and his companies had been the goal of protests, lawsuits and an exodus of high-level executives. He ended the 12 months with a fortune value some $600bn.
In the background, his turbulent private life continued to present surprises. Rightwing influencer Ashley St Clair sued Musk in February for custody of their five-month-old child, revealing that Musk had fathered a thirteenth publicly documented little one, for a complete of now 14 kids. As Musk made common attacks in posts on X towards transgender individuals, his estranged daughter Vivian Wilson, who is trans, was featured in New York journal and modeled at New York trend week. And the New York Occasions published a prolonged investigation into Musk’s father, Errol Musk, who was accused of kid intercourse abuse.
The connection that dominated Musk’s public life, nonetheless, was his friendship and falling out with Trump. On the day of his inauguration, Trump empowered Musk to intestine authorities companies, which the tech billionaire did with zeal and abandon. However by June, Musk and Trump had broken up. Their bromance burned sizzling and quick. On considered one of his ultimate days as a particular authorities worker, Musk lashed out at the president on his social media platform, X, saying: “Time to drop the actually large bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein recordsdata.” The submit has since been deleted.
Although the drama surrounding Musk was continuously absurd and unpredictable, it was additionally consequential. This was a 12 months when the richest particular person in the world obtained new ranges of wealth and energy that few in historical past have ever approached, one which demonstrated the depth of his international affect as he sought to advance his rightwing agenda and develop his tech empire.
Whereas Musk had stayed away from Washington DC after the Epstein submit, the billionaire was invited back in November for a White Home dinner in honor of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. By the finish of the 12 months, Trump and Musk appeared to have made amends. When requested by Fox Enterprise this month if Musk was again in his circle of associates, Trump instructed the two may have a future collectively once more.
“Effectively, I actually don’t know,” Trump said. “I imply, I like Elon loads.”
Musk expressed more regret than the president over the course the 12 months had taken. When his former aide Katie Miller requested whether or not he would lead the unofficial “division of presidency effectivity” (Doge) once more, understanding what he is aware of now, he responded: “As an alternative of doing Doge, I’d have labored on my corporations. They usually wouldn’t have been burning the automobiles.”
Musk goes to Washington
After changing into a Republican mega-donor and campaigning for Trump throughout the 2024 election, Musk started the 12 months on a excessive as he ready to enter the administration as the de facto chief of Doge. He instantly set a tone of chaos and outrage that might persist for the size of his time in the White Home.
Throughout Trump’s internationally televised inauguration occasion in January, Musk issued what many individuals interpreted as back-to-back fascist-syle salutes as he concluded a speech. Rights teams condemned the gesture whereas Musk tried to dismiss the criticism as “soiled methods” from legacy media. The response was so intense and damaging that some Tesla homeowners sold their cars in response to Musk’s gestures.
Musk spurred additional condemnation from Jewish teams after appearing just about at a rally for Germany’s far-right AfD occasion. The Tesla CEO told the crowd by way of livestream that Germans ought to not focus on “previous guilt” and “transfer past that” in an obvious reference to Nazi Germany.
As Musk began his work with Doge, the controversies and backlash towards his politics grew. The newly fashioned bureau operated first as a free assortment of appointed staffers after which subsumed the US Digital Service. It quickly moved to gut federal agencies and conduct mass layoffs throughout the authorities at the same time as ethics watchdogs launched lawsuits accusing Musk’s group of violating privateness and transparency legal guidelines, a few of which proceed right this moment. Musk personally bragged about feeding the United States Company for Worldwide Improvement (USAID), the world’s largest single supplier of humanitarian help, “into the woodchipper”. The cuts would trigger the abrupt cancellation of help applications worldwide, disrupt HIV/Aids remedy for hundreds of thousands and result in children starving to death in a hunger crisis that consultants agree was pointless.
At the annual Conservative Political Motion Convention in February, Musk appeared to relish his new function as the Trump administration’s demolition man. He brandished a chainsaw on stage and instructed the viewers “I’m develop into meme!” as he waved it about in sun shades and a gold chain. In March, he as soon as once more started to pour more money into Republican causes by holding rallies and handing out $1m checks to assist a conservative choose in Wisconsin’s supreme court docket race.
The pushback towards Musk’s political blitz quickly started to frustrate his ambitions, nonetheless. Judges that ruled Doge’s activities illegal or issued short-term injunctions infuriated Musk, who called for the widespread impeachment of any “activist judges” who opposed his agenda. His most popular candidate in the Wisconsin supreme court docket race lost by a big margin, an indication to some in Washington that Musk’s presence had probably develop into politically poisonous.
Musk left his role in the White Home in Might amid disputes round his pick for who would head Nasa and clashes over Trump’s One Massive Lovely Invoice Act. Upon his exit, he signalled that his time with politics had come to a detailed, claiming he would reduce his marketing campaign finance contributions in the future and return to his companies. But he rapidly put himself again in the highlight along with his public battle with Trump on social media and vowed he would begin a 3rd political occasion known as the “America party,” a promise that has but to come to significant fruition.
Musk’s political leanings continued to drift rightward, allying himself by way of near-constant posts on X interacting with far-right activists comparable to Tommy Robinson and telling Joe Rogan that “it needs to be OK to have white pleasure”. He led an online grievance campaign in early October towards the Anti-Defamation League, the nation’s most distinguished Jewish advocacy group, claiming that it “hates Christians” and suggesting that their documenting of extremism inspired homicide. Though not in the administration, his excessive conservative takes on immigration, race and politics have endured as distinguished options of his public identification.
Musk’s constellation of companies
The 12 months in Musk’s companies provided the billionaire even bigger truckloads of cash than before, regardless of dealing with intense controversy and competitors.
In contrast to different tech moguls, who sometimes helm one firm at a time, Musk sits astride a number of companies. He controls the rocket firm SpaceX and the tunneling and mind implant corporations, Boring Inc and Neuralink, respectively. Musk additionally runs the social media firm X, which he bought for a second time this 12 months by way of his synthetic intelligence firm xAI. Then there’s Tesla, his electrical automotive firm.
Of all his enterprises, Tesla particularly courted consideration this 12 months, as individuals enraged by Musk’s work with Doge targeted their consideration on the carmaker’s showrooms. Throughout the nation, protesters marched at ongoing “Tesla Takedown” events. One signal at a San Francisco protest in March learn: “Burn your swastikar before it burns you.” Dozens of Tesla automobiles and charging stations nationwide had been set on fire as one-off vandals protested the billionaire.
Although Trump and Musk hosted what amounted to a Tesla sales event on the garden of the White Home in March, Tesla noticed its sales slump worldwide.
By June, Musk had introduced the rollout of its self-driving robotaxis in Austin. Inside the first week, bystanders had recorded movies of the automobiles having problem turning left or selecting which facet of the highway to drive on, which attracted the consideration of regulators. These robotaxis, which had been required to function with a human security driver up till earlier this month, have encountered solely a handful of documented safety incidents since then.
Lawsuits towards Tesla additionally piled up all through the 12 months. In August, a Florida jury awarded more than $200m to victims of a lethal crash involving its Autopilot know-how in August. And in California, two separate lawsuits had been filed in October over three youngsters who had been killed when a Cybertruck caught on fireplace and locked them inside. The Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration additionally opened several investigations into the carmaker over safety issues.
Whereas Tesla’s plunge in income continued all through the 12 months, that didn’t cease the firm’s shareholders from approving a pay package deal for Musk – the largest company payout in historical past – that would catapult him to the standing of the world’s first trillionaire.
Tesla’s 12 months completed with a blow from California’s division of motor automobiles. The company mentioned the automotive firm had misled customers and exaggerated the capabilities of its Autopilot know-how. If Tesla doesn’t “treatment the scenario” inside 90 days, the DMV mentioned earlier in December, the firm will be banned from promoting automobiles in the state, its greatest US market.
With SpaceX, Musk was in a position to curry favor with the federal authorities. Not solely did his Starlink satellites proceed to dominate the Earth’s environment – the SpaceX subsidiary operates the overwhelming majority of all satellites in orbit – however the Federal Aviation Administration and the air drive gave SpaceX the go-ahead to increase rocket launches in Florida, Texas and California. This got here regardless of the firm’s huge Starship, a 400ft machine that Musk hopes to at some point fly to Mars, repeatedly blowing up and showering shrapnel throughout the Caribbean. One such explosion prompted legal action from Mexico, which mentioned the particles harmed 1000’s of endangered sea turtle hatchlings.
Musk additionally consolidated his social media and synthetic intelligence corporations this 12 months. In March, he announced that xAI had acquired X in an all-stock transaction that he mentioned valued X at $33bn. Each corporations are privately held.
xAI makes the Grok chatbot, which is built-in into X. The chatbot had numerous meltdowns in the second 12 months since its launch. It pushed conspiracy theories about “white genocide”, claimed Trump won the 2020 election and spewed quite a few antisemitic claims, as soon as referring to itself as “MechaHitler”. However, Musk was in a position to seal a $200m contract from the Division of Protection to combine Grok into federal authorities instruments.
In the meantime, Musk’s xAI datacenters in Memphis, Tennessee, had been accused of polluting traditionally Black neighborhoods. The corporate had moved in dozens of moveable methane fuel generators to energy the amenities, initially with out permits, which introduced a number of protests and a pending lawsuit from the NAACP.
Neuralink, which operates in relative secrecy in contrast with Musk’s different companies, accelerated the exams of its mind chips in 2025. The corporate says its product permits an individual restricted management of a pc by way of their ideas. After saying its first successful implantation in 2024, the firm announced in September that it had accomplished the process in 12 sufferers.
All through the 12 months, prime executives fled the uproar concerned in managing Musk’s corporations. Linda Yaccarino departed as X’s CEO, as did its promoting chief. xAI misplaced its co-founder, chief monetary officer and lead lawyer. Likewise, Tesla saw several executive exits, together with the vice-president of North American gross sales, the director of the battery group, the head of the “Optimus” robotic mission and several other leaders of the firm’s varied automotive divisions.
A 12 months of private feuds
Musk, whose life is continuously animated by grievances and breakups, had a banner 12 months for high-profile fights, even by his personal requirements. Longstanding feuds reignited whereas his shut relationship with Trump imploded in full public view, all as he posted a gradual stream of assaults towards immigrants, the trans neighborhood, the media, Wikipedia and a bunch of different targets on X, the place he boasts 230 million followers.
Musk started the 12 months by accusing the government of South Africa, his start nation, of anti-white racism when he sought approval for his Starlink web supplier to function in the nation. It was a part of a sequence of spats Musk would have with governments overseas and world leaders, together with declaring that the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, was “complicit in the rape of Britain” in considered one of his anti-immigration tirades.
As Musk picked fights internationally, he additionally turned a combative presence throughout his time inside the Trump administration. Tensions with different administration officers resulted in reviews of tense meetings in the Oval Workplace and a loud, near-physical yelling match between him and treasury secretary Scott Bessent in the halls of the White Home. Transportation secretary Sean Duffy turned one other adversary in a conflict over the way forward for Nasa, with Musk calling him “Sean Dummy” on X amid a string of different insults.
Even Musk and Trump’s formerly close friendship soured, as the president pushed his One Massive Lovely Invoice Act that eliminated tax credit for electrical automobiles and threatened to hurt Tesla’s already flagging gross sales. Musk lashed out at Trump on Twitter in June, saying that the invoice’s addition to the deficit would destroy the work Doge had executed. The deterioration of their relationship culminated in Musk accusing the president of getting ties to convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump, in flip, insinuated he could cancel Musk’s authorities contracts and mentioned his most distinguished monetary backer had “lost his mind”.
The messy, public breakup between Musk and Trump marked the finish of the Tesla CEO’s time as self-described “first buddy” to the president. Though the two have entered a interval of rapprochement in latest months, Musk is far from the constant presence at Trump’s facet that he was on the marketing campaign path.
Musk’s pivot again to his tech empire allowed him to refocus on different grudges, together with towards Sam Altman, his former OpenAI enterprise companion turned rival. Musk added to his series of lawsuits towards Altman’s AI firm with a case in August that alleged Apple and OpenAI had been partaking in anticompetitive conduct, an accusation that OpenAI described as a part of Musk’s “sample of harassment” towards the agency. The 2 traded barbs on X, which included preventing over whose posts had been getting extra views.
One among Musk’s ultimate feuds of the 12 months got here from a extra uncommon supply – famed 87-year-old writer Joyce Carol Oates, whose cutting observation about him on X acquired greater than 5.6m views.
“So curious that such a rich man by no means posts something that signifies that he enjoys or is even conscious of what just about everybody appreciates – scenes from nature, pet canine or cat, reward for a film, music, a guide (however doubt that he reads); pleasure in a buddy’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for somebody who has died; pleasure in sports activities, popularity of a favourite group; references to historical past,” Oates posted in November.
A day later, after Musk made a present of enthusiastically replying to a number of clips of films on X, he responded to Oates’s critique.
“Oates is a liar and delights in being imply,” Musk posted. “Not a very good human.”
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