Elon Musk has lost $20 billion and his investors have seen more than $100 billion vanish since the Tesla billionaire’s acrimonious public split with his former ally President Donald Trump last month, according to an Axios analysis.
“While the opportunity is outsized the risks are very significant as well,” Ivana Delevska, an investor who recently sold her Tesla shares, told the outlet of Musk’s complicated entanglement with the administration.
The decline comes as Tesla has reported disappointing financials in recent days, including a nearly seven percent stock price slide on Monday, and the disclosure last week that second-quarter deliveries were down 14 percent, as the carmaker has fallen behind Chinese rival BYD in EV sales. Tesla stock has fallen about 14 percent since early June, per the Axios analysis.
A demonstrator protests against Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk, outside a Tesla service center and gallery in Austin, Texas (Reuters)
The split, rooted in Musk’s opposition to the administration’s so-called ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ spending package, marks a remarkable change in financial fortunes for the Musk-Trump relationship.
The tech entrepreneur spent more than $250 million to help get Trump elected, and his backing initially seemed like a financial master-stroke, as Musk became the first person in the world to be worth $400 billion by December of 2024, amid investor enthusiasm about the future of Musk and his companies under the new administration.
Elon Musk faces declining Tesla deliveries, a beleaguered Tesla stock price, and an increasingly hostile relationship with the president, his former ally (AP)
The tech billionaire also gained an influential perch as the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency initiative, or DOGE, which scrutinized the finances, data, and personnel at numerous US government agencies, including those with impacts on Musk companies.
Despite these gains, warning signs appeared early on over Musk’s Trump association, with a man blowing up a Tesla outside of a Trump hotel in Vegas in January and Tesla dealership and chargers facing a string of vandalism and alleged arson attacks.
Now, as Musk’s feud with Trump has deepened, including with the billionaire threatening to challenge his former Republican allies by founding a new political party, the SpaceX boss could face even more risk to his companies.
Last month, Tesla publicly launched its long-awaited robotaxi fleet, a novel business line Musk has described as a key priority, and one that could be deeply impacted by new federal regulation.
SpaceX, meanwhile, relies heavily on contracts from the federal government, and has invested considerably towards supplying spacecraft for a future Mars mission.
In a recent Truth Social post, Trump said he rejected an alleged request to install one of Musk’s friends as head of NASA because he was “a blue blooded Democrat, who had never contributed to a Republican before,” and suggested he had similar reservations about Musk.
