It has been a typically chaotic 12 months for Elon Musk. The world’s richest person has been pulled from one direction to another in the running of his many companies – with mixed results.
Musk’s only publicly traded company, electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, has had a tricky year, with its share price remaining for the first 11 months of 2024. At the same time, Tesla’s share of the US electric vehicle market has been on , dropping below 50 per cent for the first time in the second quarter of the year.
Tesla has also strayed from its core mission. While its vehicles continue to sell, the company didn’t release a new model this year, although many of its competitors did. Musk, as Tesla’s CEO, has made a number of bets around robotaxis and humanoid robots that could pay off eventually, but are long shots. When he unveiled the Cybercab robotic, self-driving taxi at a glitzy event in November, the reaction was underwhelming: some pointed out he had repeatedly promised to solve full self-driving, or FSD, “this year” many times since 2014.
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Neuralink, which Musk co-founded, is in a similar position. The firm installs brain implants that help control body parts, promising plenty but in reality seemingly similar to what others have already done. The first person to have a Neuralink implant played chess using just his thoughts in March following an operation in January, but it is unclear how different this was to research that has already happened in laboratories around the world.
X, the platform once known as Twitter that Musk bought for $44 billion in October 2022, has plummeted in value as it has turned into a right-wing echo chamber. The platform’s revenue also in the first half of 2023, documents submitted by X to state regulators and uncovered this year show.
, which have to be reported to European Union authorities as part of tech laws on the continent, suggest that people are leaving the platform, too. Perhaps because it is hard to spin these losses in a positive way, instead of posting about user numbers, Musk is now using increasingly specific metrics to post to his 200 million or more followers, such as “user-seconds globally” on the platform.
Still, it hasn’t all been bad. In November, Musk was announced as one of the co-heads of a new government initiative launched by US President-Elect Donald Trump, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The planned organisation, which will make recommendations on streamlining the US government, is misnamed, because it won’t be a government department, and its existence is time-limited – the stated intention is to run it until July 2026. But it gives Musk a seat at the table – which he reportedly demonstrated literally by taking up residence at Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, for several weeks after the election.
Such closeness with Trump could be a boon for Musk. “This is a positive for Tesla, as Trump will fast-track the autonomous and AI initiatives in our view, over the next 12 to 18 months, that will be a gamechanger to the Tesla story,” says at financial services firm Wedbush Securities.
The financial markets agreed: Tesla’s share price increased by in the weeks after the US voted, in what has been put down to Trump’s re-election as president, and what it means for Musk’s fortunes.
And while the value of X has decreased as Musk has reshaped it, that has arguably been a success for the man himself, if not his financial backers. “Twitter/X has effectively transitioned into exactly what he wanted, a platform from which he can spread his right-wing misinformation,” claims at City, University of London. If the ownership of X gives Musk proximity to power that helps propel his businesses forwards even if they struggle to make new innovations, that is a win for him.
The link with Trump also makes contracts between the US government and another of Musk’s companies, SpaceX, more secure. SpaceX is one of the rare bright spots in Musk’s portfolio and the company has made real strides with its space launches this year.
That closeness could also benefit xAI, Musk’s AI company, which has had little luck so far with its Grok large language model as it tries to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
So, on balance, has Musk’s busyness paid off? Yes, say some of those who have previously argued against many of his decisions. “It’s been an exceptionally good year for Musk,” says Buckley. “He has successfully managed to construct a public image of an edgy intellectual and become America’s most powerful oligarch.”
Whether that triumphant reputation lasts is another question. “If there’s one thing the American media and public love more than building up heroes,” says Buckley, “it’s tearing them down.”
