Musk’s In A Lot of Trouble And Won’t Be the World’s Richest Man Much Longer

I’ve discussed this before, so we’ll keep it brief. Much of Musk’s wealth is in Tesla stock. Tesla car sales are down, and getting hammered particularly, but not only, in China. The Chinese are producing better, cheaper electric vehicles with autonomous driving which actually works, because they use Lidar, which Musk personally decided not to use. Even Western carmakers are catching up to and exceeding Tesla vehicles.

Musk tried to get a fifty billion dollar payout from Telsa, which was spiked in the courts, because, I suspect, he knows Tesla’s going down. He’s been systematically selling Tesla stock, but he can’t sell too much at any given time. So right now he’s trying a parlay, he has to keep Tesla stock up for as long as possible to get as much money out. His strong support for Trump was almost certainly based on the need to keep Trump from ending electric vehicle subsidies, which, so far, Trump has done, even though he was very hostile to them for much of the campaign.

Now don’t feel bad for Musk, he’ll still be one of the richest men in the world, but for whatever reason: distraction, rumored drug use, health or something else, he’s not handling the day to day, month to month business of managing his corporations very well. X/Twitter has bled users, losing millions and while advertisers are coming back, that’s only to kiss up to him for as long as he has Trump’s ear, and Trump is fickle with who stays in the inner circle.

What is happening here…something is off with elon #ElonMusk #Inauguration2025 #InaugurationDay #Elon_Musk #Drugs pic.twitter.com/mFK0gZso1k

— Danny-DreamShock (@Dreamshockcom) January 20, 2025

SpaceX is doing well, but SpaceX is still, mostly, a creature of the government, with the exception of its satellite internet. Its success was made possible by Obama policies intended to build a private space industry. It still requires government contracts and aid to do well.

If I had to make a bet, I’d bet on Blue Origin, Bezos’s space outfit. Yes, it’s far behind, but Bezos is an operator and still seems very skilled and focused, unlike Musk. And with him stepping away from day-to-day operations at Amazon, he’s got the attention to spare on what is a dream from him: he made the money at Amazon so he could do space.

The Chinese space program, as you’d expect, is doing very well, including putting up satellite internet which appears to outperform Musk’s, but America is never going to pay China to use its lift capacity so there’s a guaranteed moat.

Musk, in short, has almost certainly peaked. His political actions are, from a business perspective, necessary because he’s screwed up his core business and needs powerful government access. His competitors are chewing on his heels, he personally seems to be in some sort of decline, and his days as number one are drawing to a close.

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