Elon Musk says he will spend ‘a lot less’ on political campaigns

DOHA - Billionaire Elon Musk on May 20 said he was pulling away from spending his fortune on politics, asserting that his Tesla electric car company was doing well despite blowback due to his support of US President Donald Trump.

“In terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” Mr Musk told Bloomberg’s Qatar Economic Forum in Doha, speaking by video link from Austin, Texas.

Mr Musk, the richest person on earth, spent

hundreds of millions of dollars

on Mr Trump’s political campaign, and questions were rife in Washington whether his largesse would continue.

“If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. I don’t currently see a reason,” he said, during the often tense interview.

The comments will trigger speculation that the close relationship between Mr Trump and Mr Musk may be shifting as the Tesla tycoon

steps away from his full-time role

as cost-cutting chief for the US administration.

When it comes to politics, “I did what needed to be done”, Mr Musk said.

Mr Musk confirmed that he has reduced his role as the unofficial head of the administration’s “Department of Government Efficiency”, working there now just two days a week.

Tesla, which is the major source of Mr Musk’s wealth, has suffered significant brand damage due to his political work, particularly with Mr Trump. He has also expressed support for the far-right anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party in Germany.

Since Mr Trump took office, Tesla dealerships have become

scenes of protest and vandalism

in the US and beyond.

“It’s certainly fine to object to political things, but it’s not fine to resort to violence and hanging someone in effigy and death threats,” Mr Musk said.

But he pushed back when asked if he was worried about the effects of his political positions on sales at the electric carmaker, saying the company was doing fine.

Aside from a sales decline in Europe, “we’re strong everywhere else”, Mr Musk said.

He pointed to the performance of Tesla’s shares on Wall Street as a sign that the company was on good footing.

“We’re now back over a trillion dollars in market cap, so clearly, the market is aware of the situation, so (Tesla) is already turned around,” he said.

In the wide-ranging conversation, Mr Musk said he was in no rush to take his rocket and space exploration company SpaceX public, saying he did not need the money or the added scrutiny.

Going public “is, I guess, a way to potentially make more money, but at the expense of a lot of public company overhead, and inevitably, a whole bunch of lawsuits, which are very annoying”, he said.

Mr Musk has faced a series of lawsuits from shareholders in publicly traded Tesla, including one that saw a US judge reject his massive US$55.8 billion (S$72 billion) compensation package.

“The compensation should match that something incredible was done,” Mr Musk said, when asked about the judge’s decision.

He said he was “confident that whatever some activist posing as a judge in Delaware happens to do will not affect” his future pay.

Mr Musk also said he was pushing ahead with his lawsuit against OpenAI despite that company, which he co-founded in 2015 before leaving, saying it was keeping non-profit oversight as it continues to expand ChatGPT and its artificial intelligence models.

Mr Musk dismissed the recent restructuring and said his anger towards OpenAI for becoming a profit-driven AI giant, now one of the biggest tech companies in the world, still had merit.

“I funded OpenAI for roughly US$50 million and it was intended to be a non-profit, open source company, and now they’re trying to change that for their own financial benefit into a for-profit company that is closed source,” he said.

“This would be like you funded a non-profit to help preserve the Amazon rainforest, but instead of doing that, they became a lumber company, chopped down the forest and sold the wood.” AFP