Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story
What a weird time to be Elon Musk.
This year opened with the businessman turned political operator throwing what appeared, to Nazis at least, to be a Sieg heil.
This spring, activists frequently congregated outside the showrooms of his automaker, Tesla, to protest his foray into the US federal government and cozy relationship with President Trump. They argued that his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a cost-slashing operation named after a more than decade-old internet meme, didn’t slash much beyond foreign aid. They cheered as Tesla missed Wall Street’s financial expectations.
In May, Musk blew up his relationship with the most powerful man on Earth with a few vicious posts on X; the most powerful man on Earth called him a “TRAIN WRECK.” Tesla kept leaking money. DOGE fell victim to Washington infighting; it is now reportedly decentralized and a shadow of the Musk personal fiefdom it once was.
And yet: It seems Elon Musk is getting out of 2025 OK? Or, to put it succinctly: Elon Musk may not be the king of the world, but Elon Musk is still very, very powerful.
Money isn’t everything, but when it comes to the richest human in the known universe, it’s worth looking at the numbers. Tesla did a bit of flailing this year (more on that in a sec), and historically, much of Musk’s wealth has been derived from the world’s most valuable automaker. That should be bad news for Musk. But it’s become increasingly clear that the Tesla CEO’s other, private companies—SpaceX, xAI, Neuralink—have kept his portfolio diversified, shielding the aspiring trillionaire from some of the whipsaws of the public market.
Musk is worth some $462 billion according to Bloomberg, and his stake in Tesla is valued at $140 billion, according to financial filings—less than half of his fortune. Overall, Musk’s wealth is up $29 billion since last year.
So how did a guy who began the year as the president's “First Buddy” and ended it as a political pariah pull it off? It was, mostly, a tale of two companies: Tesla hitting some white water while SpaceX shot satellites into orbit and snapped up government contracts. Musk, meanwhile, cheered on from X, a website that he appears to have massively overpaid for in 2022. But the investment worked; the platform set the pace for political and social commentary amongst the global right wing for much of 2025.
By all accounts, Tesla had a less-than-stellar year. The US electric vehicle market foundered as Trump’s government cut tax subsidies and support for battery and vehicle manufacturing plants. It levied, then pulled back, and then levied again global tariffs that have strained the entire US auto industry. Musk's company wasn’t immune from the effects.
Tesla is reportedly trying but struggling to rid its cars of Chinese components. The Wall Street Journal reported that the US’s rapid shifts in trade policy, especially toward China, have “made it difficult for the carmaker to formulate a coherent pricing strategy.”
The policy changes have created potential issues for Tesla’s bottom line in a very specific way. Various government entities—the US Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the state of California—have historically penalized automakers for failing to meet fleetwide environmental goals. Those manufacturers that still make gas-powered cars have been able to avoid some of these financial dings by buying credits from those that make plenty of emission-free vehicles—electric car makers, for example. About a third of Tesla’s profits since 2014 are estimated to have come from these compliance credits.
Now the Trump administration has nixed penalties for missing fuel economy standards, and the administration has made clear it wants California’s influential zero-emission vehicle program gone too. Big changes in regulations could take years to come to fruition, but the shifts—brought about by the administration that Musk ushered into the White House—could do lasting damage to Tesla’s revenue stream.
Plus, Tesla’s cars just didn’t sell well this year. Deliveries are down, especially in Europe, where customers objected to Musk’s spin rightward just as cheaper and well-made Chinese EVs provided more attractive alternatives. In China itself, Tesla sales are down 8 percent through this October.
Meanwhile, the automaker's current lineup and product strategy feels both tired and overambitious. The Model Y is still the most popular electric vehicle in the world, but a refresh earlier this year doesn’t seem to have boosted sales in the way some investors had hoped. The controversial Cybertruck looks like a flop, with an estimated 16,000 sold through this fall—well short of the 250,000 annual goal Musk set years ago.
Musk has tried to focus analysts’ attention on Tesla’s robotics and autonomous vehicle efforts, but neither are moving as quickly as he had promised. Musk said in July that about half of the American population would have access to robotaxi rides by the end of the year. But at the end of November, he posted that the number of vehicles operating in Austin, Texas, would “roughly” double, which suggests that Tesla’s global total of self-driving taxis is about 60. Half the US population feels far off.
SpaceX’s fortunes are harder to read, because the company is private and doesn’t share its financial hits and misses. But it sure looked busy from the outside, and it seems to have spent the year shoring up its technology and making clear it has long-term plans to make money.
SpaceX equals rockets. But the star of 2025’s show was Starlink, the company’s satellite internet service. It has made SpaceX look less like a rocket company with an internet service provider side hustle and more like an ISP with a rocket habit. Elements of Starlink began to report a positive net income within the past year, and SpaceX said in November that it connects 8 million customers to the internet. The company is pushing aggressively into contracts with not only governments and airlines, but smartphone makers as well. SpaceX launched its 10,000th Starlink satellite in October, and it has used an annual record number of missions from its Falcon 9 rockets to launch new satellites, replace old ones, and expand into new markets.
That moneymaking is good news for SpaceX’s larger ambitions, including its heavier Starship rockets, which it tested for the 11th time this fall. Starship has taken and will continue to take billions to develop; the upside, though, is the rockets should be able to carry heavier payloads into space. That includes a human moon-landing mission with NASA that could happen in the next several years, possibly in 2028.
Speaking of government partnerships, Musk’s company also spent this year locking in lucrative contracts with Washington. In April, SpaceX won $5.9 billion in contracts to support the US Space Force through 2029. It has also previously secured a $102 million Air Force contract to study the role its rockets could play in cargo delivery.
Despite all this, SpaceX isn’t necessarily destined for success. The company’s ambitions are expensive, and will require it to ace very complex technical challenges before its piggy bank starts to squeal. The company needs to keep cutting through regulatory issues, market by market, as it might have to beat back an increasingly empowered set of competitors, including Amazon’s Leo. Relying on government contracts to bring in money, meanwhile, feels tricky when certain global politicians seem willing to flip their allegiances on a dime—or post, as it were.
The effects of a wild year won’t be clear when the calendar flips. Has Musk’s extended foray into politics done lasting damage to his brand? Will his hot-cold relationship with Trump prove to be a boon or a burden? Have the polarizing steps he’s taken this year, and his continued addiction to shitposting, precluded future success?
This fall, Musk once again made global headlines when Tesla shareholders voted to pay him up to an unprecedented $1 trillion in the next decade. That gigantic figure carries a heavy asterisk: Musk will have to hit a series of big-time benchmarks to win the whole pot, including leading Tesla to an $8.5 trillion market cap and making it into an undisrupted leader in autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots. This is easier said than done. Musk will still receive billions if he comes up short of these goals, depending on how close he gets. It will be interesting to see whether Musk can actually cash the checks his mouth—or X account—has written.
Keen observers, meanwhile, spotted a familiar face at a White House state dinner for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in November: Elon Musk. For now, at least, it seems impossible to keep the richest man in the world down for long.
