Musk Spent Nearly $500 Million on Elections — and Lost Most of His Races

Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, spent close to half a billion dollars trying to help Republican candidates win in the U.S. midterm elections. It was a record amount for any single donor in American history. But when the votes were counted, most of the candidates he supported had lost. The results left Musk with very little to show for his enormous investment in politics.

Musk backed 43 Republicans running for the House of Representatives. Only three of them won on Election Night, while 33 lost. Seven more races had not yet been decided by late Wednesday, and Democrats were leading in most of those as well. Musk also supported seven Republican candidates for the Senate, and six of them lost. The one remaining Senate race was in Alaska, where Democrat Mary Peltola held a narrow lead.

Texas was an especially tough night for Musk. Both Tesla and SpaceX are based in Texas, and Musk had planned to open a new computer chip factory there. He spent roughly $230 million on the Texas Senate race alone, plus millions more on the governor's and lieutenant governor's races. All three of those candidates lost. Democrat James Talarico won the Senate seat after Musk spent $153.5 million in attack ads against him, and in his victory speech Talarico called Musk 'Goliath,' saying, 'Tonight we beat Goliath.'

Political experts say Musk's big losses could make things harder for him going forward. David Hopkins, a political science professor at Boston College, said Democrats now see Musk as a major enemy. Because Musk's companies work closely with the government — through NASA contracts, defense deals, and his Starlink satellite service — an angry Congress could make business tougher for him. Shares of Tesla and SpaceX both dropped after the election results became clear, as investors worried about what a Democratic-led Congress might do.

According to the nonprofit group OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign money, Musk spent at least $445 million on federal races. He also gave tens of millions of dollars to 'dark money' groups, which are organizations that don't have to publicly report who donates to them. On top of that, he donated to state and local races that have fewer reporting rules, so the total may never be fully known.

Democrats say they plan to investigate Musk and his businesses now that they have more power in Congress. Lawmakers sent letters to SpaceX and the Department of Defense asking about why Musk's Starlink satellite service was turned off in Ukraine during a key moment in its war with Russia. Democrats are also pushing to close what they call the 'Musk loophole,' a campaign finance rule that lets individual executives spend unlimited personal money on campaigns even though their companies cannot. Others are looking into possible conflicts of interest from Musk's time running the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE.

Texas is likely to remain a flashpoint for Musk in the months ahead. The new Democratic governor, Gina Hinojosa, has already signaled she will take a closer look at Musk's relationship with the state. SpaceX launches rockets from Boca Chica Beach in South Texas, and Hinojosa has sued for access to emails between Musk and the previous governor, Greg Abbott. Early Wednesday morning, as the results rolled in, Musk responded with a joke on his social media platform X, writing: 'Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn't work this time.'