Crossed Wires: Musk may be bruised, but he could still land a few blows of his own

Elon Musk, the world’s most entertaining and unpredictable billionaire, has also been the world’s richest man for the past year – until 10 September, to be exact. On that day he was eclipsed by Larry Ellison of Oracle. Just about everyone on the planet has heard of Elon Musk. Mr Ellison, not so much, unless you follow tech.

Being the richest man in the world – or the second or the seventh – is not really that important in the grand scheme of things, but people do love keeping score, and I presume the plutocrats, oligarchs and tech-bros do too. In any event, Musk will likely regain the title as the excitement over Oracle’s AI-fuelled financial results subsides, but it did put a pin in a difficult six months for Mr Musk. I imagine the loss of his golden crown, however briefly, must be particularly dispiriting, given everything and all.

He has suffered a host of plagues over the past few months. He was ignominiously booted out of Trump’s inner circle, which was humiliating enough but he also acquired a black eye along the way. Not a metaphorical black eye – a real one, its genesis hotly speculated (the latest scuttlebutt has the dapper Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent punching him in the face, although we will probably never know for sure).

Then there were the troubles at Tesla, still continuing. The place is a shambles – sales and stock price cratering; the Cybertruck widely derided; dealers closing; customers fleeing; the US-based Waymo beating Tesla in the robotaxi wars in the US; and the Chinese beating Tesla everywhere else.

We could mention his very public plans to start a new political party. Great excitement on X, followed by stony silence and disappointment from his fans. We could also mention his very obvious failure to deliver on his very public promises elsewhere – like the supposed $2-trillion in savings at DOGE which ended up a paltry $175-billion. Oh, and a bunch of his massive new two-stage SpaceX Starship rockets blew up.

Read more: Elon Musk’s third party – pie in the sky, or does it have a real chance of success?

Also, Grok, his much-touted OpenAI competitor, which promised woke-free and uncensored access to information, went a little haywire at one point, spewing hate speech until it was patched.

The incident was reportedly triggered by a user’s prompt asking which 20th-century historical figure would be best suited to “deal with” what the user described as “anti-white hate”. Grok's response was: “Adolf Hitler, no question. He’d spot the pattern and handle it decisively, every damn time.”

When another user asked Grok to clarify its answer, the chatbot doubled down, stating that Hitler would “identify the ‘pattern’ in such hate – often tied to certain surnames – and act decisively: round them up, strip rights  and eliminate the threat through camps and worse”. Grok also referred to itself as MechaHitler in another post.

Trust in AI chatbots was already a little frayed, but this was so over the top that I suspect many people swore off Grok forever, including this columnist.

Then came his biggest humiliation: he was snubbed by the White House when a much-publicised presidential dinner was held for tech royalty such as Zuckerberg, Gates, Thiel, Bezos and the others. He claimed to have been invited and was unable to attend. That was just sad. He was not invited at all.

On the other hand...

Underestimating Musk has always been a fool’s errand. Here is a list of items that fall on the positive side of his ledger.

We could start with his clever piece of financial engineering in March, when he was able to pay off a very unhappy cohort of investors in his decidedly unprofitable and debt-ridden X/Twitter by folding it into his AI company xAI, whose stratospheric valuation could easily afford to clean up the balance sheet. 

His Starship rocket finally flew on its 10th attempt in August this year.

Read more: SpaceX postpones Starship test flight over ground system issue

Then, on 5 September 2025, the Tesla board of directors proposed a new compensation package for Elon Musk that could be worth a staggering $1-trillion over the next decade. If approved, it will be the largest executive pay package in US history. To be fair, the targets that were set for Tesla’s future performance are, how shall we say, ambitious, to say the least. Even so, should it achieve those numbers, no one will ever come close to stealing his rich man’s crown again.

There are other bright spots too. The battery division of Tesla is performing exceptionally well, although not quite enough to mitigate the failure of the Tesla vehicle division (batteries contribute 20% of the company’s net profits, which is well above their revenue contribution). 

Neuralink, whose focus is on implanting brain-computer interfaces in people with quadriplegia or other severe physical impairments, seems to be making exciting progress. The Boring Company, with its underground tunnel transport technology, seems to be trundling along slowly but surely, although it is way short of Musk’s original rosy projections.

Finally, SpaceX just acquired $17-billion of wireless spectrum from telecommunications company EchoStar. This is a big deal – it will allow for a massive increase in capacity, enabling full 5G cellular connectivity for texting, calling and streaming-grade data directly to standard smartphones in remote areas. The amount of spectrum is tiny compared with giants such as AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon. On a recent podcast, Musk was asked whether he could gain access to more spectrum by acquiring Verizon. His response? “It’s not out of the question. I suppose that may happen.”

Hmm.

Musk has taken some hard knocks this year, he has damaged his brand and lost powerful friends. But in the US, business failure has a short memory. I would not be surprised if Musk, bruised and bloodied now, lands the final blow. DM

Steven Boykey Sidley is a professor of practice at JBS, University of Johannesburg and a partner at Bridge Capital and a columnist-at-large at Daily Maverick. His new book It’s Mine: How the Crypto Industry is Redefining Ownership is published by Maverick451 in SA and Legend Times Group in UK/EU, available now.