Days after a fiery online feud seemed to signal an end to the relationship between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, the tech billionaire has backtracked.
In a social media post early on Wednesday, Musk expressed regret for the very public feud, saying he went “too far.”
Musk also shared he thinks it was “worth it” to have his net worth drop while he worked with the Trump administration on the Department of Government Efficiency.
After becoming one of the leading voices of the MAGA movement before and after the 2024 election, the dispute between the president and Musk shocked their Republican supporters.
While Trump has made a few comments about the fight on social media and to the press, including firing off a few warnings Musk’s way, he’s mostly sidestepped questions from reporters.
Now, Musk seems ready to reconcile, but whether Trump is ready to repair the relationship is less clear.
The relationship between Musk and Trump, and Trump and other tech industry titans, seemed to indicate the political maturation of Silicon Valley as they work to shape public policy to their benefit.
But Musk’s rise and fall is also a warning to those same titans, a clear example of the risks of engaging in the messy world of politics.
Why is Musk backtracking?
Musk’s posts come just days after the president told NBC News that the former DOGE leader was “very disrespectful to the office of the president.”
During their spat, Trump threatened that Musk’s company SpaceX could face a termination of government contracts and potentially other retribution. It’s unlikely that Trump will cancel SpaceX’s contracts “anytime soon,” Dan Grazier, a senior fellow at a national security think tank, told NPR.
Musk in response threatened to decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, but later walked it back.
The feud began over Musk’s displeasure with the Trump-backed “big, beautiful bill,” which cleared the House last month. The bill would cut electric vehicle credits and could hurt his other company, Tesla.
But John Helveston, a professor at George Washington University, told NPR the end of federal EV credits may not hurt Tesla as much as its competitors.
Impact on tech and political world
Musk, a multibillionaire serial entrepreneur, spent much of the last several months positioned beside the president. His role in the Trump administration sparked concern among critics over what sway he had over Trump’s decision-making, but hope among those who thought the duo could change the way Washington works.
Peter Loge, a public affairs and political communications professor at George Washington University, said it may have seemed like Musk’s influence on the president was “higher and different” than other advisers, but, in reality, there’s historical precedence.
In the past, railroad titans, industrialists and shipping magnates have all sought to have power over government and its policymaking. Now, it’s the tech sector, Loge said.
“It’s a small collection of really rich people who get a lot of attention and who think they know best; they try to exert their force over public policy,” he told the Deseret News.
Trump’s inauguration ceremony was striking, as a string of powerful tech CEOs from Silicon Valley, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Musk, sat behind the president during his address.
This growing influence comes at a time of significant change for the industry.
“A lot of these companies like crypto and AI are new to Washington and are new to trying to influence public policy. They could ignore Washington and do their own thing, and they discovered what Google, Microsoft and every other organization coming out of Silicon Valley discovered in the past decades, which is that you ignore Congress at your own peril,” Loge said.
Pundits have also pointed to other tech giants who may step in to replace Musk, including venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who already has a relationship with Trump.
Thiel has long been in Trump’s orbit, endorsing his 2016 campaign and signaling the relationship between the tech world and Trump-era politics. There’s a spiderwebbing impact that stems from Thiel, as Fortune highlighted in a report.
Musk may now rely on his relationships in the tech world and with others in the administration, like Vice President JD Vance, to try to get back into Trump’s favor.
Industry group head: Tech world should focus on policy, not personalities
Meanwhile, the tech world will need to decide how far to lean into their political relationships.
“I’m heartened to see that we have, over the past two decades, seen a significant increase in terms of our political influence and engagement and we hope it continues to grow,” Ahmed Thomas, the CEO of the nonpartisan business association Silicon Valley Leadership Group, said.
However, Thomas noted that going forward, he believes the tech industry should focus on emerging technologies, workforce development opportunities and be less dependent on the loudest voices in the room.
“I think for so many people, there’s a focus not on opportunity, but rather where we have … more personalities and conflict,” he said.
Regardless of whether Trump cuts out Musk entirely, or shifts his attention to another major tech player, Loge noted that Musk’s dramatic rise and fall in the Trump administration is representative of a larger conversation about the relationship between wealth and political power.
“I think that, even as we wrestle with this new question, right, ‘What about Elon Musk? What about crypto? What about AI?’ It’s important to remember that these are in many ways, very old questions about the connection between truth, persuasion, power and democracy,” Loge said.