Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly Twitter), has announced a return to “24/7” focus on his companies after pledging to scale back his role in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
“Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms,” Musk posted on X on Saturday, adding, “I must be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out.”
The post comes amid widespread reports of technical issues at X earlier in the week, during which the platform suffered a two-hour outage. Users reported problems logging in, viewing posts, and refreshing their feeds. Downdetector logged more than 25,800 complaints at the outage's peak.
Musk acknowledged the failure, stating that “failover redundancy should have worked, but did not.” He pledged to make “major operational improvements.”
Musk’s announcement comes just days after he appeared at the Qatar Economic Forum, where he stated his intention to reduce both his political involvement and financial contributions to campaign activities. Musk reportedly spent more than $250 million backing Trump’s re-election efforts but now says he will invest “a lot less” in political causes moving forward.
His remarks follow a recent poll conducted by ABC News, Washington Post, and Ipsos, which found that 57% of Americans disapprove of Musk’s performance as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — a post he has held since Trump’s inauguration in January 2025. Only 35% of respondents rated his performance favorably.
Musk's formal government tenure is expected to end later this month. Created by Trump, DOGE was tasked with identifying and implementing cost-cutting measures across federal agencies.
While Musk’s involvement in politics is waning, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance has indicated that the billionaire will remain a “friend and adviser” to the administration even after his official exit from DOGE.
The department itself is scheduled to operate until July 2026, continuing to implement Musk's initial blueprint for efficiency and budgetary reform.
With his return to private life, Musk plans to concentrate on his key ventures:
Tesla: Continuing EV innovation and scaling up global production.
SpaceX: Preparing for a Starship launch next week.
X/xAI: Improving social media and advancing artificial intelligence platforms.
Musk emphasized the urgent need to stabilize and improve X, especially in light of recent outages and increasing scrutiny over content moderation and platform reliability.