Musk doubles down on X improvements amid political retreat
Elon Musk announced his "full commitment" to his companies, highlighting the need for significant improvements in the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). The businesses of the entrepreneur, who was born in South Africa, have encountered challenges since the world's richest man became involved in U.S. politics.
In response to reports of outages, Musk wrote in a post on X that he is back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference rooms, server rooms, and factories.
According to Downdetector, which tracks outages by gathering reports on communication status from various sources, more than 25,000 issues were reported on Saturday morning with connecting to the social media platform X. Soon, the number of outage reports exceeded 100,000.
Users reported issues such as disappearing posts, errors loading the home page, and a "server issues" message.
The billionaire stated that he needs to be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla (plus the Starship launch next week) because they are introducing key technologies.
Is Musk retreating into the background?
Elon Musk has been one of Donald Trump's closest allies since the Republican's return to the White House. The entrepreneur became associated with the Department of Government Efficiency, tasked with reducing federal budget expenditures.
The South African-born businessman (who also holds Canadian and U.S. citizenship) spent over 250 million USD on Donald Trump's election campaign. The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, however, admitted that he will spend "significantly less" on political donations in the future, stating he has done "enough."
The activities of Musk have caused issues, particularly for Tesla, the electric car manufacturer he owns. Musk's car sales in the EU fell by 36% in March compared to March 2024, and in the first quarter of this year, they decreased nearly by half year-over-year.
Nevertheless, Musk cannot complain. The latest analysis by Oxfam, which fights global poverty and injustice, shows that the wealthiest Americans, particularly ten of them, amassed a considerable fortune last year. They collectively increased their wealth by 365 billion USD. More than half of this amount, a staggering 186.1 billion USD, went to the owner of Tesla.
