Musk makes light of defeats after record spend on Republican candidates

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk is the world’s richest man and the largest individual donor in the US midterms.

Elon Musk has joked online about the Republican defeat in the US midterm elections after spending nearly half a billion dollars to bolster the party’s campaigns.

Republicans were decisively routed by Democrats in Tuesday’s polls, losing control of the Senate and the House of Representatives, while racking up losses in states long seen as Republican strongholds, such as Texas and Kansas.

“Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time,” the Tesla and SpaceX founder wrote on X, which he owns, on Wednesday.

Musk reportedly spent $446m supporting Republican candidates in the elections, making him the top donor.

His donations have mostly gone to his own Republican-leaning political action committee, America PAC, and to the Republican-aligned Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) super PAC.

The SLF used Musk’s $158m in donations in September to support Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate candidate in Texas, who lost to Democrat James Talarico.

Voters rejected Paxton’s plan to make Texas the centre of the country’s artificial intelligence (AI) industry by rapidly building data centres. Talarico campaigned for tighter regulations on their development.

Musk took to X to joke: “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now”.

The South Africa-born entrepreneur has moved the headquarters of his companies Tesla, SpaceX, and X to Texas.

Talarico explicitly referenced Musk in his election victory speech, saying his campaign had taken on “goliaths” including “the richest man in the world” and won.

Musk, who became a trillionaire in June when his company SpaceX went public, supported the Republican campaign for governor of Texas, a race which the Democrats also won.

Gina Hinojosa defeated incumbent Governor Greg Abbott despite a $5m donation by Musk to the Republican candidate.

Huge campaign donations by billionaires have become part of the political reality in the US since a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that the government could not limit political spending by corporations, unions, and other groups if they spend it independently of candidates.