Several masters of the universe convened on Wednesday, and they had one name on their lips: Elon Musk.
At the annual New York Times DealBook Summit, the world’s richest man was a topic of conversation among his fellow billionaires, CEOs, and political elite.
CEOs and politicians weighed in on Elon Musk’s role as a political advisor to president-elect Donald Trump. Brandon Bell/Getty Images
To be sure, Andrew Ross Sorkin, DealBook’s founder and the day’s MC, asked nearly all of his guests about Musk, who made headlines at the same summit last year for telling advertisers on X to “go fuck” themselves.
And while the Tesla CEO wasn’t present this year, many conversations touched on his latest role. Over the past couple of months, Musk has become a political advisor and confidant to President-elect Donald Trump and one of his biggest donors, shelling out about $119 million to support his campaign.
The reaction to Musk’s new role as co-leader of the Department of Government Efficiency ranged from cautiously optimistic to not giving a damn.
Ken Griffin, the billionaire hedge fund manager and GOP donor, praised Musk’s entrepreneurial ability.
“He runs Tesla, he runs SpaceX at a level of excellence that very few companies can even start to relate to,” Griffin said.
At the same time, he questioned just how much Musk could impact federal spending.
“He’s going to have to hit the hard reality, the hard truth, that making cuts of any form whatsoever will be politically very unpopular,” Griffin said. “It’ll be very hard to squeeze numbers in the trillions of dollars out of the baseline budget.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has been embroiled in a personal and legal feud with Musk, similarly praised the Tesla CEO’s business acumen.
“At a time when most of the world was not thinking very ambitiously, he pushed a lot of people, me included, to think much more ambitiously,” Altman said of his OpenAI cofounder.
While Altman acknowledged his feelings about Musk have changed, he said it would be unlike his former “mega hero” to use his political proximity for his own monetary gain.
“It would be profoundly un-American to use political power, to the degree that Elon has it, to hurt your competitors and advantage your own businesses,” Altman said. “It would go so deeply against the values I believe he holds very dear to himself.”
Jeff Bezos, whose Blue Origin is in direct competition with Musk’s SpaceX, agreed that Musk’s relationship with Trump was not that concerning.
“I take it face value what has been said, which is that he is not going to use his political power to advantage his own companies or to disadvantage his competitors,” Bezos said. “Let’s go into it hoping that the statements that have been made are correct, that this is going to be done above board in the public interest.”
And Sundar Pichai, the Alphabet CEO, said Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence company is a formidable competitor “given Elon’s track record.”
Those interviewed with actual political experience — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and former President Bill Clinton — appeared the most unfazed by Musk’s new position of power.
Powell seemed confident in the independence of the Fed, even though Musk has signaled support for moving the central bank under the president’s command.
And Clinton seemed to almost entirely brush off Musk’s burgeoning influence — including the fact that he was on a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Trump’s whole shtick is that all these rules and systems don’t amount to anything,” the former president said.
“Being the richest guy on Earth is far more important than anything else that you could be to him,” Clinton added. “That’s what he values. It’s no big deal.”
