Elon Musk

Ukraine's president says Starlink speed caps have left the country's interceptor drones non-operational and calls the throttling a "planned operation," proposing a trilateral meeting over the standoff. Musk answers that the systems are owned and controlled by the US government, with any usage limits decided by the US military and ultimately the president; Trump has publicly denied that he or Musk was responsible for the reductions, though reports say Musk proposed the caps to Trump. Musk holds that commercial Starlink is limited to civilian and defensive activities, saying offensive military action "would be inappropriate for a commercial company," with the military-grade Starshield controlled by the US government.

Musk drove a Roadster prototype upside down on a curved ramp using underbody suction fans and landed it with SpaceX cold-gas thrusters at a facility near Waco, telling a live audience, "we need an audience to prove that it's not AI." Tesla shares rose about 5% premarket, though the flying version is unlikely to be sold publicly given cost, safety and regulatory hurdles. The demo spotlighted the two companies' integration, including their joint Terafab chip plant, and analysts continue to suggest Tesla and SpaceX may eventually merge.

Tesla had fewer than 400 robotaxis on the road as of mid-2026, against Musk's 2019 prediction of a million by 2020, doing about 28,000 weekly rides to Waymo's 450,000, a gap that has contributed to a 15% share-price decline over 12 months. He still promises the $30,000, steering-wheel-free Cybercab next year, though it is in early production with about 300 units recently added to the Austin service, and insists Tesla be viewed as an autonomous and robotics company even as more than 70% of revenue comes from vehicle sales. FSD subscriptions are up 56% to 1.48 million, robotaxis run in seven US metro areas, and he has taken direct control of the Terafab chip project while calling Optimus potentially "the biggest product ever," the pivot behind a $380 share price.

SpaceX, public since June and valued at about $2 trillion while not yet profitable, will build its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia, whose Vera Rubin architecture Musk calls "the best architecture," and its Grok operation reported 213% revenue growth in Q2. He projects SpaceX revenue of $1 trillion by 2030 and $3.5 trillion by 2033, far above analyst consensus, stacking bets on a US mobile-market entry via spectrum from Grain Management, Starlink scaling and a planned $100 billion Starbase Louisiana facility, while critics call the stock overvalued at 49 times forward sales. After Amazon blocked Grok-powered shopping bots, he floated "a competitor to Amazon" and pledged that SpaceX will make users whole if a Grok bot errs on a purchase or leaks card data, diverging from Meta and OpenAI, which hold users responsible. He is also pressing memory suppliers on AI chip costs, endorsing Micron's reasonable pricing, calling rivals extortionate and warning that "customers will not forget how suppliers treated them during the memory shortage." He told an X Takeover event he has experienced what he calls "AI psychosis" about half a dozen times over the past year.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told an OECD conference that Musk launched "massive online harassment campaigns against European leaders" to influence debates by exploiting the virality of X, part of France's sovereignty warning ahead of its 2027 presidential election, after Musk and Trump framed French protests through the lens of mass migration. In Texas, Musk has contributed $168 million in total to PACs supporting Ken Paxton, including $158 million routed through the Senate Leadership Fund, ahead of the November 3 election.