Amid Elon Musk’s whirlwind campaign to cut thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in government services in the name of efficiency, a bombshell report Wednesday revealed a staggering amount of taxpayer cash that goes directly to him.
The richest man in the world is one of the biggest earners paid from public money, the Washington Post found.
A deep dive into government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits found the South African billionaire has reaped $38 billion dollars of government cash.
The Post reported the payments started more than 20 years ago, as Musk secured a low-interest loan from the Energy Department as CEO of the then-struggling Tesla. That department is one of many now hit by mass layoffs and cuts led by Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
The Post spoke to unnamed sources from inside the government to back up its story.
Almost two-thirds of the cash came in the past five years, according to the report. Just last year, at least $6.3 billion was committed to Musk’s companies. They included cash to build a Tesla factory and NASA contracts to his company SpaceX to aid the moon program.
“The total amount is probably larger: This analysis includes only publicly available contracts, omitting classified defense and intelligence work for the federal government,” the Post reported.
It went on, “The Post found nearly a dozen other local grants, reimbursements and tax credits where the specific amount of money is not public.”
The report also found 52 contracts with seven government agencies that are set to pay another $111.8 billion over the next few years. All seven agencies have come under DOGE's microscope.
While Musk is not a paid government employee, he was a massive funder of now-President Donald Trump’s election campaign and is now a central part of his advisory team. He also heads DOGE, which he claims will slash trillions of dollars in government waste.
Musks’s part in the Trump administration has raised many red flags among onlookers about major conflicts of interest.
“Not every entrepreneur at this scale has been this dependent on federal money — certainly not Nvidia, not Microsoft, nor Amazon, nor Meta,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management.