If Nvidia’s Jensen Huang is the business world’s Bugs Bunny, playing every position on the baseball field by himself, Elon Musk is its Forrest Gump, materializing at the center of events both strange and consequential.
In just the past 10 days, Musk has cut a $1 billion check to help the Ellisons build a right-leaning media empire; tested market jitters with a gargantuan SpaceX bond offering; set in motion the largest-ever corporate merger and the largest-ever philanthropic gift; and set a new standard for all corporate demo days with an actual flying car. Further from Wall Street, he reset US foreign policy by cutting Ukraine off from Starlink — a move that says enough about who’s in charge that President Donald Trump claimed credit for reversing it — and dominated the midterm-elections homestretch with spending that will near $450 million this cycle.
After his post-DOGE meltdown last year, many had thought Musk had been neutered. He lost his lawsuit against OpenAI. SpaceX’s grandiose IPO prospectus drew titters from an investment community generally prone to believe outlandish promises. But like X, Musk has emerged stronger and more central to finance, politics, and culture.