The world’s richest man was at the center of the 2024 presidential election. Elon Musk has never been far from political commentary thanks to his business interests and public profile. But in 2024, he put his considerable cultural and financial weight behind Donald Trump’s successful campaign to become US president for a second time.

The billionaire donated more than $119 million to a political action committee (PAC) for Trump’s election and spent weeks before the election encouraging voters in key battleground states to go to the polls by offering multimillion-dollar prizes.

Observers suggest that as a key Trump backer, Musk, who currently has a net worth of around $290 billion, is now poised to benefit from a direct line to the White House. The question is how?

South Africa’s richest export product

Born in Pretoria, South Africa, to property developer, engineer and former local politician Errol Musk and Canadian model and dietician Maye Musk, the billionaire first emigrated to the US in the 1990s.

He co-founded early Internet companies such as online city guide Zip2 and the financial services platform X.com, which later merged with a similar platform, PayPal. Today, he is probably best known for founding the private space exploration company SpaceX and providing the financing for the creation of electric car manufacturer Tesla. He is the CEO of both. He also founded tunnel builder The Boring Company and brain implant developer Neuralink.

Musk believes that humanity should become a multiplanetary species and populate other planets. This ambition is being pursued through SpaceX. Although it is a private company, it is increasingly intertwined with the US federal space agency NASA through billions of dollars in supply contracts, including the Starship Human Landing System that will be used on NASA’s own Artemis moon missions. SpaceX could also support NASA’s long-term plans for Mars exploration and pursue Musk’s own plans for colonizing Mars.

Musk has also said he thinks low birth rates are a bigger problem than climate change – something scientists and demographers strongly disagree with – and that he has fathered at least 12 children himself.

Musk turns to the right

Musk has not always supported Trump. He previously described himself as a moderate, halfway between Democrats and Republicans. In 2022, he suggested that Trump was too old to be president and that he should “sail into the sunset.” Trump responded by saying Musk had “begged” him for subsidies while in the White House.

But by the end of the 2024 election, any animosity had disappeared and Musk had poured an estimated $119 million into Trump’s campaign coffers.

Musk has long been an incendiary public personality. Much of that was due to his high public profile on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. In 2022, he acquired the platform for $44 billion and renamed it “X”. During his time at the helm of the platform, Musk has also become a recognized spreader of disinformation. He also fired many staffers, allowed banned, controversial users back onto the platform, including Trump, and alienated advertisers. This eventually caused an exodus of other users from the platform, and Twitter is now valued at about a fifth of the original price Musk paid.

But that doesn’t seem to interest Musk, who joined a group of several billionaires with a mass media platform when he acquired Twitter.

“There are wealthy people who … want to continue making money and see the world through the prism of their business interests and accumulate more wealth,” says David Faris, an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University who has written about the influence of wealth on American politics.

“And then there are people who are so rich, (they say) ‘I don’t care if I lose $44 billion buying Twitter.’ (Musk) seems to fall into the latter category. He’s using his wealth in a way that doesn’t make economic sense.”

Will Elon Musk enter politics?

Because he was born in South Africa, he cannot run for U.S. presidency, but as a U.S. citizen he could run for lower office. He could also simply be working to influence policy through his Trump connections.

Steve Nelson, a political economist at Northwestern University, has observed the tendency of billionaires to hold political office, although this has mainly occurred in autocracies. In democracies, it is less common for partisans to donate money to candidates they support.

“For someone like Musk, it’s probably the case that you have a very strong personal interest in pursuing a particular policy agenda that you don’t think can be controlled in a more indirect way,” Nelson told DW.

Trump has previously suggested that Musk could be put in charge of a federal efficiency department — essentially a cost-cutting function for the government.

Nelson can imagine Musk trying to win political office, perhaps thinking he would be better able to pursue certain goals if he were actually in power, rather than relying on others.

“For Musk, I think there is an almost messianic belief in his own effectiveness and a very clear agenda around frontier technologies,” Nelson told DW.

SpaceX will likely flourish during Trump’s second term, but other Musk companies may not. Trump has said he will cut back on climate-focused initiatives, including in electric transportation — Tesla’s bread and butter.

It’s possible that Musk’s support for Trump could help buffer his companies against adverse policy conditions or create a more lucrative environment for them.

But some business experts say viewing the world’s richest man through that lens is too simplistic.

“When many people try to understand Elon Musk, they try to read his behavior through the lens of business incentives,” said Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of Global Business at Tufts University’s Fletcher School.

“That’s half of what’s going on. This is an individual who is very much driven by a personal dopamine hit. (His) is a dopamine-driven business and that ego often pushes him to start companies and make promises to do and set goals that would achieve that.” would be considered bizarre to anyone else.”

“That largely explains many of his successes, and also his excesses,” Chakravorti concluded.