Last month, Elon Musk reached a new milestone: He became the first person in modern history to achieve a net worth of $400 billion.
Musk made the jump after his rocket company, SpaceX, was recently valued at $350 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, causing a $20 billion jump in his net worth.
Related: Tesla faces ‘unprecedented’ downturn in one key area
The jump started speculation that Musk could become the world’s first trillionaire as soon as 2027.
But, while Elon Musk’s political activism was an asset in 2024 (he spent at least $250 million of his own money to help get Donald Trump re-elected), it has quickly turned into a liability for the mercurial Musk.
Tesla has suffered the most from Elon Musk’s political career
Trump’s win pushed Tesla’s stock price, and Musk’s fortune, to new heights. But Musk’s short time in Washington as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency and his relationship with President Trump have quickly turned from an asset to a liability for Tesla.
Tesla brand loyalty peaked in June 2024, according to S&P Global Mobility data seen by Reuters, when 73% of Tesla-owning households looking to buy a new car purchased another Tesla.
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S&P analyst Tom Libby told Reuters that Tesla’s decline from the unquestioned industry brand loyalty leader to industry average was “unprecedented.”
“I’ve never seen this rapid a decline in such a short period of time,” he said.
For the four years before July 2024, Tesla acquired, on average, five new households for every one it lost, well ahead of any rivals.
But since February 2025, Tesla has only gained fewer than two households for every one it lost to a competitor.
It seems that this development has caused Musk to rethink his political ambitions.
PayPal and Palantir technologies co-founder Peter Thiel knew Elon Musk long before he became a Republican major donor.
Image source: Angerer/Getty Images
Elon Musk abandons “third party” political ambitions
Elon Musk has told some of his confidants that he wants to focus his attention on his companies, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Musk is shelving plans to start a third political party independent of the Democrat and Republican U.S. parties.
He threatened to do so after a very public falling out with President Trump, after Musk was relieved of his position as the unofficial head of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Related: Elon Musk explains DOGE mission, takes shot at government
While the president and Musk have thrown political grenades at each other in recent months, they’ve also extended olive branches.
Musk has repeatedly claimed that President Trump appears in the government documents detailing the crimes of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Trump has, in turn, threatened to cut off the billions in government contracts Musk’s companies receive annually.
However, Musk has maintained ties with Vice President JD Vance, and he has told people in recent weeks that he doesn’t want his political ambitions to hurt his relationship with Vance.
JD Vance has been associated with Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel since at least 2011, according to Forbes. Vance switched his career from law to venture capital, joining the Thiel-co-founded Mithril Capital in 2015 as a partner, according to Politico.
Meanwhile, Musk and Thiel have been close for well over a decade. Musk grew up in Apartheid South Africa, the same country where Thiel went to school in the ’70s.
Thiel co-founded PayPal and served as its CEO, while Musk was chief product architect. Thiel was also an early investor in SpaceX and Tesla.
Fellow billionaire Mark Cuban publicly supported Musk’s third-party ambitions, but he told the Journal that he hasn’t spoken to Musk or his team about the new party.
Tesla’s brand loyalty has suffered under Elon Musk
Part of Musk’s hesitation has been the threat of alienating Republicans who like his political leanings, as well as the Democrats who have abandoned him since he declared himself “dark MAGA.”
Tesla brand loyalty peaked in June 2024, according to S&P Global Mobility data seen by Reuters, when 73% of Tesla-owning households looking to buy a new car purchased another Tesla.
This represented significant brand devotion, since among auto brands from the fourth quarter of 2021 through the third quarter of 2024, only Ford’s quarterly loyalty rate exceeded 60%, and only one time.
Yet more recent data, which tracks registration data across all 50 states, shows that Tesla’s loyalty rate bottomed in March, with just 49.9% of Tesla owners looking for another.
That number ticked back up to 57.4% in May. Musk’s last day at DOGE was May 30.