Elon Musk took to social media early Wednesday to poke fun at himself after the Republican candidates he poured hundreds of millions of dollars into came up short in Tuesday’s midterm elections.
“Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time,” the Tesla and SpaceX CEO wrote on X, the platform he owns.
Musk spent more than $442 million boosting Republicans this cycle, with some campaign finance tallies putting the total as high as $474 million. That makes the world’s richest man the biggest known individual donor of the 2026 midterms. It also far exceeds the roughly quarter-billion dollars he spent in the 2024 presidential race.
It didn’t move the needle. Democrats seized control of both the House and Senate on Tuesday, winning competitive races across the map and defeating Republicans in several contests once considered long shots.
Texas was ground zero. Musk sent roughly $224 million into the Lone Star State, much of it to help Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton win the Senate seat held by Sen. John Cornyn. Paxton lost to Democrat James Talarico, giving Democrats their first statewide victory in Texas in decades. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott also lost, and Democrat Gina Hinojosa will take over the governor’s office.
Much of the money moved through super PACs. Musk gave $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC backing GOP Senate candidates. That money was almost immediately passed to a Texas super PAC supporting Paxton. He also kept funding America PAC, the group he launched during the 2024 election. He gave it $76.8 million in October alone, on top of $76 million between July and September.
Talarico made Musk a regular target in his stump speeches, frequently calling out the billionaire’s spending in the race.
The losses mark a sharp reversal for Musk, who largely stayed out of politics before 2024. After helping elect Trump that year, he led the Department of Government Efficiency and pushed for sweeping cuts across federal agencies. In May 2025, shortly before leaving that role, he said he planned to do “a lot less” political spending in the future. That promise did not hold.
Some analysts are already reading the results as a rebuke. A visiting senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund told CNBC the Texas outcome was a rejection of the Musk influence that had made its way into Trump’s orbit.
The stakes for Musk don’t end on election night. His companies are closely tied to the federal government. House Democrats, who will now have subpoena power, were already expected to scrutinize his role in the administration if they won the majority.
Musk wasn’t alone in spending big. According to the Federal Election Commission, nearly $12 billion was spent on this year’s midterms, an all-time record.
[READ MORE: Jasmine Crockett Dodges Praise for James Talarico on Election Day, Won’t Say His Name]
