July 22, 2025 • 34 mins
On this week’s episode of Elon, Inc., host Max Chafkin and Bloomberg News reporter Ed Ludlow discuss their cover story for the latest issue of Bloomberg Businessweek. Their reporting details the ways in which Elon Musk’s companies—specifically Tesla, SpaceX and xAI—are struggling in the wake of his feud with President Donald Trump.
Chafkin and Ludlow break down where each of these companies stands now, and analyze how investors are rationalizing their continued investments in the multibillionaire’s sprawling endeavors.
Then Bloomberg News technology editor Sarah Frier takes over the hosting chair to interview Wall Street Journal reporter Dana Mattioli about Musk’s many offspring, including his custody agreements and pro-natalist leanings. The conversation is the second in a summer series in which our Elon, Inc. panelists interview Musk reporters from outside Bloomberg about stories we wished we wrote first.
Mattioli explains Musk’s stated desire to populate Mars and further populate Earth, how he’s using his social media platform to recruit mothers and why observers think it’s likely he has more than the 14 kids that are publicly known. She also digs into how Musk’s fixer Jared Birchall has interacted with the mothers of Musk’s children, including Ashley St. Clair, whose public child support battle with Musk shed light on Birchall’s tactics.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Let me tell you we have a new star.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
A star is born Elan mars Jus and Kennemy. He
is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
I feel for the guy. I would say ninety eight
percent really appreciate what he DOESK but those two percent
that are nasty, they are I'll pay in full pos
We were meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Us of that.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I'm very disappointed in Elan.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I've helped Elon a lot.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Welcome to Elon Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Tuesday, July twenty second. I'm Max Chafkin, filling in
for David Popadopolos. Later in this episode, we have another
interview in our summer series that we're doing with some
of our favorite Elon Musk reporters. We're going to talk
to them about the stories that they've written recently that
we're jealous of, that we wish we had written. This week,
(01:08):
we've got our very own Sarah Fryar, Bloomberg Big Technology Editor,
speaking with Wall Street Journal reporter Dana Mattioli about an
article she wrote in March about Elon's kids, his custody agreements,
and the pro natalist thing around all of this. Dana
is an incredible investigative reporter. She wrote the book The
Everything War, and this is a great conversation and also
(01:30):
one that sort of perfectly relates to the next thing
we're going to talk about here on the podcast, which
is that my friend and colleague Ed Ludlow, co host
of the Bloomberg Technology television show, is joining from our
SF office. He and I just wrote a cover story
about all the ways that Elon Musk's business empire is stretched,
and we're gonna have a conversation about that.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Ed, Hello, good morning.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
You are, in addition to the co host of Bloomberg Technology,
like you are just super plugged into the world of tech,
and in particular are plugged in to the world of
Elon Musk. You and I talk in private about this
stuff all the time, so it's kind of cool that
we're doing this now. The story, just for people who
haven't read it yet and hopefully you will, is about
(02:12):
the way that Elon's companies are operating at a time
of all of this political uncertainty, that Elon is maybe
stretched more thinly than he ever has, Like he's coming
back to Washington quote unquote at a time of extreme
political pressure, this fight with President Trump, these threats to
start a new political party, and at the same time
(02:35):
you have all of these challenges. And in the story,
you and I sort of break it down into three buckets,
and I figured we could sort of start with the
one that actually comes last in the story, but I
think makes sense to start with first here, which is Xai.
Sure this company ed operates chatbots. It is the technology
(02:56):
behind Grock on Twitter, or x as it's now called,
And as our colleagues of Bloomberg have reported, it's losing
something like a billion dollars a month. There's been this
swirl of controversy. The words mecha hitler have been uttered
several times over the last couple of weeks. ED, what
is the bull case? Like, like, would do you see
(03:17):
any signs of actual progress? Like I just rattle off
a bunch of kind of concerning things about Xai, Like
what are investors getting excited about?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Here?
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Well, the investors would point you to to how Xai
went about introducing GROCK four and GROK four Heavy, which
is its latest models, and the way that they would
put it is well, XAI did the sort of non
traditional Elon Musk thing, which was that they had a
sort of more muted, calm technical presentation that was detailed
(03:46):
and not so much off the cuff, like you and
I've been to all these Tesla events or SpaceX events
where must always goes off script a little bit. But
with Grock four, the way they presented it was against
traditional benchmarks for other frontier or large language models, and
against those benchmarks it does really well. But what's so
interesting about it is that it's timing. Like timing is
kind of everything. So as we speak, the President is
(04:09):
going to kind of come out and tell the world
about what his plan for AI is. And it's kind
of really notable that Musk isn't really there in the room,
so to speak, like he was at the absolute critical
juncture from a policy perspective. But as you and I
discussed and we report throughout the story, like XAI is
Musk's obsession. He has this kind of like chip on
(04:29):
his shoulder that XAI should have a valuation that's competitive
with open Ai, where he was one of the sort
of original founders and he has that beef of Sam Altman,
and he also is like super bullish on its capabilities.
But as you said, like financially it's burning through cash.
It's a bit sort of tongue in cheek. And the
bit that we look at is like in the magazine
(04:50):
piece is like, is Elon there in the room? Like
what is he doing amidst all the rest of the
chaos and his political and career life.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Here's us, we're to me. Like these ai companies open
ai is good example, are both consumer products and like
business software products, and like open ai sort of famously
started as as essentially a consumer product, a bunch of
people making funny stuff to put on Twitter, essentially like
asking open ai to write a poem about you know whatever,
(05:22):
the Coldplay couple or something right, and Grock succeeds. I
think on that level, like Rock is everywhere on Twitter.
Probably doesn't hurt that Elon Musk owns the platform, but
like on X these days, you know, it's like it
seems like every other tweet is somebody either interacting with
Rock or being like Grock, Is this true? As kind
of a dunk or reposting something about Rock and of
(05:43):
course probably no coincidence that Elano owns both those products.
But the future here is people paying for this stuff,
and it's so hard for me to imagine somebody like
wanting to Grock api instead of the open Ai API
or something like that, just because of all the controversy
that we're talking about.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Yeah, the way that some XAI is is kind of
like classic Musk play or Elon inc History, which is
move fast and break things. This is kind of one
of the taglines of the story, like Musk inventing his
way out of trouble. But what they have done in
an incredibly short amount of time is impressive.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Right.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
The only founded xai a couple of years ago. There
are people that work at Xai whose job is to
sell to enterprise customers, but honestly, we have no idea
how that's going really. You know. The interface is the
Grock chatbot, and I found that really interesting when Grock
four was presented that in the public's consciousness and in
(06:41):
the culture, there's no distinction between chatbot and the underlying technology.
It's just Grock. So it's all kind of a bit muddled. However, again,
you know, on common metrics and benchmarks. Grock four is performance.
You know what they did with their data center in Memphis,
which is called Colossus, is astonishing. I speak to a
lot of people in the AI infrastructure industry, and this
(07:03):
is the thing that Elon Musk is good at. Just
like in many ways, Rules be Damned, move fast. We're
doing this and no one can tell me otherwise. But
the net effect of that, or the negative of that,
is that you then have to go back and like
plug in the other holes. And you know is XAI.
I'm sure there's a lot of that company that should
be in place to commercialize.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Well yeah, and not only like Rules of Damned, but
being willing to kind of spend money quickly to invest,
which brings me to other thing I've sort of been
wondering about. I mean, one thing that has created I
think strength in Elon Musk's empire is and I hate
to use this word, but like synergy. Right, Like these
companies are not independent, they are connected, and like sometimes
(07:43):
often maybe those connections have been useful to Elon Musk.
Like for sure, SpaceX's success has helped propel Tesla's brand,
right like the aura of genius around Elon musk Helps,
which is created i'd say largely by SpaceX, has sort
of allowed Tesla to claim some of that mantle and
(08:03):
ed on the topic of X losing money and X
needing money. You know, you have reported with our colleague
Dana Holp on the fact that it's not just that
he's raising all his money from investors, he's raising the
money from his own company. SpaceX is going to put
or try to put anyway, two billion dollars into XAI.
Elon has also said that Tesla is going to try
(08:25):
to put five billion dollars in XAI. Why is this happening?
To me? This seems like evidence of brittleness, But I'm
kind of curious what you think.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
Yeah, brittleness or interruptability or call it whatever you want.
I mean, the main thing that we'll get into, I'm sure,
is this idea that if you count all of the
companies that Elon must involved in on one or two hands,
that's a lot of his time split between very different domains,
but there is overlap between them, and that's always been
the case, right Like, particularly in R and D. There's
(08:54):
loads of history in Tesla and SpaceX doing shared work
on materials for example, some of that led to the
heat sing or the heat discs on the starship. But
the real question is the future. So why is SpaceX
putting two billion dollars into XAI? Why would Tesla do that?
And the way that investors and people inside all these
(09:16):
companies explain it to me is vertically integrated AI infrastructure
or AI technology.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Stack Grock and your Tesla baby.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
Yeah, so it's all of the above. And like you know,
XAI is the frontier or large language model maker. It
writes the underlying technology. You need a way of interacting
with that technology. So we have groc available as a
standalone app or through the x social media platform interface
and now inside the Tesla vehicle. Right, So if you
are a Tesla owner listening to this, you'll know that
(09:44):
one of the frustrations is can't use Apple car Play
in a Tesla, so it doesn't have the same sort
of serie capabilities or other there are other voice assistants available,
but now Grock kind of fixes that. The next evolution
of that is like you start to lose the thread
a bit, which is why SpaceX well data is the
underpinning of all things now and The way that people
(10:05):
pitch it to me is that Starlink basically provides you
with the most beautiful space based data center you could
ever have the ability, particularly on inference. So rather than
training models by Xai people running them, you have low latency,
super high speed automatic connection at low cost, and Starlink
kind of facilitates us using all of that. The Tesla
(10:28):
bit is where I start to lose a thread a
bit beyond just going into vehicles and making cars more appealing.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
You can talk to you know, your anti wok Ai
while you're driving. I honestly think what you're saying about.
How the investors rationalize this is important because it helps
get at like both the psychology and maybe the ball
case for some of these companies. It really does, to me, though,
feel just like a rationalization, and because the real reason
(10:56):
is Elon wants it and like they believe in Elon, and.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Elon notes the limits right, So on x the social platform,
somebody said, oh, Tesla should just buy Xai outright, and
must say no, I don't believe that. But again, the
way it's explained to me is that there's a high
degree of crossover, and this brings us back to the
magazine piece and a must relationship or roller coaster of
relationship with the president. Each of these companies, SpaceX, Tesla, XAI,
(11:21):
even Boring Co and Neuralink have distinct regulatory exposure. They
are within their own domains. There's a specific regulatory body
for each and if they were suddenly to come under
one umbrella, one big conglomerate, I think most insiders in
that company and people close to Mask and investors that
we spoke to know that that would be a nightmare.
So he's at least aware enough to say there's a
(11:44):
limit to how integrated these companies can be.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Let's move on to SpaceX at least, yeah, because you
know this two billion dollar investment or whatever. The thing
that I've wondered is like, doesn't SpaceX need that two dollars?
I'm curious ed as you talk to investors in Elon
Musk how they see SpaceX right now, because I mean,
clearly it's like the strongest of the companies, I'd say,
(12:13):
but also there's potential weakness.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Here too, just based on data. In fact, you know,
SpaceX dominates the vast majority of commercial payload to orbit,
whether that payload be human or satellite based. This is
the umbrella story that so beautifully captured through SpaceX, which
is Musk's relationship with the President and the administration giveth,
(12:35):
but they also taketh away. And you know, you should
look at this in the in the lens of exposure.
So SpaceX has many commercial contracts with third parties, but
it is reliant on NASA contracts and grants. It has
many DoD and Pentagon contracts with the defense apparatus of
this nation. And when the going was good, the story
(12:57):
was really simple, particularly through starlink. If I am a
head of state of a country somewhere in the world,
I would like to quite get close to President Trump.
What shall I do? Well, maybe I could offer Elon
Musks starlink access in this country. Just make it easy
for him, right.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
If you don't have a sixteen million dollar lasted settlement
to pay, that is the best option.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Right, and then take us away. You know, fast forward
to a deteriorating relationship, and the president's literal threat was
I will cancel all of these federal contracts for SpaceX,
which would have a dent. Your original question was does
SpaceX need the money SpaceX? Is it a point where
the Starlink business space based constellation internet, which is on
(13:39):
paper a much higher margin business, has eclipsed launching in
terms of revenue. But Musk has always said that that
there is a ceiling to the amount of money you
can make from sending stuff into space. Here's the crux
of the issue for the investors. Musk's big picture is
SpaceX lives as the Starship to get humankind to Mars.
The investors look at st as a high margin space based,
(14:03):
consolation based internet and think that's the future, and we'd
love that to be spun out. We'd love for it
to be IPO's and not looking as far ahead as Mars. Necessarily.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yeah, I do wonder how badly Starlink needs Starship to work,
you know, because the great thing about Starship is you
could put a lot of Starlink satellites into orbit at once.
There are questions, I've heard this in my own reporting.
There are questions about what the finances of Starlink look
like if you don't eventually make these gigantic rockets work. Right,
(14:34):
all right, let's move on to Tesla. This is topical
both because I think it's the most extreme case of
the ways in which Musk's sort of business is colliding
with politics. Also Tesla's reporting earnings tomorrow. You've got demand
for cars, for Tesla cars anyway falling, you have competition
from China. You have maybe a robotaxi business that's off
(14:55):
to sort of a slowish start. And I have struggled
to find a silver line here for this company, especially
from the point of view an investor. And I'm kind
of curious, like where investors see a ballcase here at
this point, with the stark very highly valued and all
of the challenges that I just laid.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Out, the ballcase is and would have been that Elon
Musk went into the White House and got in close
proximity with the President in order to come out of
the White House with policy, federal level policy that is
favorable for a robotaxi future. To be fair or the
to be sure is that in the lead up to
(15:33):
November's election, must campaigned on the deficit and the budget
and cutting back on behalf of a swollen government. But
the sense, the very real sense I get, is that
he had some foresight that he would be able and
indeed he said it, you know, on an earnings call
prior to November's election. Look, if I get a formal
position in the government, I'm going to use it to
(15:55):
advocate for federal level robotaxi frameworks. And that's important because now,
even though there's legislation that's been introduced and is due
to pass its way through Congress, there isn't a sort
of nationwide set of rules. It's kind of state by state.
But the Tesla future is one where they own and
operate a proprietary ride hailing platform with their own cyber
(16:16):
cabs and consumer vehicles that consumers agree to submit to
the fleet. But on the cyber cab part, in particular,
the number of vehicles you can have on public roads
with out steering wheel no driver controls is limited to
a few thousand at the moment, and obviously, if Elon
is to realize this great, big dream of tens of
thousands or more robotaxis driving around America, then those rules
(16:40):
will need to change. So he went in to get that.
As it stands, he hasn't come out with that. And
so that's how I look at it, as well as
like you tell me, it's a kind of simple story,
and that Tesla is the only publicly traded proxy for
sentiment of Elon Inc. So you just follow the stock.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Yeah, it's it. You're right, And that is such a
big part of the story, the sort of both the
fandom aspect, but also the fact that you cannot buy
stock at least not easily in SpaceX or xai. And
do you think we talk on this podcast? I don't
know if this is kind of filtered to you. Do
you know about mahmout No, Musk always makes up with Trump.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
It's the idea, okay, that.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Coined by me and David Popadopolis, that there is mutual
self interest here that these two men will move inexorably
closer together because, as you say, like, it's in Elon's interest.
I think also it's in Donald Trump's interest because Musk
is such an important donor and donor to Republicans.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Was yeah, right, Republicans.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Yeah, you see a path here? Do you see any
way they would want to try to make up? I mean,
do you see any chance of that or has that
ship sailed?
Speaker 4 (17:47):
The way that I look at it as a technology
journalist in particular, is that the goals of Tesla, as
a US manufacturer of hardware and the US developer of software.
Same with XAI is just highly analogous with the ambitions
of this administration. There is an irony, and I know
that in this calendar week when you and I are speaking,
(18:07):
the world is going to find out a lot more
about how the Trump administration will approach AI from a
regulatory and policy perspective, and as it stands, must won't
be there. Ironically, the test rinding score will be at
the same time and kind of underway. But you know,
SpaceX is the national champion of space exploration pardon the
play on the name. Tesla is the US manufacturer of
(18:29):
automobiles electric vehicles, even if the future is different, and
they kind of all agree on that where they fell apart.
You know, Musk at least he's consistent in some respects,
and he was in the lead up to November's election,
was like, look, I'm really worried about the ballooning budget
and bringing the deficit down and government spending and this
(18:51):
is why I'm going into dog. And he didn't achieve
the things necessarily that he said that he would. But
the president, through the big beautiful bill and the tax bill,
they clearly have a point of fiscal difference. Now they've
fallen out over that well, which seems to be I
don't know, you know, you tell me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Certainly true, I agree with everything you just said. But
there's also and maybe we'll see this on the earnings call.
I think this is a topic too for future podcasts.
But like the Big Beautiful Bill, now, the Big Beautiful Act,
I guess is very bad for Tesla. I mean, there's
a chance that Tesla loses money in the fourth quarter
because of this bill. And I think it's not just
the fact that the deficits went up according to projections
(19:30):
by the Congression Budget Office, went up, and Elon Musk
was all about, you know, being a deficit hawk, but
also that while that was happening, all of this money
is being pulled away from Elon Musk's interests, right.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
I mean, there is never enough time to go line
by line through everything Musk has said any given week,
and going back to the start of the year, the
question is their staying power relative to the rest of
the automotive industry, And Musk would argue, yeah, we got this.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
All right, Ed. It is always fun to talk to you.
Thanks again for doing this and we'll talk soon.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
A top on a thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
All Right, we've been talking about the way that Elon
Musk's business empire is stretched thin. But of course, part
of why so many people have been concerned, why investors
are concerned, is it's not just the business empire, it's
also his personal life. And that's where the next conversation
really becomes interesting. This is an interview that our friend
and Elon and regular Sarah Fryar did with the Wall
(20:30):
Street Journal reporter Dana Mattioli about Elon and his kids.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Have a listen, Dana, thank you so much for coming here.
I'll let you give us the summary of this reporting
and how you came to reveal this story to the
world in the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Well, thank you for having me. Yeah. In March, and
probably in early March, I sat down with one of
my editors, Chris Stewart, who's that investigations at the Wall
Street Journal, and I'd been hearing and my colleagues have
been hearing that Elon had more kids than were known about,
and we started thinking about this pro natalist movement out
of the Valley and what that means, and also what
(21:07):
it would mean for the world's richest man who at
that period of time was definitely one of the most
powerful people in the world on a political stage. He
was the biggest donor to Donald Trump's a reelection effort,
two hundred and fifty million dollars for this big super
pack he created, and he was like really by Trump's
side every step of the way back in March April timeframe.
(21:28):
Making these huge decisions for average Americans is part of DOGE.
So yeah, we wanted to reveal what it was like
being opposite the world's most powerful and richest man on
custody if you had children with him, and I was
able to get a lot of access to one of
the people that he has a baby with, Ashley Saint Clair,
(21:51):
and understand the financial arrangements behind having a baby with
Elon Musk, the custody arrangements, And what we came to
learn is that having a baby with Elon Musk is
often a very big power struggle. That in the situation
that I was able to reveal, this twenty six year
old woman who had his baby was in this very
(22:12):
contentious paternity battle with him where he wouldn't acknowledge paternity
and he was pressuring her not to have legal representation
in these matters, and there were very one sided, lopsided
terms that she was feeling pressured to accept, and we
wanted to really just portray for our readers what that
(22:33):
was like at a time when Elon is the world's
richest man, was one of the most powerful people in
the world on the political stage, and how messy and
complicated his personal life was behind the scenes.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
And you know, when you're at the Wall Street Journal,
you're writing for a business audience. And one thing that
really struck me about this story is the main character
fighting Elon Musk's battles for him him is Jared Britschall,
who's the head of his family office. He's listed as
(23:05):
the CFO for several of his companies. He's the one who,
as you know it in the story, led the Tunere
fifty million investment in Donald Trump's reelection. He's the guy
who does everything. He's like the fixer for Elon, and
it was really interesting to see him take on this role.
Can you explain how he manages what Musk calls his
(23:27):
legion of children h That was.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Really interesting for us too, because Jared is listed as
an executive at a bunch of Elon Musk Companies. He's
his right hand man. He goes to lots of his
business meetings with him. He's like sort of a conduit
on the business side. But behind the scenes, he also
had this other see to your role where he's managing
these women having babies with Musk and that goes to
(23:51):
you know, managing the NDAs that they sign acquiring land
for a compound out in Austin where Elon would like
all these kids and these moms to live. Was involved
in that and also you know, in trying to make
them agree to some onerous terms that Elon would like
them to accept in exchange for money. And what I
found is, you know, through lots of text messages, phone calls,
(24:14):
Jared's own words was that he was often the enforcer.
He makes these veiled threats to Ashley in a phone
call from December where he says, you know, Elon is
a really great guy, but there's another side to him
that if the women he's in relationships with get legal counsel,
you know, things often change. It doesn't come to a
(24:35):
nice outcome for them, right, So there's that side to
him too, and we just see him really being the
enforcer There's another scene in the story that I thought
was just like really gripping, where Ashley Saint Clair is
giving birth. She's in the hospital in labor by herself
because Elon was not there, and Jared is sending her
(24:55):
signal messages saying, don't put Elon's name on the birth certificate.
And this is a woman in labor, and Jared is
on top of things like sending her very frequent updates.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
About putting her in her place.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yeah, right, And it's very clear from the phone calls
from other messages that this is not the first time
he's done that. This is very standard for him in
these sorts of arrangements.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
And he waits often until she's literally in the delivery
room to make that request.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Or yeah, that's right. And shortly after that's when an
NDA showed up for her to sign that she found
to be really just one sided and not fair and.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
In a medically traumatic moment for getting handed DA exactly.
And to be clear, the reason that Musk wants her
to sign the NDA, or the reason that he gives
at least through Jared, is that he cares about privacy.
He says, you know, I'm second in line after Trump
for assassination and if all hell breaks loose, like this
(25:55):
is for protection of the child. But then in this agreement,
I mean, it didn't seem to really line up with
that idea of protecting the child.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Now that that is the excuse he gave us, that
it would protect the child if the child's progeny was
not known, But then you'd see him do things that
would be really conflicting with that statement. Right at the
same time, he's bringing his four year old son X
to really high profile situations, target rich environments where there
(26:27):
could be bad actors. You know, people have made assassination
attempt on Donald Trump, and then there's this child on
his shoulders around Donald Trump and these rallies and you know,
at the White House grounds. So people have called that
out as hypocritical as well.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
What does Musk mean when he talks about having a legion.
I mean, that's a term that evokes an army, like
you think of an army when you think of a legion, Like,
why is he using that language to describe the children
that will have as DNA.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yeah, So Musk ascribes to a belief that there are
not enough children being born in the US in Western Europe.
He's kind of in this pro natalist category that is
worried about population decline, and he's worried that if we
can't even populate the Earth, how will we populate Mars,
which is his ultimate goal through his company called SpaceX,
and he has taken it upon himself. He encourages other
(27:20):
people to have a lot of children as well, especially
well educated people, but he's also taken it upon himself
to live out that mission. And what's fascinating to me
is in text messages to Ashley that I was able
to view, he tells her you should have ten children.
He even tells her that, you know, in order to
have our legion of babies, we should have lots of
surrogates at the same time to mass populate, right, not
(27:42):
enough just to have one child at once, you know,
Let's bring on surrogates and have more babies. And the
people I spoke to around him think that there are
many more babies, that this is just the tip of
the iceberg. The fourteen that are publicly.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Known on the scale of well, you know, now to
Pavlo d'erov one hundred, it's a telegram ceo who has
one hundred children, created with his sperm. Where is Musk
on that trajectory?
Speaker 2 (28:06):
So we don't know for sure. I mean, we did
break in the story that he has given his sperm
to people he doesn't even know. There's an example in
the story where officials from Japan come to Austin to
meet with him and ask for his sperm for some
very high profile Japanese women, and he says yes. He
tells Ashley that, you know, no romance involved, He's just
setting off a sperm sample. So there's that situation. And
(28:27):
then we have situations where we know he used his
platform X, which he bought in twenty twenty two, to
try to recruit women to have babies with, oftentimes women
he didn't know. That's actually how it started with Ashley.
There's also another example and the story where he reaches
out to an influencer named Tiffany Fong starts interacting with
her here and there, liking her posts.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Set Okay, this is the part of the we're talking
about stories were jealous of. This is a part of
the story I was very jealous of because I've frequently
thought about, like, now that muss is and of X
the social network, how is he using that control for
personal gain or adjusting the rules. And you have all
these people who are making money off of their posts
(29:10):
on X and does it benefit them to be close
to Elon, to get retweeted by Elon? And you show
how that business relationship got a little bit complicated by
Musk's request.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Well, in short, if Elon starts interacting with your posts
on X and you are an influencer or you're part
of their program where you get paid for interactions, it's
a gold mine for you that could make a meaningful
difference in your following, in the interactions and your payouts.
And he started doing that with this influencer named Tiffany Fong,
also more of a right wing influencer in the bitcoin space.
(29:46):
He starts interacting with her and she sees her followers
just explode on X. He's retweeting her, he's in her comments,
he's sending flirty messages to her, and then one day
he hops into her DMS and he asked if she'd
be interested in pairing one of his babies. She was
in a relationship at the time with her boyfriend. It
sort of came out of nowhere and she winds up
(30:09):
declining the offerer, but she tells a few people, including
Ashley Saint Clair about it, and this gets back to
Elon and then he chides her for not using discretion
for telling anyone that he offered her a baby, and
then he unfollows her, and from there she goes from
having twenty one thousand dollars a month in revenue and
X went at the height of when he's interacting with
(30:31):
her to seeing that fall off a cliff because the
followers dry up, the interactions dry up, and has a
meaningful effect on her income when this is the main
source of income. So there are consequences to that, especially
for these influencers that rely on X for a lot
of money.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
As you look at at this story and like you've
been a business reporter for a long time, like, how
do you apply what you learn here to understanding musk
the businessman, Because that's a very clear example of how
he's mixing his business goals with his baby making goals,
or maybe they are one and the same. Maybe that's
all the umbrella under which he wants to take us
(31:10):
to Mars is adding more babies to the world, and
he sees it as like a business transaction to do that.
But what did learning about Birchall's role, Tiffany's problem, Ashley
Saint Clair's legal battle, how does that color our perception
of Musk the businessman.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Well, I think it's a lot of it's intertwined. What
we learned from reporting out the story is that Musk
runs five different companies and the greater goal of all
of them is to one day get humans into a
multiplanetary existence and get to Mars. So SpaceX is overtly that, right,
But even the profits from the other ones go toward
that mission. And then at his home life is supporting
(31:49):
that mission too, because he wants to reverse population decline.
So I think a lot of it is intertwined. And
I think there's blurred lines between some of the company
behavior and his personal behavior, like as you see him
using you know, his tweets to support different causes, like
you know, run the election. He got very political starting
last year about you know, Trump's reelection. That was like
(32:12):
more about personal goals, right, and what we see him
doing in the DMS is more about his personal life.
So I think a lot of it is really intertwined.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
It's so interesting too, Like we talked earlier in our
conversation about how he's a man of contradictions. I actually
saw your story cited by Charlie Warzel in his piece
in the Atlantic about how Musk is playing God, or
at least that was his argument that, you know, as
he has this mission of furthering Western civilization, he is
(32:44):
through the cuts US AID, leading to a lot of
deaths in countries in Africa. And I'm curious to you
if you have a thought on that argument or if
that was part of your takeaway too as you're looking
at these decisions that Musks makes.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Well. I think it's interesting when you speak to people
in the pro natalist community the areas that they target
that are concerns for them. They oftentimes reference to the
US in particular, and like Western Europe. And there is
a quote in the story where Musk tells someone that
he is worried that third world countries are outbreading the
US and Western Europe.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
I think that's like pretty telling that there's concern for
specific geographies but not others.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Yeah, and the idea, I guess you also quote Shavon
Zillah saying that she was asked to make children with
Musk because he wants to add more smart people to
the world his definition of smart people.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, and he's told other people that too. He really
wants very intelligent people to breed more. That's definitely one
of his goals.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Dana Mattioli, thank you so much for being here. I
love hearing your take, and I really enjoyed reading your
take on another billionaire who we talk about often, Jeff Bezos.
Dana Mattioli's book is called The Everything War. It's a
story of Amazon's dominance and includes a lot of great
detail on Bezos and his fight in Washington. Thank you
(34:10):
so much for being here, and good luck with all
the scoops.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
This episode was produced by Stacy Wong and edited by
Anna Masarakis. Blake Maples handles engineering, and Dave Purcell fact checks.
Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrickson. The Elannin theme is
written and performed by Taka Yazuzawa and Alex Sagiera. Sage
Bauman is head of Bloomberg Podcast. A big thanks to
our supporters Joel Webber and Bradstone. I'm Max Chafkin. If
(34:46):
you have a minute, rate and review our show, it'll
help other listeners find us, and we will see you
next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Let me tell you we have a new star.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
A star is born Elan mars Jus and Kennemy. He
is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
I feel for the guy. I would say ninety eight
percent really appreciate what he DOESK but those two percent
that are nasty, they are I'll pay in full pos
We were meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Us of that.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I'm very disappointed in Elan.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I've helped Elon a lot.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Welcome to Elon Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Tuesday, July twenty second. I'm Max Chafkin, filling in
for David Popadopolos. Later in this episode, we have another
interview in our summer series that we're doing with some
of our favorite Elon Musk reporters. We're going to talk
to them about the stories that they've written recently that
we're jealous of, that we wish we had written. This week,
(01:08):
we've got our very own Sarah Fryar, Bloomberg Big Technology Editor,
speaking with Wall Street Journal reporter Dana Mattioli about an
article she wrote in March about Elon's kids, his custody agreements,
and the pro natalist thing around all of this. Dana
is an incredible investigative reporter. She wrote the book The
Everything War, and this is a great conversation and also
(01:30):
one that sort of perfectly relates to the next thing
we're going to talk about here on the podcast, which
is that my friend and colleague Ed Ludlow, co host
of the Bloomberg Technology television show, is joining from our
SF office. He and I just wrote a cover story
about all the ways that Elon Musk's business empire is stretched,
and we're gonna have a conversation about that.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Ed, Hello, good morning.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
You are, in addition to the co host of Bloomberg Technology,
like you are just super plugged into the world of tech,
and in particular are plugged in to the world of
Elon Musk. You and I talk in private about this
stuff all the time, so it's kind of cool that
we're doing this now. The story, just for people who
haven't read it yet and hopefully you will, is about
(02:12):
the way that Elon's companies are operating at a time
of all of this political uncertainty, that Elon is maybe
stretched more thinly than he ever has, Like he's coming
back to Washington quote unquote at a time of extreme
political pressure, this fight with President Trump, these threats to
start a new political party, and at the same time
(02:35):
you have all of these challenges. And in the story,
you and I sort of break it down into three buckets,
and I figured we could sort of start with the
one that actually comes last in the story, but I
think makes sense to start with first here, which is Xai.
Sure this company ed operates chatbots. It is the technology
(02:56):
behind Grock on Twitter, or x as it's now called,
And as our colleagues of Bloomberg have reported, it's losing
something like a billion dollars a month. There's been this
swirl of controversy. The words mecha hitler have been uttered
several times over the last couple of weeks. ED, what
is the bull case? Like, like, would do you see
(03:17):
any signs of actual progress? Like I just rattle off
a bunch of kind of concerning things about Xai, Like
what are investors getting excited about?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Here?
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Well, the investors would point you to to how Xai
went about introducing GROCK four and GROK four Heavy, which
is its latest models, and the way that they would
put it is well, XAI did the sort of non
traditional Elon Musk thing, which was that they had a
sort of more muted, calm technical presentation that was detailed
(03:46):
and not so much off the cuff, like you and
I've been to all these Tesla events or SpaceX events
where must always goes off script a little bit. But
with Grock four, the way they presented it was against
traditional benchmarks for other frontier or large language models, and
against those benchmarks it does really well. But what's so
interesting about it is that it's timing. Like timing is
kind of everything. So as we speak, the President is
(04:09):
going to kind of come out and tell the world
about what his plan for AI is. And it's kind
of really notable that Musk isn't really there in the room,
so to speak, like he was at the absolute critical
juncture from a policy perspective. But as you and I
discussed and we report throughout the story, like XAI is
Musk's obsession. He has this kind of like chip on
(04:29):
his shoulder that XAI should have a valuation that's competitive
with open Ai, where he was one of the sort
of original founders and he has that beef of Sam Altman,
and he also is like super bullish on its capabilities.
But as you said, like financially it's burning through cash.
It's a bit sort of tongue in cheek. And the
bit that we look at is like in the magazine
(04:50):
piece is like, is Elon there in the room? Like
what is he doing amidst all the rest of the
chaos and his political and career life.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Here's us, we're to me. Like these ai companies open
ai is good example, are both consumer products and like
business software products, and like open ai sort of famously
started as as essentially a consumer product, a bunch of
people making funny stuff to put on Twitter, essentially like
asking open ai to write a poem about you know whatever,
(05:22):
the Coldplay couple or something right, and Grock succeeds. I
think on that level, like Rock is everywhere on Twitter.
Probably doesn't hurt that Elon Musk owns the platform, but
like on X these days, you know, it's like it
seems like every other tweet is somebody either interacting with
Rock or being like Grock, Is this true? As kind
of a dunk or reposting something about Rock and of
(05:43):
course probably no coincidence that Elano owns both those products.
But the future here is people paying for this stuff,
and it's so hard for me to imagine somebody like
wanting to Grock api instead of the open Ai API
or something like that, just because of all the controversy
that we're talking about.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Yeah, the way that some XAI is is kind of
like classic Musk play or Elon inc History, which is
move fast and break things. This is kind of one
of the taglines of the story, like Musk inventing his
way out of trouble. But what they have done in
an incredibly short amount of time is impressive.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Right.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
The only founded xai a couple of years ago. There
are people that work at Xai whose job is to
sell to enterprise customers, but honestly, we have no idea
how that's going really. You know. The interface is the
Grock chatbot, and I found that really interesting when Grock
four was presented that in the public's consciousness and in
(06:41):
the culture, there's no distinction between chatbot and the underlying technology.
It's just Grock. So it's all kind of a bit muddled. However, again,
you know, on common metrics and benchmarks. Grock four is performance.
You know what they did with their data center in Memphis,
which is called Colossus, is astonishing. I speak to a
lot of people in the AI infrastructure industry, and this
(07:03):
is the thing that Elon Musk is good at. Just
like in many ways, Rules be Damned, move fast. We're
doing this and no one can tell me otherwise. But
the net effect of that, or the negative of that,
is that you then have to go back and like
plug in the other holes. And you know is XAI.
I'm sure there's a lot of that company that should
be in place to commercialize.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Well yeah, and not only like Rules of Damned, but
being willing to kind of spend money quickly to invest,
which brings me to other thing I've sort of been
wondering about. I mean, one thing that has created I
think strength in Elon Musk's empire is and I hate
to use this word, but like synergy. Right, Like these
companies are not independent, they are connected, and like sometimes
(07:43):
often maybe those connections have been useful to Elon Musk.
Like for sure, SpaceX's success has helped propel Tesla's brand,
right like the aura of genius around Elon musk Helps,
which is created i'd say largely by SpaceX, has sort
of allowed Tesla to claim some of that mantle and
(08:03):
ed on the topic of X losing money and X
needing money. You know, you have reported with our colleague
Dana Holp on the fact that it's not just that
he's raising all his money from investors, he's raising the
money from his own company. SpaceX is going to put
or try to put anyway, two billion dollars into XAI.
Elon has also said that Tesla is going to try
(08:25):
to put five billion dollars in XAI. Why is this happening?
To me? This seems like evidence of brittleness, But I'm
kind of curious what you think.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
Yeah, brittleness or interruptability or call it whatever you want.
I mean, the main thing that we'll get into, I'm sure,
is this idea that if you count all of the
companies that Elon must involved in on one or two hands,
that's a lot of his time split between very different domains,
but there is overlap between them, and that's always been
the case, right Like, particularly in R and D. There's
(08:54):
loads of history in Tesla and SpaceX doing shared work
on materials for example, some of that led to the
heat sing or the heat discs on the starship. But
the real question is the future. So why is SpaceX
putting two billion dollars into XAI? Why would Tesla do that?
And the way that investors and people inside all these
(09:16):
companies explain it to me is vertically integrated AI infrastructure
or AI technology.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Stack Grock and your Tesla baby.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
Yeah, so it's all of the above. And like you know,
XAI is the frontier or large language model maker. It
writes the underlying technology. You need a way of interacting
with that technology. So we have groc available as a
standalone app or through the x social media platform interface
and now inside the Tesla vehicle. Right, So if you
are a Tesla owner listening to this, you'll know that
(09:44):
one of the frustrations is can't use Apple car Play
in a Tesla, so it doesn't have the same sort
of serie capabilities or other there are other voice assistants available,
but now Grock kind of fixes that. The next evolution
of that is like you start to lose the thread
a bit, which is why SpaceX well data is the
underpinning of all things now and The way that people
(10:05):
pitch it to me is that Starlink basically provides you
with the most beautiful space based data center you could
ever have the ability, particularly on inference. So rather than
training models by Xai people running them, you have low latency,
super high speed automatic connection at low cost, and Starlink
kind of facilitates us using all of that. The Tesla
(10:28):
bit is where I start to lose a thread a
bit beyond just going into vehicles and making cars more appealing.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
You can talk to you know, your anti wok Ai
while you're driving. I honestly think what you're saying about.
How the investors rationalize this is important because it helps
get at like both the psychology and maybe the ball
case for some of these companies. It really does, to me, though,
feel just like a rationalization, and because the real reason
(10:56):
is Elon wants it and like they believe in Elon, and.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Elon notes the limits right, So on x the social platform,
somebody said, oh, Tesla should just buy Xai outright, and
must say no, I don't believe that. But again, the
way it's explained to me is that there's a high
degree of crossover, and this brings us back to the
magazine piece and a must relationship or roller coaster of
relationship with the president. Each of these companies, SpaceX, Tesla, XAI,
(11:21):
even Boring Co and Neuralink have distinct regulatory exposure. They
are within their own domains. There's a specific regulatory body
for each and if they were suddenly to come under
one umbrella, one big conglomerate, I think most insiders in
that company and people close to Mask and investors that
we spoke to know that that would be a nightmare.
So he's at least aware enough to say there's a
(11:44):
limit to how integrated these companies can be.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Let's move on to SpaceX at least, yeah, because you
know this two billion dollar investment or whatever. The thing
that I've wondered is like, doesn't SpaceX need that two dollars?
I'm curious ed as you talk to investors in Elon
Musk how they see SpaceX right now, because I mean,
clearly it's like the strongest of the companies, I'd say,
(12:13):
but also there's potential weakness.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Here too, just based on data. In fact, you know,
SpaceX dominates the vast majority of commercial payload to orbit,
whether that payload be human or satellite based. This is
the umbrella story that so beautifully captured through SpaceX, which
is Musk's relationship with the President and the administration giveth,
(12:35):
but they also taketh away. And you know, you should
look at this in the in the lens of exposure.
So SpaceX has many commercial contracts with third parties, but
it is reliant on NASA contracts and grants. It has
many DoD and Pentagon contracts with the defense apparatus of
this nation. And when the going was good, the story
(12:57):
was really simple, particularly through starlink. If I am a
head of state of a country somewhere in the world,
I would like to quite get close to President Trump.
What shall I do? Well, maybe I could offer Elon
Musks starlink access in this country. Just make it easy
for him, right.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
If you don't have a sixteen million dollar lasted settlement
to pay, that is the best option.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Right, and then take us away. You know, fast forward
to a deteriorating relationship, and the president's literal threat was
I will cancel all of these federal contracts for SpaceX,
which would have a dent. Your original question was does
SpaceX need the money SpaceX? Is it a point where
the Starlink business space based constellation internet, which is on
(13:39):
paper a much higher margin business, has eclipsed launching in
terms of revenue. But Musk has always said that that
there is a ceiling to the amount of money you
can make from sending stuff into space. Here's the crux
of the issue for the investors. Musk's big picture is
SpaceX lives as the Starship to get humankind to Mars.
The investors look at st as a high margin space based,
(14:03):
consolation based internet and think that's the future, and we'd
love that to be spun out. We'd love for it
to be IPO's and not looking as far ahead as Mars. Necessarily.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yeah, I do wonder how badly Starlink needs Starship to work,
you know, because the great thing about Starship is you
could put a lot of Starlink satellites into orbit at once.
There are questions, I've heard this in my own reporting.
There are questions about what the finances of Starlink look
like if you don't eventually make these gigantic rockets work. Right,
(14:34):
all right, let's move on to Tesla. This is topical
both because I think it's the most extreme case of
the ways in which Musk's sort of business is colliding
with politics. Also Tesla's reporting earnings tomorrow. You've got demand
for cars, for Tesla cars anyway falling, you have competition
from China. You have maybe a robotaxi business that's off
(14:55):
to sort of a slowish start. And I have struggled
to find a silver line here for this company, especially
from the point of view an investor. And I'm kind
of curious, like where investors see a ballcase here at
this point, with the stark very highly valued and all
of the challenges that I just laid.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Out, the ballcase is and would have been that Elon
Musk went into the White House and got in close
proximity with the President in order to come out of
the White House with policy, federal level policy that is
favorable for a robotaxi future. To be fair or the
to be sure is that in the lead up to
(15:33):
November's election, must campaigned on the deficit and the budget
and cutting back on behalf of a swollen government. But
the sense, the very real sense I get, is that
he had some foresight that he would be able and
indeed he said it, you know, on an earnings call
prior to November's election. Look, if I get a formal
position in the government, I'm going to use it to
(15:55):
advocate for federal level robotaxi frameworks. And that's important because now,
even though there's legislation that's been introduced and is due
to pass its way through Congress, there isn't a sort
of nationwide set of rules. It's kind of state by state.
But the Tesla future is one where they own and
operate a proprietary ride hailing platform with their own cyber
(16:16):
cabs and consumer vehicles that consumers agree to submit to
the fleet. But on the cyber cab part, in particular,
the number of vehicles you can have on public roads
with out steering wheel no driver controls is limited to
a few thousand at the moment, and obviously, if Elon
is to realize this great, big dream of tens of
thousands or more robotaxis driving around America, then those rules
(16:40):
will need to change. So he went in to get that.
As it stands, he hasn't come out with that. And
so that's how I look at it, as well as
like you tell me, it's a kind of simple story,
and that Tesla is the only publicly traded proxy for
sentiment of Elon Inc. So you just follow the stock.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Yeah, it's it. You're right, And that is such a
big part of the story, the sort of both the
fandom aspect, but also the fact that you cannot buy
stock at least not easily in SpaceX or xai. And
do you think we talk on this podcast? I don't
know if this is kind of filtered to you. Do
you know about mahmout No, Musk always makes up with Trump.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
It's the idea, okay, that.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Coined by me and David Popadopolis, that there is mutual
self interest here that these two men will move inexorably
closer together because, as you say, like, it's in Elon's interest.
I think also it's in Donald Trump's interest because Musk
is such an important donor and donor to Republicans.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Was yeah, right, Republicans.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Yeah, you see a path here? Do you see any
way they would want to try to make up? I mean,
do you see any chance of that or has that
ship sailed?
Speaker 4 (17:47):
The way that I look at it as a technology
journalist in particular, is that the goals of Tesla, as
a US manufacturer of hardware and the US developer of software.
Same with XAI is just highly analogous with the ambitions
of this administration. There is an irony, and I know
that in this calendar week when you and I are speaking,
(18:07):
the world is going to find out a lot more
about how the Trump administration will approach AI from a
regulatory and policy perspective, and as it stands, must won't
be there. Ironically, the test rinding score will be at
the same time and kind of underway. But you know,
SpaceX is the national champion of space exploration pardon the
play on the name. Tesla is the US manufacturer of
(18:29):
automobiles electric vehicles, even if the future is different, and
they kind of all agree on that where they fell apart.
You know, Musk at least he's consistent in some respects,
and he was in the lead up to November's election,
was like, look, I'm really worried about the ballooning budget
and bringing the deficit down and government spending and this
(18:51):
is why I'm going into dog. And he didn't achieve
the things necessarily that he said that he would. But
the president, through the big beautiful bill and the tax bill,
they clearly have a point of fiscal difference. Now they've
fallen out over that well, which seems to be I
don't know, you know, you tell me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Certainly true, I agree with everything you just said. But
there's also and maybe we'll see this on the earnings call.
I think this is a topic too for future podcasts.
But like the Big Beautiful Bill, now, the Big Beautiful Act,
I guess is very bad for Tesla. I mean, there's
a chance that Tesla loses money in the fourth quarter
because of this bill. And I think it's not just
the fact that the deficits went up according to projections
(19:30):
by the Congression Budget Office, went up, and Elon Musk
was all about, you know, being a deficit hawk, but
also that while that was happening, all of this money
is being pulled away from Elon Musk's interests, right.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
I mean, there is never enough time to go line
by line through everything Musk has said any given week,
and going back to the start of the year, the
question is their staying power relative to the rest of
the automotive industry, And Musk would argue, yeah, we got this.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
All right, Ed. It is always fun to talk to you.
Thanks again for doing this and we'll talk soon.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
A top on a thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
All Right, we've been talking about the way that Elon
Musk's business empire is stretched thin. But of course, part
of why so many people have been concerned, why investors
are concerned, is it's not just the business empire, it's
also his personal life. And that's where the next conversation
really becomes interesting. This is an interview that our friend
and Elon and regular Sarah Fryar did with the Wall
(20:30):
Street Journal reporter Dana Mattioli about Elon and his kids.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Have a listen, Dana, thank you so much for coming here.
I'll let you give us the summary of this reporting
and how you came to reveal this story to the
world in the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Well, thank you for having me. Yeah. In March, and
probably in early March, I sat down with one of
my editors, Chris Stewart, who's that investigations at the Wall
Street Journal, and I'd been hearing and my colleagues have
been hearing that Elon had more kids than were known about,
and we started thinking about this pro natalist movement out
of the Valley and what that means, and also what
(21:07):
it would mean for the world's richest man who at
that period of time was definitely one of the most
powerful people in the world on a political stage. He
was the biggest donor to Donald Trump's a reelection effort,
two hundred and fifty million dollars for this big super
pack he created, and he was like really by Trump's
side every step of the way back in March April timeframe.
(21:28):
Making these huge decisions for average Americans is part of DOGE.
So yeah, we wanted to reveal what it was like
being opposite the world's most powerful and richest man on
custody if you had children with him, and I was
able to get a lot of access to one of
the people that he has a baby with, Ashley Saint Clair,
(21:51):
and understand the financial arrangements behind having a baby with
Elon Musk, the custody arrangements, And what we came to
learn is that having a baby with Elon Musk is
often a very big power struggle. That in the situation
that I was able to reveal, this twenty six year
old woman who had his baby was in this very
(22:12):
contentious paternity battle with him where he wouldn't acknowledge paternity
and he was pressuring her not to have legal representation
in these matters, and there were very one sided, lopsided
terms that she was feeling pressured to accept, and we
wanted to really just portray for our readers what that
(22:33):
was like at a time when Elon is the world's
richest man, was one of the most powerful people in
the world on the political stage, and how messy and
complicated his personal life was behind the scenes.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
And you know, when you're at the Wall Street Journal,
you're writing for a business audience. And one thing that
really struck me about this story is the main character
fighting Elon Musk's battles for him him is Jared Britschall,
who's the head of his family office. He's listed as
(23:05):
the CFO for several of his companies. He's the one who,
as you know it in the story, led the Tunere
fifty million investment in Donald Trump's reelection. He's the guy
who does everything. He's like the fixer for Elon, and
it was really interesting to see him take on this role.
Can you explain how he manages what Musk calls his
(23:27):
legion of children h That was.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Really interesting for us too, because Jared is listed as
an executive at a bunch of Elon Musk Companies. He's
his right hand man. He goes to lots of his
business meetings with him. He's like sort of a conduit
on the business side. But behind the scenes, he also
had this other see to your role where he's managing
these women having babies with Musk and that goes to
(23:51):
you know, managing the NDAs that they sign acquiring land
for a compound out in Austin where Elon would like
all these kids and these moms to live. Was involved
in that and also you know, in trying to make
them agree to some onerous terms that Elon would like
them to accept in exchange for money. And what I
found is, you know, through lots of text messages, phone calls,
(24:14):
Jared's own words was that he was often the enforcer.
He makes these veiled threats to Ashley in a phone
call from December where he says, you know, Elon is
a really great guy, but there's another side to him
that if the women he's in relationships with get legal counsel,
you know, things often change. It doesn't come to a
(24:35):
nice outcome for them, right, So there's that side to
him too, and we just see him really being the
enforcer There's another scene in the story that I thought
was just like really gripping, where Ashley Saint Clair is
giving birth. She's in the hospital in labor by herself
because Elon was not there, and Jared is sending her
(24:55):
signal messages saying, don't put Elon's name on the birth certificate.
And this is a woman in labor, and Jared is
on top of things like sending her very frequent updates.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
About putting her in her place.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yeah, right, And it's very clear from the phone calls
from other messages that this is not the first time
he's done that. This is very standard for him in
these sorts of arrangements.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
And he waits often until she's literally in the delivery
room to make that request.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Or yeah, that's right. And shortly after that's when an
NDA showed up for her to sign that she found
to be really just one sided and not fair and.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
In a medically traumatic moment for getting handed DA exactly.
And to be clear, the reason that Musk wants her
to sign the NDA, or the reason that he gives
at least through Jared, is that he cares about privacy.
He says, you know, I'm second in line after Trump
for assassination and if all hell breaks loose, like this
(25:55):
is for protection of the child. But then in this agreement,
I mean, it didn't seem to really line up with
that idea of protecting the child.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Now that that is the excuse he gave us, that
it would protect the child if the child's progeny was
not known, But then you'd see him do things that
would be really conflicting with that statement. Right at the
same time, he's bringing his four year old son X
to really high profile situations, target rich environments where there
(26:27):
could be bad actors. You know, people have made assassination
attempt on Donald Trump, and then there's this child on
his shoulders around Donald Trump and these rallies and you know,
at the White House grounds. So people have called that
out as hypocritical as well.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
What does Musk mean when he talks about having a legion.
I mean, that's a term that evokes an army, like
you think of an army when you think of a legion, Like,
why is he using that language to describe the children
that will have as DNA.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yeah, So Musk ascribes to a belief that there are
not enough children being born in the US in Western Europe.
He's kind of in this pro natalist category that is
worried about population decline, and he's worried that if we
can't even populate the Earth, how will we populate Mars,
which is his ultimate goal through his company called SpaceX,
and he has taken it upon himself. He encourages other
(27:20):
people to have a lot of children as well, especially
well educated people, but he's also taken it upon himself
to live out that mission. And what's fascinating to me
is in text messages to Ashley that I was able
to view, he tells her you should have ten children.
He even tells her that, you know, in order to
have our legion of babies, we should have lots of
surrogates at the same time to mass populate, right, not
(27:42):
enough just to have one child at once, you know,
Let's bring on surrogates and have more babies. And the
people I spoke to around him think that there are
many more babies, that this is just the tip of
the iceberg. The fourteen that are publicly.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Known on the scale of well, you know, now to
Pavlo d'erov one hundred, it's a telegram ceo who has
one hundred children, created with his sperm. Where is Musk
on that trajectory?
Speaker 2 (28:06):
So we don't know for sure. I mean, we did
break in the story that he has given his sperm
to people he doesn't even know. There's an example in
the story where officials from Japan come to Austin to
meet with him and ask for his sperm for some
very high profile Japanese women, and he says yes. He
tells Ashley that, you know, no romance involved, He's just
setting off a sperm sample. So there's that situation. And
(28:27):
then we have situations where we know he used his
platform X, which he bought in twenty twenty two, to
try to recruit women to have babies with, oftentimes women
he didn't know. That's actually how it started with Ashley.
There's also another example and the story where he reaches
out to an influencer named Tiffany Fong starts interacting with
her here and there, liking her posts.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Set Okay, this is the part of the we're talking
about stories were jealous of. This is a part of
the story I was very jealous of because I've frequently
thought about, like, now that muss is and of X
the social network, how is he using that control for
personal gain or adjusting the rules. And you have all
these people who are making money off of their posts
(29:10):
on X and does it benefit them to be close
to Elon, to get retweeted by Elon? And you show
how that business relationship got a little bit complicated by
Musk's request.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Well, in short, if Elon starts interacting with your posts
on X and you are an influencer or you're part
of their program where you get paid for interactions, it's
a gold mine for you that could make a meaningful
difference in your following, in the interactions and your payouts.
And he started doing that with this influencer named Tiffany Fong,
also more of a right wing influencer in the bitcoin space.
(29:46):
He starts interacting with her and she sees her followers
just explode on X. He's retweeting her, he's in her comments,
he's sending flirty messages to her, and then one day
he hops into her DMS and he asked if she'd
be interested in pairing one of his babies. She was
in a relationship at the time with her boyfriend. It
sort of came out of nowhere and she winds up
(30:09):
declining the offerer, but she tells a few people, including
Ashley Saint Clair about it, and this gets back to
Elon and then he chides her for not using discretion
for telling anyone that he offered her a baby, and
then he unfollows her, and from there she goes from
having twenty one thousand dollars a month in revenue and
X went at the height of when he's interacting with
(30:31):
her to seeing that fall off a cliff because the
followers dry up, the interactions dry up, and has a
meaningful effect on her income when this is the main
source of income. So there are consequences to that, especially
for these influencers that rely on X for a lot
of money.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
As you look at at this story and like you've
been a business reporter for a long time, like, how
do you apply what you learn here to understanding musk
the businessman, Because that's a very clear example of how
he's mixing his business goals with his baby making goals,
or maybe they are one and the same. Maybe that's
all the umbrella under which he wants to take us
(31:10):
to Mars is adding more babies to the world, and
he sees it as like a business transaction to do that.
But what did learning about Birchall's role, Tiffany's problem, Ashley
Saint Clair's legal battle, how does that color our perception
of Musk the businessman.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Well, I think it's a lot of it's intertwined. What
we learned from reporting out the story is that Musk
runs five different companies and the greater goal of all
of them is to one day get humans into a
multiplanetary existence and get to Mars. So SpaceX is overtly that, right,
But even the profits from the other ones go toward
that mission. And then at his home life is supporting
(31:49):
that mission too, because he wants to reverse population decline.
So I think a lot of it is intertwined. And
I think there's blurred lines between some of the company
behavior and his personal behavior, like as you see him
using you know, his tweets to support different causes, like
you know, run the election. He got very political starting
last year about you know, Trump's reelection. That was like
(32:12):
more about personal goals, right, and what we see him
doing in the DMS is more about his personal life.
So I think a lot of it is really intertwined.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
It's so interesting too, Like we talked earlier in our
conversation about how he's a man of contradictions. I actually
saw your story cited by Charlie Warzel in his piece
in the Atlantic about how Musk is playing God, or
at least that was his argument that, you know, as
he has this mission of furthering Western civilization, he is
(32:44):
through the cuts US AID, leading to a lot of
deaths in countries in Africa. And I'm curious to you
if you have a thought on that argument or if
that was part of your takeaway too as you're looking
at these decisions that Musks makes.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Well. I think it's interesting when you speak to people
in the pro natalist community the areas that they target
that are concerns for them. They oftentimes reference to the
US in particular, and like Western Europe. And there is
a quote in the story where Musk tells someone that
he is worried that third world countries are outbreading the
US and Western Europe.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
I think that's like pretty telling that there's concern for
specific geographies but not others.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Yeah, and the idea, I guess you also quote Shavon
Zillah saying that she was asked to make children with
Musk because he wants to add more smart people to
the world his definition of smart people.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, and he's told other people that too. He really
wants very intelligent people to breed more. That's definitely one
of his goals.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Dana Mattioli, thank you so much for being here. I
love hearing your take, and I really enjoyed reading your
take on another billionaire who we talk about often, Jeff Bezos.
Dana Mattioli's book is called The Everything War. It's a
story of Amazon's dominance and includes a lot of great
detail on Bezos and his fight in Washington. Thank you
(34:10):
so much for being here, and good luck with all
the scoops.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
This episode was produced by Stacy Wong and edited by
Anna Masarakis. Blake Maples handles engineering, and Dave Purcell fact checks.
Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrickson. The Elannin theme is
written and performed by Taka Yazuzawa and Alex Sagiera. Sage
Bauman is head of Bloomberg Podcast. A big thanks to
our supporters Joel Webber and Bradstone. I'm Max Chafkin. If
(34:46):
you have a minute, rate and review our show, it'll
help other listeners find us, and we will see you
next week.
Host
David Papadopoulos
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