Elon Musk suffers major blow in US midterms

WASHINGTON — Tech billionaire and Republican megadonor Elon Musk was among the biggest losers of election night, after spending hundreds of millions to boost candidates that failed to win their races.

He doled out around $446 million — the most a non-candidate has ever spent on an election, including over $200 million on Texas-related efforts. Musk’s preferred candidates across the country were swamped, losing almost everywhere, including Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate race and Vivek Ramaswamy in the Ohio gubernatorial race.

His plans for a buildout of data centers across Texas are especially in doubt after Democrat Gina Hinojosa won a surprise victory over incumbent Greg Abbott in the state’s gubernatorial race.

“Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now,” Musk wrote on X on Wednesday morning, jumping off the results to boost an idea he’s trying to pursue.

He quickly followed that with a joke about election interference, writing, “Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time.”

Musk’s adopted home of Texas has been a hot spot for data centers and data center construction over the last couple of years, with Abbott a strong ally of both tech leaders and Wall Street.

“Amid data center backlash all across the country, Texas was supposed to be an AI oasis, where people would be able to build data centers no matter what was happening in the rest of America,” said Sam Koppelman, the publisher of Hunterbrook Media — an investigative journalism outlet connected to a hedge fund. “This election totally changed that.”

With Democrats taking control of the U.S. Congress, Musk may also be a target for a party looking to pillory tech CEOs — with some Democrats pushing to bring tech CEOs in front of Congress.

“Voters rejected Republicans in part because they were bought and paid for by AI billionaires,” Democratic Representative Greg Casar of Texas said in a statement on Tuesday evening. “Democrats must hold them accountable instead of cashing their checks.”