Tech companies involved in AI may be in for a tougher government scrutiny and potential regulation with Democrats in power, though any legislation would need Trump’s approval.
James Flintoft, head of investment solutions at AJ Bell, pointed to Musk’s unsuccessful spending on Republican candidates and the scale of wins by Democrats as bringing in a “period of uncertainty for investors as they assess whether tech companies are set to face greater regulation.”
Senator Ed Markey on Wednesday responded on X to a person asking if major tech industry executives would be the target of investigations, saying: “They are going to need to plant new forests for all of the subpoenas we’ll be printing.”
Tech stocks were broadly up on Wednesday morning. Yet, Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX were down by 4.9% and 3.4% respectively.
By Wednesday, Musk had stopped posting to X about politics and was instead posting in praise of GrokBot, an AI chatbot produced by xAI. It was a stark contrast to the 2025 election, when Musk would post to X sometimes hundreds of times in a day about politics.
He also unpinned a post that had been saved to the top of his X profile since last week that explained his “concern” with Democratic politicians winning more midterm races.
Those concerns included the idea that the US could welcome more immigrants, make Washington DC and Puerto Rico individual states, and expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court.
Another post telling his 241 million X followers to “Vote red today!” appeared on Wednesday to have been deleted from Musk’s profile.
The BBC has contacted SpaceX for comment about Musk’s spending and posts.
