Elon Musk is leaving his position as de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), announcing his departure via X on Wednesday. An anonymous White House official confirmed Musk's departure to AP.
"As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending," Musk wrote. "The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government."
Though Musk stated that his time at DOGE was "scheduled," there was no clear indication as to exactly how long he would be involved with it prior to this week's announcement. While it was revealed in February that White House official Amy Gleason had been appointed DOGE's acting administrator some time earlier, in practical terms Musk has remained in charge until now.
Musk previously indicated he would be reducing his involvement with DOGE during Tesla earnings call in April. The billionaire stated that he would "significantly" lower the amount of time he spent on DOGE in May, as well as increase his attention on Tesla. However, at the time he drew short of saying he would quit DOGE, pledging to stay for "as long as it's useful" and President Donald Trump wanted him to remain.
It now seems though Musk believes that time has come to an end. While Trump has not yet issued a public statement regarding his departure, the news comes a day after Musk uncharacteristically criticised the president's tax bill, stating that it "increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing."
Though Musk initially claimed that DOGE would cut government spending by a minimum of $2 trillion, the reality has fallen far short from this. In April he revised DOGE's goal down to $150 billion, a mere fraction of the cuts initially promised. Meanwhile, U.S. government agencies have been thrown into turmoil by DOGE's actions, with over 280,000 government workers laid off. DOGE has also worked to dismantle several agencies entirely, including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a foreign aid organisation.
Musk is expected to return his attention to his various companies, including Tesla, X, and SpaceX. Such companies have been publicly floundering in the past few months, struggling against severe reputational damage caused by Musk's widely unpopular political work.
Tesla sales have plummeted across the globe, the electric vehicle company experiencing a 71 percent drop in profit during Q1 2025. Social media platform X isn't faring much better, losing millions of users while advertisers fled, though Musk denied reports that he told employees that they were "barely breaking even." SpaceX doesn't appear to have suffered quite as much, however the explosion of its latest Starship test flight on Tuesday was less than ideal — particularly considering it was the company's third "rapid unscheduled disassembly" in a row.
Speaking to Ars Technica prior to both SpaceX's launch and the announcement he'd be leaving DOGE, Musk acknowledged that he'd been spending too much time on politics rather than running his companies.
"I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics, [though] it's less than people would think," said Musk. "It's not like I left the companies. It was just relative time allocation that probably was a little too high on the government side, and I've reduced that significantly in recent weeks."
