Technological billionaire and Republican megadonor Elon Musk was among the "biggest losers" on election night for the U.S. Congress, spending hundreds of millions of dollars supporting candidates who failed to win their races. Politico reports, according to UNN.
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Musk allocated about $446 million—the largest amount ever spent on an election by someone who was not a candidate—including more than $200 million on efforts related to Texas. The candidates Musk would have liked to see elected across the country suffered defeats, losing almost everywhere, including Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate election and Vivek Ramaswamy in the Ohio gubernatorial election, the publication writes.
His plans to build data centers across Texas are especially in doubt after Democrat Gina Hinojosa scored an unexpected victory over incumbent Senator Greg Abbott in the state’s gubernatorial election.
"Data centers in space are looking pretty attractive right now," Musk wrote on X on Wednesday morning, November 4, referring to the results to support an idea he is trying to implement.
He quickly followed this with a joke about election interference, writing: "I guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time."
Texas, Musk’s home state, has been a hot spot for data centers and their construction over the past several years, while Abbott is a strong ally of both technology leaders and Wall Street, the publication notes.
"Amid the backlash against data centers across the country, Texas was supposed to become an AI oasis where people could build data centers regardless of what was happening in the rest of America," said Sam Koppelman, publisher of Hunterbrook Media, an investigative journalism outlet affiliated with a hedge fund. "These elections completely changed that."
With Democrats taking control of the U.S. Congress, Musk could also become a target for a party seeking to scrutinize technology company CEOs more closely—some Democrats are pushing to bring technology company CEOs before Congress, the publication writes.
"Voters rejected Republicans in part because they were bought and paid for by AI billionaires," Democratic Representative Greg Casar of Texas said Tuesday evening. "Democrats need to hold them accountable, not cash their checks."
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