Yesterday (May 28), Elon Musk announced on X that he is leaving his role in the Trump administration as the unelected de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

“As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” Musk wrote on his social media platform. “The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”

Though Musk once called himself the President’s ‘first buddy’, he did not have a formal conversation with Trump before announcing his departure. He was initially meant to leave on May 30. The Guardian reported that a source with knowledge of the matter said his exit was decided “at a senior staff level.”

Initially, Trump granted Musk unprecedented authority as the head of DOGE to dismantle parts of the US government, but Musk has spent this week criticising the Trump administration for impeding his work. On Tuesday (May 27), Musk told CBS News that he seriously disagreed with Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ – his sweeping tax and spending bill that is predicted to increase the federal deficit by more than $3.3 trillion over the next decade, which contradicts Musk’s efforts to reduce the US national debt through cost-cutting measures. “I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” he told CBS News.

Musk also expressed frustration to White House officials over a deal between Abu Dhabi and OpenAI, the Sam Altman-led rival to Musk’s AI company. The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk previously tried to derail the deal unless his company was included. 

When Trump was running for his second term as President last year, Musk spent nearly $300m backing his campaign and other Republicans. But earlier this month, at an economic forum in Qatar, Musk revealed that he would now substantially cut his political funding: “I think I’ve done enough.”

Musk will now be refocusing on his companies, stating on X that he would be “spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms,” after his net worth plummeted to 25 per cent since Trump's inauguration. To put it simply, Musk has lost more than $1 billion per day on average in the first 100 days of Trump's second term, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.