Tech billionaire and major Republican Party donor Elon Musk is also one of the biggest losers of the midterm elections; he spent millions supporting the party, but its defeat could now jeopardize his data center projects, reports Politico.During the election campaign, Musk spent approximately 446 million dollars, including about 200 million dollars to support candidates in Texas. This is the largest sum ever spent on a midterm election by an individual who was not a candidate themselves. Candidates backed by Musk lost across almost the entire country, including Ken Paxton in Texas and Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio.Following the victory of Democratic candidate Gina Hinojosa in Texas, Musk’s plans to build large-scale data centers in the state are now at risk. On Wednesday morning, Musk wrote on the platform X that building data centers in space was starting to look quite attractive. He followed up with a joke about election interference, remarking that, apparently, his “space lasers” intended to influence the election hadn’t worked this time around. In recent years, Texas has become a frequently discussed location for the construction of data centers; furthermore, the incumbent Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, has been a close ally of tech giants and Wall Street figures. Sam Koppelman, publisher at the investigative journalism outlet Hunterbrook Media, noted that while opposition to data center construction has been growing across the country, Texas was envisioned as an “artificial intelligence oasis”—a place where such facilities could be built regardless of trends elsewhere in the U.S.—but the election has changed everything.With Democrats potentially taking control of Congress, Elon Musk could also become a target of investigations, and some Democrats have called for tech executives to be held accountable. On the evening of the 3rd of November, Greg Casar, a representative for the Texas Democratic Party, stated that voters rejected Republicans partly because they are backed by billionaires involved in artificial intelligence development—and that they should be held to account for this.
Midterm election results – a blow to Musk, too
