"Musk the Biggest Loser of Midterms"... Wasted 600 Billion Won

[Anchor]

Analyses suggest that the biggest casualty of this election is Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Despite pouring nearly 600 billion won into the race, the candidates he backed suffered a string of defeats, and now even his own businesses face the threat of instability.

Correspondent Kim Hyun-woo reports from New York.

[Reporter]

On the 4th local time, the day after the midterm elections where the Republican Party suffered a crushing defeat, Elon Musk posted a self-deprecating joke on his social media, saying it seems the space laser for election interference did not work this time.

U.S. media outlets are naming Elon Musk as the biggest loser of this election.

Musk poured about 450 million dollars—roughly 600 billion won in Korean currency—into supporting Republican candidates in this election, the largest amount ever spent on an election by a non-candidate.

However, the candidates he backed lost almost everywhere.

The most painful blow came in Texas.

Despite pumping nearly half of his total support funds—200 million dollars—into Texas, a Republican stronghold and home to the headquarters of Tesla and SpaceX, both the Senate and gubernatorial seats went to the Democratic Party.

[James Talarico / Texas State Senator-elect (Yesterday): We sent a message in this election to every billionaire and trillionaire who funded massive amounts of money. The power in this country belongs to the people.]

The election aftermath spilled over into stock prices.

Even though the New York stock market surged, the stock prices of SpaceX and Tesla both dropped by over 3%.

Dark clouds have also gathered over his business outlook.

As Texas Governor-elect Hinojosa pledged to temporarily suspend the construction of new data centers, brakes could be put on Musk's AI data center business, for which cooperation from the state government is essential.

In response, Musk reacted by saying that building data centers in space might look better.

On top of this, Democrats are sharpening their knives, vowing to investigate the process by which Musk laid off roughly 25,000 public servants while leading the Department of Government Efficiency, as well as allegations of preferential treatment in government contracts for SpaceX, signaling that pressure on Musk is likely to intensify further.

(Video reporting: Lee Hee-hoon, Video editing: Kim Ho-jin)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.