Trump’s victory will profit Elon Musk and xAI

Disclaimer: I voted for Kamala Harris within the 2024 presidential election and stand by my alternative.

Republican politician and businessman Donald J. Trump has received the 2024 U.S. presidential election in a robust political comeback, regardless of varied pre-election polls displaying him neck-and-neck together with his opponent Kamala Harris (the present and now outgoing Vice President, a Democrat).

As many who comply with the information know all too nicely, one in all his most outspoken allies on this election was none different six-company proprietor/operator and know-how multibillionaire Elon Musk, who dedicated tens of thousands and thousands in funding to a political motion committee advocating Trump’s re-election.

All of Musk’s know-how firms stand to profit from Trump’s return to workplace

Musk owns or operates the next firms, all of which stand to profit from Trump retaking energy:

• Tesla Motors: Although Trump has pledged to not implement electrical car mandates or tighter emissions requirements, Musk’s well-liked electrical car and autonomous car firm may benefit from loosened restrictions on car requirements general, particularly on the subject of autonomy. Already, Tesla inventory is up greater than 13% as we speak on the election being known as for Trump.
• SpaceX: Musk’s rocketry and spacefaring firm has feuded earlier than with the federal authorities, significantly the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which simply final month levied $633,009 in fines to SpaceX alleging it did not “comply with its license necessities throughout two launches in 2023.” Musk would probably search to make use of the Trump Administration to recall this wonderful and take away future licensing necessities stopping what he sees as mandatory pace and nimbleness from the company or a extra “hands-off” method.
• Starlink: Equally, Musk’s satellite tv for pc web offshoot Starlink, which at present has greater than 6,000 satellites beaming web from orbit, would probably profit from Trump’s pledges to cut back administrative burdens and pink tape from federal regulatory businesses such because the Federal Communications Fee (FCC) and FAA.
• Neuralink: Musk’s experimental mind implant firm has reportedly triggered the dying, harm and dismemberment of check monkeys but in addition additionally been efficiently implanted right into a paralyzed human affected person, permitting them to regulate a pc with their mind indicators. Given it’s a medical gadget, it’s overseen by the federal Meals and Drug Administration, which has already permitted Neuralink implantation in people and trials. However the Trump victory will probably solely additional clear the best way for Neuralink to ramp up its trials on extra human topics and accomplish that sooner.
• X: Musk’s social community, the renamed Twitter he bought for $44 billion two years in the past, has already been by a strategy of mass and focused layoffs, in addition to coverage and have updates allowing extra freewheeling and extremist speech and content material, and led to a extra political right-wing oriented userbase and content material. This development is more likely to proceed and X to realize much more prominence as a mouthpiece for Musk’s, Trump’s, and their allies’ positions.

xAI might profit and transfer from being a runner-up within the AI race to a pacesetter

However most significantly of all, xAI, Musk’s AI startup offshoot of X designed to rival his former firm OpenAI, is now more likely to turn into way more of a viable various to the U.S. authorities and navy as a contractor and AI know-how providers supplier.

Already, the U.S. authorities has been courted by and is reportedly working with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta to combine generative AI fashions into varied departments.

Nonetheless, now that Musk helped propel Trump to a victory, anticipate xAI to hitch within the checklist of federally permitted AI distributors and presumably even most well-liked AI distributors — although in fact, the federal government is technically supposed to stay vendor-neutral for firms working throughout the U.S., signing contracts based mostly on request-for-proposals and the companies’ health for the job.

xAI may even probably profit from repealed Biden-era AI Government Order

But as AI influencer Andrew Curran famous on Musk’s X community this morning, one other direct final result of Trump reassuming the White Home come January 2025 (when he’s to be sworn in) is a robust chance — outlined within the Republican Get together election platform — of the repeal of outgoing President Joe Biden’s Government Order (EO) on AI, which Biden issued in October 2023 and requires builders of highly effective basis fashions to share security check outcomes and different important data with the US authorities and topics firms coaching AI fashions to red-teaming workout routines by the federal company The Nationwide Institute of Requirements and Expertise (NIST).

Whereas many within the AI {industry} and out of doors of it applauded this order as a way of guaranteeing security of AI deployments on American and international society, some analysts instructed it might result in undermining U.S. AI competitiveness on the worldwide stage, each within the business (direct-to-consumer and business-to-business) market and the navy enviornment.

As such, with the probably repeal of this EO come January 2025 or early 2025, it might assist xAI and its rivals in transport new fashions sooner — although as we’ve seen with xAI’s Grok-2 and its permissive picture technology characteristic, that may additionally result in an increase in deepfakes and different wild, offensive, but in addition inventive and imaginative AI imagery.

Both approach, issues are wanting good for Musk’s firms and xAI specifically – and which will assist the corporate’s fashions turn into extra attractive to builders and enterprise prospects.