According to the latest report from Reuters, two Democratic senators recently called on law enforcement agencies to investigate Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, because he had multiple calls with Russian officials. However, the report also pointed out that as Trump prepares to return to the White House, the above senators' call for a federal investigation is likely to be in vain.

At this critical moment, Musk's SpaceX and artificial intelligence company xAI both have big news. Foreign media reported that SpaceX is in preliminary discussions to sell shares to insiders, which could value the company at about $255 billion. In addition, xAI is raising up to $6 billion at a valuation of $50 billion.

Check out the detailed report!

Musk may be investigated

According to a Reuters report on the 16th, citing Reuters local time on the 15th, in a letter seen by Reuters, two Democratic senators said that the Pentagon and law enforcement agencies should investigate reports that billionaire Musk had multiple phone calls with Russian officials including Putin on the grounds of national security.

Previously, Trump had announced that Musk would lead the newly established "Department of Government Efficiency" to "cut redundant regulations and wasteful spending, and reorganize federal agencies." The department will provide "advice and guidance" from outside the government and will work with the White House Office of Budget and Management. On November 13, local time, the "Department of Government Efficiency" that Musk will lead opened a social platform account and has been certified as an official government entity. The first post published by the account said: "Working overtime to ensure your tax dollars are used reasonably!"

According to the report, as CEO of the aerospace company SpaceX, Musk is responsible for managing billions of dollars in contracts for the Pentagon and the intelligence community. Jeanne Shaheen, a senior member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Jack Reed, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Defense Department Inspector General in the letter that after reports emerged in October that Musk had talked with Russian officials, his involvement in SpaceX-related programs should be investigated for possible prohibitions and exclusions, that is, prohibiting him from participating in certain contracts and enjoying certain privileges.

“These relationships between a known enemy of the United States and Musk, a beneficiary of huge U.S. government funds, raise serious questions about Musk’s reliability as a government contractor and confidential personnel,” the two senators wrote in a joint letter dated the 15th.

Several Democratic lawmakers have publicly called for an investigation into Musk's communications with Moscow since the Wall Street Journal reported the alleged contacts last month, but the letter to government officials with the authority to launch such an investigation has not previously been reported.

Reuters reported that Musk publicly claimed that he had a U.S. security clearance, which gave him access to secret information from SpaceX, which holds billions of dollars in launch contracts from the Pentagon and NASA. The company also has a $1.8 billion contract with the intelligence community to build a massive network of spy satellites, the report said. "Communications between Russian government officials and any individual with a security clearance could potentially put our security at risk," the lawmakers said in the letter.

Musk's SpaceX has dominated the U.S. space industry and is heavily relied upon by NASA and the Pentagon. The company's Starlink internet network of nearly 7,000 satellites makes SpaceX the world's largest satellite operator and a disruptive force in the field of satellite internet, and the Pentagon is very interested in military communications. The Ukrainian military relies heavily on Starlink for battlefield connectivity.

Shaheen and Reid's calls for a federal investigation are likely to go unanswered as Trump prepares to return to the White House with the help of Musk, who spent more than $119 million on Trump's second presidential campaign and has been named co-director of Trump's forthcoming Department of Government Effectiveness.

SpaceX valuation surges

Recently, Bloomberg reported that Musk's SpaceX is discussing plans to sell internal shares, which could increase the value of Musk's rocket and satellite company to about $255 billion. In June of this year, SpaceX was valued at $210 billion when it sold internal shares, which means that after about half a year, SpaceX's valuation has increased by more than 20%.

The secondary market, where employees and some early shareholders can sell the stock, offers SpaceX investors a new way to profit from Musk’s deep ties to President-elect Trump and windfalls from the billionaire’s business empire. Shares of Musk’s only publicly traded company, electric car maker Tesla, have risen 26% since the Nov. 5 U.S. election, adding $200 billion to its market value.

The people familiar with the matter cautioned that the conversations with SpaceX are ongoing and that details of a potential deal could change based on interest from internal sellers and buyers.

Earlier, the Financial Times quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that SpaceX is preparing to launch a takeover offer in December to sell the company's existing shares at about $135 per share, valuing the company at more than $250 billion. Previously, SpaceX set a record for a private company in the United States with a valuation of $210 billion.

This Friday, SpaceX's second-in-command, President and COO Gwynne Shotwell, slammed U.S. regulators at the annual investor and customer conference held by asset management company Baron Capital, saying that rocket launch approvals need to keep up with the company's innovation. She said: "Technology is easy, physics is easy, people are difficult, and regulators are the most difficult. All we ask is to regulate the industry and make them safe, correct and fair. But we have to speed up. Much faster (than now)."

Shotwell's comments are another step in SpaceX's public pressure on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which has been seeking to speed up the approval process for commercial space operations. Musk called for the resignation of the head of the FAA in September, claiming that the government's paperwork to approve launches took longer than actually building the rockets.

Shotwell also revealed at the Baron Capita conference that SpaceX's Starlink business launches about 60 satellites a week on average, with about 7,000 satellites currently in orbit, and will begin launching a "direct connection to mobile phones" service in the next month or so. Starlink's satellite Internet network currently serves nearly 5 million customers, but the satellite broadband market is "huge." Ron Baron, the founder of Baron Capita and a billionaire investor, said his company holds more than $2 billion in SpaceX stock and that about 30% of the world's 8 billion people do not have access to broadband.

xAI's valuation also skyrocketed

It is worth noting that in addition to SpaceX, the valuation of Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI has also increased significantly. According to CNBC, xAI is raising up to $6 billion at a valuation of $50 billion.

Sources said the round is expected to close early next week, with $5 billion expected to come from Middle East sovereign funds and $1 billion from other investors, some of whom may want to reinvest. The funds raised will reportedly be used to purchase 100,000 Nvidia chips, which is likely to have a significant impact on the improvement of Tesla's fully autonomous driving capabilities.

Musk announced the formation of the AI ​​company in July 2023, and last November, xAI released a chatbot called Grok, which the company said was designed based on (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). The company claimed at the time that the chatbot had been trained for two months when it debuted and had real-time internet knowledge.

With Grok, xAI aims to compete directly with companies including ChatGPT creator OpenAI, which Musk helped found but later clashed with co-founder Sam Altman, leading to his exit from the project in 2018. It will also compete with Google’s Bard technology and Anthropic’s Claude chatbot.

Now that Trump has been elected president, Musk, as part of Trump's inner circle, has in recent weeks begun actively working with the new administration to study artificial intelligence and technology issues more broadly.

According to the campaign platform, Trump plans to repeal President Biden's executive order on artificial intelligence, saying it "hinders AI innovation and imposes radical left-wing ideas on the development of this technology," while the Republican Party supports the development of AI based on free speech and human flourishing.