As Musk works to slash federal spending, his own firms have received billions in government contracts

[riversedge]

As Musk works to slash federal spending, his own firms have received billions in government contracts

https://abcnews.go.com/US/musk-works-slash-federal-spending-firms-received-billions/story?id=118589121
NASA is the single largest customer of Musk's company SpaceX.



By Soo Rin Kim
February 10, 2025, 6:22 PM


As billionaire businessman Elon Musk has been leading an unprecedented effort to slash government spending, his own companies have, over the last several years, received an increasing amount of funding through government contracts, according to federal spending data.

Over the last decade, Musk's companies SpaceX and Tesla were awarded at least $18 billion in federal contracts, according to spending data -- with SpaceX winning more than $17 billion worth of contracts since 2015.

Federal contracts to SpaceX doubled at the beginning of the Biden administration, going from $1.1 billion in the 2020 fiscal year to $2.2 billion in the 2021 fiscal year. The contracts continued to grow under Biden, reaching $3.7 billion during the 2024 fiscal year.


Since President Donald Trump took office last month, Musk, as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, has wasted no time carrying out Trump's effort to trim the federal government, including allegedly terminating hundreds of federal contracts across multiple agencies and offering "Fork in the Road" buyouts to two million government employees in the form of a deferred resignation offer.

In the first two weeks of the new administration, DOGE's X account claimed it terminated $1 billion worth of DEIA-related contracts across 30 federal agencies -- though the accuracy of the claim is hard to verify given its vague nature. Musk himself has not discussed the specifics of the cuts.