The massive outage that disrupted the social media platform X on Saturday, May 24, was followed by Elon Musk's definitive departure from Donald Trump's teams and the Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE), which he had led since the Republican took office on January 20. "Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms. I must be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out," Musk posted on his platform on Saturday.

This decision came just before the May 28 deadline, 130 days after his appointment – the maximum period he could spend in the government team without fulfilling transparency and congressional oversight obligations. It also coincided with a slowdown in Tesla sales, which have been affected by the poor political reputation of its CEO. So much so that, according to the Wall Street Journal on May 1, the company's supervisory board, despite its loyalty to Musk, had begun searching for a replacement for him. The company unconvincingly denied the information, but Musk sought to reassure stakeholders, explaining during a videoconference at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha on May 20 that he would still be leading the company in five years' time: There is "no doubt about that at all," he said.

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