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Trump’s victory will benefit Elon Musk and xAI

Now that Musk helped propel Trump to a victory, expect xAI to join in the list of federally approved AI vendors and possibly even preferred AI vendors.

SpaceX: Musk’s rocketry and spacefaring company has feuded before with the federal government, particularly the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which just last month levied $633,009 in fines to SpaceX alleging it failed to “follow its license requirements during two launches in 2023.” Musk would likely seek to use the Trump Administration to recall this fine and remove future licensing requirements preventing what he sees as necessary speed and nimbleness from the agency or a more “hands-off” approach. However, now that Musk helped propel Trump to a victory, expect xAI to join in the list of federally approved AI vendors and possibly even preferred AI vendors — though of course, the government is technically supposed to remain vendor-neutral for companies operating within the U.S., signing contracts based on request-for-proposals and the businesses’ fitness for the job. Yet as AI influencer Andrew Curran noted on Musk’s X network this morning, another direct outcome of Trump reassuming the White House come January 2025 (when he is to be sworn in) is a strong likelihood — outlined in the Republican Party election platform — of the repeal of outgoing President Joe Biden’s Executive Order(EO) on AI, which Biden issued in October 2023 and requires developers of powerful foundation models to share safety test results and other critical information with the US government and subjects companies training AI models to red-teaming exercises by the federal agency The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

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