Elon Musk’s Midterm Spending Reaches $90 Million Despite Previously Saying He Has ‘Done Enough’ Political Spending

Elon Musk has contributed about $90.6 million to the 2026 midterm elections through Sept. 25, according to a CNBC analysis of Federal Election Commission records published Oct. 8, including more than $50 million to America PAC, the super PAC he funded in 2024. Seventeen months earlier, on May 20, 2025, he said he would do much less of this.

The remark came in an interview with Bloomberg's Mishal Husain at the Qatar Economic Forum. “In terms of political spending, I'm going to do a lot less in the future. I think I've done enough,” Musk said. In the same answer, he added a qualifier: “If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. I do not currently see a reason.” NPR, PBS, and NBC News carried both sentences at the time.

The filings since then began five weeks later. On June 27, 2025, Musk gave $5 million each to three Republican super PACs: the Senate Leadership Fund, the Congressional Leadership Fund, and MAGA Inc., according to mid-year FEC reports NBC News described in July 2025.

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America PAC's own semi-annual report for the first half of 2025 showed $45.3 million from Musk, per the same NBC report: about $17.9 million in direct contributions and $27.4 million in in-kind contributions. In-kind means goods and services provided to the committee rather than money transferred to it, so that $27.4 million is a valuation of what was supplied, not a cash figure.

CNBC's tally through Sept. 25, 2026 puts the cycle total at roughly $90.6 million, with America PAC receiving more than $50 million of it. CNBC's figure sums individual FEC records rather than a single total line in any filing, and it will change with every new report.

For scale, Musk spent at least $250 million backing Donald Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 cycle, a figure the Associated Press reported and PBS carried on the day of the Qatar interview. The 2026 total through September is roughly a third of that, with the general election still ahead. That comparison sets a partial cycle against a completed one, so the gap will narrow with each filing.

Musk, CEO of Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX (SPCX), founded America PAC in 2024 to support Trump's campaign. Where its money goes in 2026 is a matter of public record: the committee files independent-expenditure reports with the FEC that name the races it spends in, and WIRED maintains a running tracker of those filings. This article does not characterize those races beyond what the filings state.

Musk has not revisited the May 2025 remarks alongside the filings that followed them.

The record, then, is two dated statements and a ledger. On May 20, 2025: “I think I've done enough,” followed by “if I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it.” On the FEC's books since: three $5 million contributions on a single day in June 2025, $45.3 million to America PAC in the first half of that year, and about $90.6 million for the cycle by CNBC's count as of late September 2026.