After spending three months trying to radically reshape the federal government and its workforce, Elon Musk on Tuesday said he would soon be stepping back from the White House DOGE office.
"Starting next month, I will be allocating far more of my time to Tesla," Musk said during Tesla's earnings call, adding that "the major work of establishing the Department of Government Efficiency" was done.
He said he would continue to spend a day or two a week on government matters, "as long as it is useful" and the president wants him to do so.
Tesla stock jumped about 5% in after-hours trading after Musk announced the plans to reduce his role with DOGE. The announcement came on the heels of a disappointing quarterly earnings report for the company, which has struggled in the months since Musk began advising President Donald Trump.
Before Tuesday, Tesla stock was down 44% this year, and its first-quarter sales came in way under expectations.
Musk himself said he was leading his companies "with great difficulty" during his time with DOGE.
Under Musk's unofficial leadership, DOGE has targeted a wide swath of federal agencies for cuts, including dismantling the US Agency for International Development, while attempting to gain access to sensitive data and payment systems at the IRS and the Treasury Department and trying to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Musk has also helped Trump gut the federal workforce through buyout offers to government employees, mass firings of probationary workers, and downsizing of agencies like the National Institutes of Health.
Despite its large-scale targeting of federal agencies and workers, DOGE has not yet come close to its savings goals. Musk first promised that his sweeping DOGE cuts would save taxpayers $2 trillion, but later downgraded that to $1 trillion, and further again to $150 billion.
DOGE's claimed savings have been riddled with mistakes and corrections, including removing $4 billion from its "Wall of Receipts" in March, dropping its real estate savings by $150 million later that month, and lowering its savings claims by over $9 billion over two days in February.
Musk's involvement with DOGE was never meant to be permanent — as a "special government employee," he is not allowed to serve more than 130 days in a 365-day period.
Under Trump's original executive order, the DOGE office can run through July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the nation's independence. Many of DOGE's top leaders are linked to Musk's companies. It's unclear whether they'll also be scaling back their presence in DOGE.
Correction: April 22, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated Elon Musk's announcement regarding his DOGE role. He said he'd be stepping back from DOGE, not leaving entirely.
