2025 was a year of promises by Elon Musk. However, how far the promises have been fulfilled is worth debating. Musk’s promises were related to SpaceX, Tesla, and Doge. This is not the first time that Musk has made unfulfilled promises. In 2011, Musk had said that he would send humans to Mars after ten years, which has not been done to date. He had reiterated this plan in 2016, but it still remains unfulfilled.
Tesla’s Robotaxi Launch
In Q2 2025, Musk announced the launch of Robotaxis; his plans were quite ambitious, too. He had announced that in 2025, half of the US population would be using Robotaxis. However, the ground report was on the contrary. In Austin, Texas, which was the only place where Robotaxis were launched, there were only a few taxis spotted.
The Robotaxi project failed partly because the project did not comply with Texas’s rules regarding human safety, which prohibited a complete elimination of human coordination in vehicles.
Musk’s Stint in DOGE and Resignation
Soon after Donald Trump took charge as the president of America, he formed the Department of Government Efficiency with Elon Musk as its head. The department was tasked with improving the government’s efficiency by cutting expenditure and jobs. However, the department failed to reach the set target even after the initial months of its formation, apart from the legal issues.
The confirmed reports about Musk’s resignation from DOGE came in May 2025, almost five months after his appointment. Prior to his resignation, he had raised criticism about a budget bill. In his own words, “I think a bill can be big, or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both.”
Thus, Musk failed to keep up the promise of being part of DOGE in its efforts to reform the country.
Controversies Surround the X and xAI Merger Amid Data and Governance Questions
In March 2025, Musk made the decision for his AI company, xAI, to acquire the X platform to form X AI Holdings. The aim was to merge data, models, compute, distribution, and talent of both these enterprises, as the future of communication is intertwined with that of AI. With this merger, xAI gains direct, uninterrupted access to X’s vast, real-time user-generated data (posts, images, etc.) to train its AI models, such as the Grok chatbot. Separately, in November 2025, Tesla shareholders approved an “investment” in xAI, further intertwining Musk’s various ventures, a network often dubbed “The Muskonomy”.
However, Musk and the concerned authorities have failed to fully answer the controversies regarding these mergers. Critics who oppose the merger of X and xAI see similarities to the 2016 Tesla acquisition of SolarCity. They believe that the XAI deal may have been a way to boost the struggling X platform. The use of user data for AI training has also raised alarms among privacy experts, who question whether users have sufficient control over their content.
