Elon Musk is not in the DealBook Summit speaker lineup, but his presence is unmistakable.
Even some billionaires and political leaders are marveling at the tech mogul’s reach, access to the levers of power, and staggering wealth.
Ken Griffin, the founder and chief executive of Citadel, called Mr. Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and founder of SpaceX, “one of the great entrepreneurs of our lifetime.” Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, called him a “mega hero.” And former President Bill Clinton saw Mr. Musk’s growing influence in President-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle as a sign of the times.
“It’s no big deal,” Mr. Clinton said of Mr. Musk joining a phone call between Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
Mr. Musk is running his businesses at “a level of excellence that very few companies can even start to relate to,” Mr. Griffin said, adding that he was all the more impressed at Mr. Musk’s deepening relationship with the next Trump administration. The president-elect has designated Mr. Musk, Trump’s biggest backer, to help lead a so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
“I think that his willingness to be in this role that involves such a commitment of his time in public service is something that I applaud and admire,” Mr. Griffin said.
But Mr. Griffin, one of the five largest donors to the Republican Party this last campaign cycle, just behind Mr. Musk, had his reservations about Mr. Musk’s new role aimed at curbing excess government spending.
“Will he be successful? That’s really hard to tell at this point in time,” he continued. “He’s going to have to hit the hard reality — the hard truth — that making cuts of any form whatsoever will be politically very unpopular.”
Still, Mr. Griffin said, “I’ll take Elon in the White House.”
Mr. Altman said he is not worried about Mr. Musk — his former partner in founding OpenAI — and Mr. Trump hurting his business.
“It would be profoundly un-American to use political power to the degree that Elon has it to hurt your competitors,” Mr. Altman said. “I don’t think people would tolerate that. I don’t think Elon would do it.”
In a lawsuit, Mr. Musk claims that OpenAI and two of its founders, Mr. Altman and Greg Brockman, breached the company’s founding contract by putting commercial interests ahead of the public good.
Mr. Altman said that their falling out has made him “tremendously sad.”
“I grew up with Elon as like a mega hero,” he said. “I thought what Elon was doing was absolutely incredible for the world at a time when most of the world was not thinking very ambitiously, he pushed a lot of people, me included, to think much more ambitiously.”
Now, Mr. Altman sees Mr. Musk as a competitor as the X owner tries to build his own artificial intelligence lab to power the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
“He really cares about being the guy,” Mr. Altman said. “He’s a competitor, and we’re doing well.”
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