After a two-hour disruption on his social media platform X this past Saturday, Elon Musk took to the very platform that went offline to share a more personal admission: it’s time to shift his focus back to the companies he built from the ground up.
In a candid post, Musk acknowledged the outage as a wake-up call. “As evidenced by the X uptime issues this week, major operational improvements need to be made,” he wrote. “The failover redundancy should have worked, but did not.”
For someone juggling as much as Musk—overseeing Tesla, SpaceX, AI venture xAI, and X (formerly Twitter)—even a short absence can ripple into visible consequences. Musk admitted, perhaps with some frustration and reflection, that he’s been spread too thin.
This reset comes amid increasing public criticism over his recent political involvement. Musk had been advising President Donald Trump’s administration and helping lead the controversial “Department of Government Efficiency,” which aimed to drastically cut federal spending. But with public backlash intensifying and Tesla stock faltering, Musk began to quietly retreat from his role in Washington.
“Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms,” Musk posted, describing a familiar scenario for the workaholic entrepreneur. He added that he must now be “super focused” on X, xAI, and Tesla—especially with SpaceX’s Starship rocket slated for a test launch next week.
While hacker group DieNet claimed responsibility for the outage, calling it a “test” of their cyber capabilities, X has yet to confirm any details, and the authenticity of the claim remains unverified.
Behind the headlines and controversies, Saturday’s incident appears to have reminded Musk of something simple and grounding: the mission and innovation that have always been at the heart of his work. And now, more than ever, he seems determined to return to them.
