Elon Musk has now poured more than $735 million into American elections since the summer of 2024. That’s more than George Soros has given to federal elections in his entire life, by our count of the public records. Musk spent years telling his followers that Soros was buying American democracy. Then he went out and outspent him.
The $735 Million Man
Start with 2024. Musk gave more than $291 million to help elect Donald Trump and other Republicans. That included the million-dollar giveaways his super PAC handed to swing-state voters. He was the biggest donor of that election by a mile.
In May 2025 he promised to pull back, saying “I think I’ve done enough.” He hadn’t. This cycle he has given $446 million to Republican causes, making him the biggest individual political donor in modern American history.
The Man Who Cried Soros
For years, Soros has been Musk’s favorite villain. In 2023 he compared Soros, a survivor of the Nazi occupation of Hungary, to the Marvel villain Magneto. Then he wrote: “He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity.”
After the 2024 election, Musk didn’t drop the obsession. He studied it. The Washington Post reported he was using Soros’s past donations as a road map for his own political targets. The billionaire who spent years crying about one man buying elections decided to become that man, and then some.
Doing the Math
This cycle, Soros’s companies gave $102 million to his super PAC, Democracy PAC. That makes him the top Democratic individual donor of the midterms. Musk has given more than four times as much.
Soros’s biggest year ever was 2022, when OpenSecrets recorded about $179 million from him. Now add up every federal election dollar OpenSecrets has tracked from Soros, his firm and its employees since 1990, plus his nonprofit’s transfers to Democracy PAC in 2020 and 2024, plus this year’s $102 million. It comes to roughly $536 million over 36 years.
Musk beat that in a little over two. One caveat: Soros has also given billions through his Open Society Foundations. But that’s charity money for nonprofits, not checks to campaigns and super PACs. On election money, it isn’t close.
Where the Money Went
In September alone, Musk wrote two checks, $75 million and $83 million, to the main Senate Republican super PAC. Both times, within a day, the same amount moved to a brand-new group with one job: electing Republican Ken Paxton in Texas.
Then, in the first two weeks of October, he gave another $76.8 million to his own America PAC, per its FEC filing. Millions more went to House Republicans, the Republican Governors Association and Republican attorneys general.
And that’s only what we can see. A spokesman for America PAC confirmed that Musk has also given through groups that don’t disclose their donors.
What Musk Gets
The richest man in the world doesn’t spend like this for fun. SpaceX has collected more than $30 billion in federal work since 2008, according to the research firm FedScout. This year alone it’s $6.78 billion, a record.
Musk is also back inside the government. In September, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth named him a co-lead of Project Meridian, a study on the future of warfare. Pentagon officials warned of conflicts of interest. None of this proves a donation bought a decision. But almost no one alive has more riding on which party runs Congress.
Republicans Are Running on One Man’s Wallet
Musk isn’t alone, but he leads the pack. A CNBC analysis found 14 of the 20 biggest donors this cycle give exclusively or nearly exclusively to Republicans. Among the top 10 individual donors, Republican backers account for 86% of the money.
Democrats have big donors too. Mike Bloomberg has put more than $80 million into the midterms in recent months. But nobody on either side comes close to Musk. In Texas, Democrat James Talarico slammed a system that allows “one trillionaire to buy his own personal U.S. Senator.”
Musk’s spokespeople did not respond to Politico’s questions about Democrats’ plans to investigate him. Musk answered on X instead, warning his critics: “Live by the sword, die by the sword.”
The Bottom Line
For years, the Republican base was told George Soros was secretly buying America. Turns out the biggest checkbook in American politics belongs to Elon Musk, and he writes his checks to Republicans. In a little over two years he has outspent Soros’s entire life of election giving, while his companies rake in record federal contracts. On Nov. 3, voters get to decide whether Congress is for sale.
Sources: The Washington Post; OpenSecrets; FEC filings; CNN; Reuters; FactCheck.org; ABC News; WIRED; CNBC; The Guardian; POLITICO; Forbes (Antonio Pequeño IV).