As rumors swirl that Elon Musk may donate $100 million to Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK party Musk has also just incorporated X.AI London Ltd
If 2016 was the era of Trump, the 2020s have ushered in the era of Elon Musk and the ascendancy of the U.S. oligarchy.
In 2022 Elon Musk completed a $44 billion deal to purchase Twitter. Then before the 2022 U.S. midterm elections Elon Musk gave $50 million to a nonprofit linked to Stephen Miller to fund ad campaigns that attacked Democrats on issues such as medical care for transgender children and illegal immigration. And this year Musk gave over $250 million to pro-Trump campaign groups and PACs ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Elon Musk’s billions and millions invested in campaigns and social media has paid off. Musk and Donald Trump are now joined at the hip, with Trump often appearing like a docile Vice President to an unelected President Musk.
However, buying a U.S. presidency is apparently not enough for the richest man in the world. Elon Musk’s insatiable appetite to buy power and influence extends across the globe. In a recent exchange with JD Vance (in case you forgot, the soon-to-be actual Vice President), Musk posted on X that “Only the AfD can save Germany”. The media has widely reported on Musk’s endorsement of the far-right neo-Nazi AfD party.
It is impossible to foresee how disruptive and destructive the next Trump presidency will be or how much back-seat power Elon Musk will be able to buy. But he is on a roll, and he has now set his sites on the U.K.
Elon Musk may give $100 million to Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK party (formerly the Brexit Party)
At the end of November, The Sunday Times reported that Elon Musk may be preparing to give $100 million to Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, which was previously known as the Brexit Party. A donation of that size would be the largest ever made in British electoral history.
Last week Elon Musk met with Nigel Farage and Reform’s new party treasurer, Nick Candy, at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago (Nick Candy is reported to be a billionaire property tycoon who runs Candy Property and Candy Ventures). Nigel Farage also published a piece in the Telegraph on how “Elon Musk believes Britain is in very deep trouble” under Keir Starmer.
Elon Musk has just incorporated a new company X.AI London Ltd
As the rumors of Musk’s potential massive infusion of money to sway U.K. politics floods the news, I noticed that a new Musk company has appeared on the radar in London.
UK’s Companies House filings show that X.AI London Ltd (company # 16131916) was incorporated on December 12, 2024. Elon Musk’s long-time business associate Jared Birchall is the director and Elon Musk is listed as the person with significant control. The incorporation filing shows the initial shareholder with 100 ordinary shares is X.AI LLC at 216 Park Rd Burlingame CA 94010.
The U.K. office address is 20 Air Street London, the same address as Musk’s X (previously Twitter) offices. In January 2023 Musk’s Twitter was sued for missing rent payments on offices in London, San Francisco and New York City. It is not clear from subsequent reporting what happened to Musk's unpaid rent bills.
There is little additional information in the X.AI London Ltd incorporation filing and it is not clear what the scope of Musk’s focus will be for xAI in London. A search of the UK Companies House filings does not show any other active companies in the U.K. that list either Elon Musk or Jared Birchall as officers or significant owners.
There is no indication that there is any connection between Musk’s new X.AI London Ltd and Musk’s possible funding of Farage’s Reform party. But there is a significant amount of money flowing through Elon Musk's xAI business and the timing to incorporate a company in London shows that Musk is focused on a presence in the U.K. on multiple fronts.
Elon Musk’s xAI is has significant funding from Saudi Prince Alwaleed’s Kingdom Holding
Elon Musk launched his artificial intelligence business xAI in July 2023. The website modestly states that the mission is to ‘Understand the Universe’. Last year xAI launched Grok, a competitor to Chat GPT and other AI chatbot tools, which trained on X content and is available to X users.
Earlier this year I reported that a $6 billion funding round for xAI in May 2024 included $400 million from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud and his company, Kingdom Holding. A quarterly financial statement for Kingdom Holding Company for the period ending June 30, 2024 revealed that they invested Saudi Riyals 1.5 billion valued at USD $400 million in xAI.
The Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF) is also a 16.8% owner of Kingdom Holding and therefore also an investor in Elon Musk’s X and xAI.
As I have covered here and more recently here, the Saudi Arabian PIF has invested over $2 billion to be managed by Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners and PIF has sponsored many golf tournaments at Donald Trump properties. This month the Trump Organization announced several new projects in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.
In addition to Prince Alwaleed’s Kingdom Holdings $400 million investment in xAI in May it appears that they will have even more than that invested, although the amount is not yet known. The Financial Times reported this month that xAI was set to close a new $5 billion funding round and that Elon Musk had given investors that backed his $44 billion Twitter acquisition 25 percent of the shares of xAI.
Those set to benefit as investors in both Musk companies include Fidelity, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and Silicon Valley venture firms Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
A Forbes story reports that xAI raised nearly $6 billion in this month’s financing per this SEC Form D filing and the company is now valued at $50 billion.
In 2016 Brexit and Trump had common supporters and funders and it continues to be important to monitor far-right US-UK connections
After Trump was elected in 2016 I started researching and reporting on Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group funded by the Mercer family and Steve Bannon. Over the years I have periodically focused on some of the common US and UK political and business connections.
Robert and Rebekah Mercer provided a huge amount of funding to elect Trump in 2016, so it is not surprising that Elon Musk, who filled this role in 2024, is now reaching across the pond to get involved in U.K. politics by supporting Nigel Farage’s far-right movement.
Elon Musk is not just 'reaching across the pond' metaphorically, but he has also talked about a project to transform transatlantic travel by building a vacuum tube tunnel in which trains could reach speeds up to 3,000 miles per hour and bring passengers from New York to London in one hour. Some estimates say that the project would cost $20 trillion, but Musk claims that his Boring Company could build the tunnel for a mere $20 billion.
Whether or not Musk gets involved with building a tunnel from New York to London, it appears he is likely to soon invest heavily in supporting his far-right agenda in the U.K. and at the same time he has set up a company in London for his xAI business venture. This is one story well worth watching and digging into further.
Brilliant piece and unsettling.
Musk needs to be made aware of limits, in the harshest way possible.