Elon Musk made a surprise appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, marking a striking reversal after years of publicly criticising the annual gathering of political and business elites. The world's richest person joined BlackRock CEO Larry Fink on a panel, tweeting beforehand: “Speaking @wef in 20 mins. What should I say?”
During the session, Musk discussed plans for Tesla's self-driving technology in Europe, expressing hope that the company would receive approval by next month. He also joked about President Donald Trump’s recent aggressive rhetoric toward Venezuela and Greenland, referencing Trump's new “Board of Peace.” “I heard about the formation of the peace summit, and I was like, is that p-i-e-c? You know, a little piece of Greenland, a little piece of Venezuela,” he said.
Musk criticised Trump’s tariffs on solar panels, stating: “Unfortunately in the U.S., the tariff barriers for solar (panels) are extremely high. And that makes the economics of deploying solar artificially high, because China makes almost all the solar and the tech.” His appearance comes amid his continued involvement in global debates, including SpaceX's supply of satellite internet to conflict zones and controversy over sexualised images generated by Grok, a chatbot from his AI startup xAI.
In previous years, Musk has been one of the WEF's most prominent critics, regularly mocking the Davos gathering as “boring” and describing the organisation as “an unelected world government that the people never asked for and don't want.” However, his status as a Trump ally has elevated his political clout, giving him unusual influence over policy discussions on technology, defence and global communications.
