Largest single spend is $158m to Senate Leadership Fund

Elon Musk has emerged as the largest political donor of the 2026 US midterm elections cycle, funneling about $366m into political groups and conservative candidates, The Guardian reported, citing figures first published by The New York Times ahead of a federal disclosure due Thursday.

The sum exceeds Musk’s roughly $300m in contributions to Donald Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign, The Guardian reported, and marks a reversal from Musk’s mid-2025 announcement that he would step back from large-scale political giving after his Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) role ended in a public falling-out with the president.

According to the NYT figures cited by The Guardian, Musk has poured more than $276m into politics since July alone, a pace the Guardian characterized as among the most rapid in US political history. The spending is concentrated on races that will determine which party controls the US Senate.

The Guardian and Reuters reported that the donations flow through a network of political action committees, including Musk’s own America Pac. Musk’s largest single outlay is a $158m contribution to the Senate Leadership Fund, a Super PAC working to help Republicans retain control of the chamber.

Other major contributions include $76m for America Pac, $20m for the Congressional Leadership Fund and $10m for the Republican Governors Association, according to the Guardian.

Musk also gave $10m to a PAC supporting Ken Paxton, the Texas Republican Senate candidate facing Democratic nominee James Talarico in one of the cycle’s most closely watched races. In January, Musk gave $10m to Nate Morris, a Kentucky Republican Senate candidate who withdrew from the race in May after accepting an offer to become the US ambassador to Colombia.

Some of the spending funds advertising and messaging focused on anti-transgender rhetoric and accusing Democratic candidates of being “radical socialists,” The Guardian reported.

Over the weekend, Musk reposted on X a video from America Pac that featured Talarico’s past statements on gender, calling it “madness.” The Guardian reported that Musk has long used X, the social media platform he owns, to target political opponents, push what the newspaper characterized as election misinformation, and attack trans rights.

The Guardian described Musk’s renewed spending as reasserting the SpaceX and Tesla CEO as the top Republican mega-donor, reversing a quieter period in 2025 when the failures of Doge and what the newspaper characterized as costly public backlash to his political influence had appeared to dampen his interest in Washington politics.

According to The Guardian, Musk has become an “international linchpin for far-right political movements” and aligns himself with “anti-immigrant, conservative leaders.”

Even at the record-setting total, the $366m represents less than 0.04% of Musk’s net worth, which The Guardian estimated at nearly $1tn.