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• Elon Musk and Donald Trump have had a tumultuous relationship over the years.
• The two traded barbs during Trump’s first term but became political allies during the 2024 election.
• After a public fallout, Musk and Trump’s feud appears to be thawing.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump appear to be back on after an on-again, off-again relationship over the years.

The world’s richest person and the two-time president of the United States weren’t always close, but became singular political allies, with Musk calling himself “first buddy” following Trump’s 2024 victory and donating more than $200 million toward pro-Trump super PACs.

At the beginning of Trump’s second term, Musk was frequently seen on the president’s side and served as the de facto head of the White House DOGE office.

In June 2025, Trump and Musk’s relationship blew up after Musk criticized Trump’s signature “Big Beautiful Bill.” Musk even threatened to start his own political party. Trump threatened to “destroy” Musk’s companies.

Tensions have cooled since then. Musk and Trump shook hands at Charlie Cook’s memorial service in September, a reunion that Musk and the White House proudly shared on social media. In October 2025, Trump said he now had a “good” relationship with Musk.

“I like Elon, I’ve always liked him,” Trump said.

Here’s how the two billionaires reached this point.

November 2016: Musk says Trump is ‘not the right guy’ for the job

Just before the 2016 presidential election, Musk told CNBC he didn’t think Trump should be president. 

“I feel a bit stronger that he is not the right guy. He doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States,” Musk said. 

The billionaire added that Hillary Clinton’s economic and environmental policies were the “right ones.”

December 2016: Musk appointed to Trump’s advisory councils

After he won the presidency, Trump appointed Musk to two economic advisory councils, along with other business leaders like then Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. 

Musk received criticism for working with the controversial president, but he defended his choice by saying he was using the position to lobby for better environmental and immigration policies. 

June 2017: Musk cut ties with the White House in protest of Trump’s environmental policies

On June 1, 2017, after Trump announced the US would pull out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, Musk resigned from his roles on presidential advisory boards. 

“Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world,” Musk said in a tweet announcing his departure.

Musk’s goal for Tesla is to curb dependence on fossil fuels through electric vehicles, solar power, and stationary energy storage. 

January 2020: ‘One of our great geniuses’

During a January 2020 interview with CNBC, Trump praised Musk’s accomplishments and intelligence. 

“You have to give him credit,” the former president said, referring to Tesla becoming more valuable than Ford and General Motors. “He’s also doing the rockets. He likes rockets. And he’s doing good at rockets too, by the way.” 

Trump called Musk “one of our great geniuses” and likened him to Thomas Edison. 

May 2020: Trump backs up Musk in feud with California’s COVID-19 rules

As the pandemic gripped the US in early 2020, Musk clashed with California public-health officials who forced Tesla to temporarily shut down its factory there. Trump voiced his support for Musk. 

“California should let Tesla & @elonmusk open the plant, NOW,” Trump tweeted in May 2020. “It can be done Fast & Safely!”

“Thank you!” Musk replied. 

May 2022: Musk says he would reinstate Trump’s Twitter account

In May 2022, Musk said he would unban Trump as Twitter’s new owner. 

Musk called the ban a “morally bad decision” and “foolish to the extreme” in an interview with the Financial Times. Twitter kicked Trump off its platform following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. 

The Tesla billionaire has called himself a “free speech absolutist,” and one of his key goals for taking Twitter private was to loosen content moderation. 

July 2022: Trump calls Musk a ‘bullshit artist’

In July 2022, Trump took aim at Musk, saying the businessman voted for him but later denied it. 

“You know [Musk] said the other day ‘Oh, I’ve never voted for a Republican,'” Trump said during a Saturday rally in Anchorage, Alaska. “I said ‘I didn’t know that.’ He told me he voted for me. So he’s another bullshit artist.”

Days later, Musk tweeted that Trump’s claim was “not true.”

July 2022: Musk says Trump shouldn’t run again

Musk stopped short of attacking Trump personally, but said he shouldn’t run for president again. 

“I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset. Dems should also call off the attack – don’t make it so that Trump’s only way to survive is to regain the Presidency,” he tweeted. 

He continued: “Do we really want a bull in a china shop situation every single day!? Also, I think the legal maximum age for start of Presidential term should be 69.” Trump is 76 years old. 

July 2022: Trump lashes out

Soon after, Trump went on the offensive, posting a lengthy attack on Musk on Truth Social.

“When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects, whether it’s electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere, without which subsidies he’d be worthless, and telling me how he was a big Trump fan and Republican, I could have said, ‘drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it,” Trump said in a post that criticized two of Musk’s ventures, Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX. 

“Lmaooo,” Musk responded on Twitter.

October 2022: Trump cheers Musk’s Twitter deal but says he won’t return

Following Musk’s official purchase of Twitter in October 2022, Trump applauded the deal.

“I am very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands, and will no longer be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs that truly hate our country,” he said. He added that he likes Truth Social better than other platforms, echoing comments from earlier this year in which he ruled out a return to Twitter. 

Musk later joked about the potential of welcoming the former president back to his newly acquired platform.

“If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if Trump is coming back on this platform, Twitter would be minting money!,” the Tesla CEO tweeted in October 2022.

May 2023: Musk hosts Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ glitchy debut

Musk and other right-leaning voices in Silicon Valley initially supported Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis ended 2022 as Trump’s best-positioned primary challenger. In November 2022, as DeSantis was skyrocketing to acclaim, Musk said he would endorse him. In March 2023, after enduring Trump’s attacks for months, DeSantis prepared to make history by formally announcing his candidacy in an interview on Twitter.

The initial few minutes were a glitchy disaster. Trump and his allies ruthlessly mocked DeSantis’ “Space” with Musk and venture capitalist David Sachs. DeSantis’ interview later proceeded, but his campaign was dogged for days with negative headlines.

September 2023: A Trump-style border wall is needed, Musk says

Musk live-streamed a visit to the US-Mexico border on Twitter, which he had rebranded as “X.” Musk offered his support for one of Trump’s signature immigration policies.

“We actually do need a wall and we need to require people to have some shred of evidence to claim asylum to enter, as everyone is doing that,” Musk wrote on X. “It’s a hack that you can literally Google to know exactly what to say! Will find out more when I visit Eagle Pass maybe as soon as tomorrow.”

March 2024: Trump tries to woo Musk, but the billionaire says he won’t give him money.

Trump tried to woo Musk during a meeting at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort. According to The New York Times, Trump met with Musk and a few other GOP megadonors when the former president’s campaign was particularly cash-strapped. After the Times published its report, Musk said he would not be “donating money to either candidate for US President.” 

July 2024: Musk endorses Trump after the former president is shot

Musk said he “fully endorsed” Trump after the former president was shot during a political rally ahead of the Republican National Convention. Musk’s endorsement marked a major turning point in his yearslong political evolution from an Obama voter. Days later, it would come to light that Musk pressed Trump to select Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate.

Trump announced Vance as his vice presidential pick at the Republican National Convention.

The ticket, Musk wrote on X, “resounds with victory.”

August 2024: Trump joins Musk for a highly anticipated interview

Trump, who ended the Republican National Convention primed for victory, stumbled after Biden abruptly dropped out of the 2024 race. He and his allies have struggled to attack Vice President Kamala Harris, who became the Democratic presidential nominee.

Amid Harris’ early media blitz, Trump joined Musk on a two-hour livestream on X that garnered an audience of over 1 million listeners. The conversation covered topics ranging from a retelling of Trump’s assassination attempt to illegal immigration to Musk’s potential role with a government efficiency commission.

In August, Trump began to suggest that he “certainly would” consider adding Musk to his Cabinet or an advisory role. The Tesla CEO responded by tweeting an AI-generated photo of himself on a podium emblazoned with the acronym “D.O.G.E”—Department of Government Efficiency.

“I am willing to serve,” he wrote above the image.

September 2024: Musk says he’s ready to serve if Trump gives him an advisory role

In September 2024, Trump softened the possibility that Musk might join his Cabinet suggestion of Musk joining his Cabinet. However, he also said that Musk could “consult with the country” and help give “some very good ideas.”

Musk later expressed enthusiasm about the news.

“I can’t wait. There is a lot of waste and needless regulation in government that needs to go,” he wrote on X.

He later added that he “looked forward to serving” the country and would be willing to do with without any pay, title, or recognition.

October 2024: Musk speaks at Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania

Musk joined Trump onstage during the former president’s rally, hosted on October 5 in the same location where Trump survived an assassination attempt in July 2024. Musk sported an all-black “Make America Great Again” cap and briefly addressed the crowd, saying that voter turnout for Trump this year was essential or “this will be the last election.” 

“President Trump must win to preserve the Constitution,” Musk said. “He must win to preserve democracy in America.”

The next day, Musk’s America PAC announced that it would offer $47 to each person who refers registered voters residing in swing states to sign a petition “in support for the First and Second Amendments.”

By October, the PAC had reportedly already spent over $80 million on the election, with over $8.2 million spread across 18 competitive House races for the GOP. 

The Tesla CEO later told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that he might face “vengeance” if Trump loses the election.

November 2024: Trump wins the presidency and names Musk his administration

Musk was by Trump’s side on election night at Mar-a-Lago, helping celebrate his victory.

Nearly a week after his 2024 presidential election win, Trump announced that Musk and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy were chosen to lead a newly minted Department of Government Efficiency (or DOGE, as Musk liked to call it, in reference to the meme-inspired cryptocurrency Dogecoin).

“Together, these two wonderful Americans will pay the way for my Administration to dismantle the Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” Trump said in a statement. 

Outside of administrative duties, Musk’s presence at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club was so constant that Trump joked he couldn’t “get rid of him.”

“Elon won’t go home,” Trump told NBC News jokingly

The pair’s close relationship grew into a more personal friendship. Musk was seen attending Trump’s Thanksgiving dinner and on the golf course with Trump and his grandchildren, where Kai Trump said he achieved “uncle status.”

December 2024: Trump reaffirms he will be the next President, not Musk

Trump dismissed concerns that Musk would be running the country, adding in a barb that the billionaire couldn’t even be in charge if he wanted to, since he was born in South Africa.

“No, he’s not going to be president, that I can tell you,” Trump said in December 2024. “And I’m safe. You know why? He can’t be? He wasn’t born in this country.”

Trump’s comments came after Musk flexed his influence to help shut down a bipartisan emergency spending bill earlier that month. Some Republicans questioned why Trump hadn’t been more active in derailing the bill, and Democrats baited the President-elect on social media with posts about Musk “calling the shots” and taking on the role of a “shadow president.

January 2025: Musk and fellow billionaires celebrate Trump’s inauguration

Trump was sworn into office on January 20. Several tech leaders were in attendance, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Google’s Sundar Pichai. The “first buddy” was also front and center for Trump’s inauguration.

Musk took the stage to celebrate at an inauguration event at the Capital One Arena, where he sparked accusations over a gesture he made that some said resembled a Nazi salute. Musk denied the allegations.

“Hopefully, people realize I’m not a Nazi. Just to be clear, I’m not a Nazi,” he said during an interview with Joe Rogan.

February 2025: The White House says Musk isn’t running DOGE

Though Musk quickly became the face of the DOGE effort, White House court filings said he had “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.”

In the February 2025 filing, Musk was described as a senior advisor to Trump with “no greater authority than other senior White House advisors.” Officials also called him a “special government employee.”

Trump told reporters they can call Musk “whatever you want.”

The White House later named Amy Gleason, who previously worked for US Digital Service, as the acting DOGE administrator.

March 2025: Trump buys a Tesla and calls out protesters

Musk’s companies struggled to escape the almost daily DOGE-related news cycles.

Protests, boycotts, and vandalism at Tesla dealerships spread across the US.

In March, Trump stepped in to defend Musk’s electric car company, with Teslas on the South Lawn of the White House. Trump later wrote that he’d purchased a Tesla to show support for Musk.

“The Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s ‘baby,’ in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for,” he wrote on Truth Social.

April 2025: Musk announces he’s stepping back from DOGE

Three months into DOGE’s mission to reshape the federal workforce, Musk announced that he would be stepping back from the effort. He broke the news during an underwhelming Tesla earnings call, where earnings per share were down 71% year over year.

“Starting next month, I will be allocating far more of my time to Tesla,” Musk said during the call. He added that “the major work of establishing the Department of Government Efficiency” had been completed.

At the time, Musk said he would keep spending one or two days each week on governmental duties, so long as Trump wanted him to do so.

May 2025: Musk says he’ll be spending less on politics, criticizes the Republican agenda, and announces he’s leaving government for good

By May 2025, Musk started to step back from his overall political activity. The world’s richest person also said he had “done enough” in terms of political contributions.

Musk told a reporter that he “probably did spend a bit too much time on politics,” and that he’d “reduced that significantly in recent weeks.”

His retreat didn’t last long. Musk took a decidedly more critical tone regarding the overall Republican agenda. In an interview with CBS in late May, he said he wasn’t pleased with Trump and House Republicans’ “big beautiful” spending bill.

“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said.

On May 28, 2025, Musk cut ties with DOGE and the Trump administration. Under federal law, special government employees can’t serve more than 130 days a year. Musk left shortly before that deadline.

June 2025: Musk and Trump escalate attacks, after Tesla CEO delivers sharp rebuke against the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’

Days after stepping away from his job in the White House, Musk delivered his harshest criticism yet of the GOP spending proposal called the “Big Beautiful Bill.”

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote on X on June 3. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”

On June 5, the barbs escalated as Musk doubled down on his criticisms and Trump threatened the CEO’s businesses.

Musk began to dig up old tweets from Trump, including one where the president said in 2013, “I cannot believe the Republicans are extending the debt ceiling—I am a Republican & I am embarrassed!”

Musk quote-tweeted it with the message, “Wise words,” taking a dig at Trump’s very different stance on the debt ceiling today.

Trump first shot back with a softer/more diplomatic response, saying that the CEO and he “had a great relationship,” but he wasn’t sure if it would continue.

The tone soon took a sharp turn after Trump threatened on the same day to terminate the federal contracts that Musk’s companies, including SpaceX and Tesla, rely on, and Musk began to take credit for Trump’s 2024 electoral victory.

In response to Trump’s threat to cancel the government contracts, Musk said on X that he’d immediately decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, which provides NASA transport to and from the International Space Station.

Trump and Musk continued their back-and-forth throughout the month.

“He’s a smart guy. And he actually went and campaigned with me and this and that,” Trump told Fox News in late June. “But he got a little bit upset, and that wasn’t appropriate.”

On June 30, Musk doubled down on his calls for another political party. He also vowed to defeat politicians who support Trump’s bill.

“They will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” Musk wrote on X.

July 2025: Trump threatens Musk but later says he wants his companies to do well

Trump responded on July 1 on Truth Social, suggesting that DOGE could be turned on its former chief.

“Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE,” he wrote.

Musk followed up with more posts on X proclaiming his opposition to the spending bill.

Trump signed his signature bill on July 4, 2025.

On July 5, Musk said on X that he had formed the America Party to “give you back your freedom.”

Trump responded on Truth Social that he was “saddened” to see Musk go “completely ‘off the rails,'” essentially becoming a “TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks.” Trump added that third political parties have never succeeded.

Late in the month, Trump said that even though his signature domestic plan slashes EV subsidies, he’s not out to hurt Musk’s bottom line.

“Everyone is stating that I will destroy Elon’s companies by taking away some, if not all, of the large-scale subsidies he receives from the U.S. Government,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This is not so! I want Elon, and all businesses within our Country, to THRIVE, in fact, THRIVE like never before!”

Trump’s statement came a day after the White House appeared to suggest that federal agencies shouldn’t contract with Musk’s xAI.

September 2025: Trump and Musk reunite to remember a conservative icon

Trump and Musk were seen for the first time since their public falling out at the memorial service for conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.

Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and a host of other top White House officials joined together in Arizona to pay tribute to Kirk, who was killed while speaking at Utah Valley University.

Musk and the White House later posted photos of the meet-up on X.

Trump said that Musk came over “to say hello.”

“I thought it was nice, he came over, we had a little conversation,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One after the memorial service. “We had a very good relationship but it was nice that he came over. “

Musk had previously said that the White House had invited him to an exclusive dinner for tech CEOs but was unable to attend.

October 2025: Trump gives a relationship status update

Trump said he and Musk had a “good” relationship and called their brief feud “a stupid moment.”

“He had a bad spell, he had a bad period. He had a bad moment,” Trump told reporters when asked about their relationship. “It was a stupid moment in his life, very stupid. I’m sure he’d tell you that. But I like Elon, and I suspect I always will.”

The Tesla CEO still has beefs elsewhere. In late October, Musk called Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy a “dummy” amid a spat over who would lead NASA.

November 2025: Musk attended a White House dinner

Trump invited Musk to attend a dinner at the White House with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in November. The event marks Musk’s first public appearance at the White House since stepping back from the DOGE office in May 2025.

The guest list for the dinner included prominent CEOs such as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Apple CEO Tim Cook. Musk shared a photo of the event on X, which included himself, Trump, the crown prince, and Huang.

“I would like to thank President Trump for all he has done for America and the world,” Musk wrote.

One day after the dinner, Trump joked about Musk in a speech at the US-Saudi Investment Forum.

“You’re so lucky I’m with you, Elon. I’ll tell you. Has he ever thanked me properly?” Trump said.

• Felix Wallis landed a research engineer job at an AI startup right after graduating from college.
• Instead of mass-applying for roles, he focused on demonstrating interest in startups he liked.
• He got his first internship by coding a fix and posting it on the company’s Facebook group.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Felix Wallis, 23, a research engineer from London, who works at Artificial Societies. His education, internship, and employment have been verified by Business Insider. This piece has been edited for length and clarity.

It can be challenging to secure a job in AI the traditional way — writing cover letters, blanket-applying for roles, and hoping for the best.

I thought it would be far more straightforward to find a company I was genuinely interested in and personalize my approach — either by building or improving a tool for them, or developing a relationship with senior people at the company.

That strategy helped me land an AI internship while I was still in college, and ultimately led to me securing a full-time job as a research engineer at the AI startup Artificial Societies, which I joined immediately after completing my postgraduate degree.

My coding journey started with a Christmas present

When I was about 10, my parents gave me a Raspberry Pi for Christmas, which came pre-installed with Python. It was the start of my coding journey.

My parents weren’t keen on me playing computer games, but I wanted to play them so badly that I decided to make my own. That, they supported. I started with small Python projects, although I eventually realized it was a terrible language for making games. I moved on to playing around with machine learning, which I’d read about online.

What kept me going was a desire to solve problems I faced as a student, like how to share notes with other pupils. I learned everything from YouTube, the Q&A website for programmers Stack Overflow, and the wider internet.

AI’s hype felt justified

At high school in London, I was interested in both math and politics, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to pursue as a career. I had this boring notion of going into finance or investment banking until I came across an undergraduate degree at University College London that combined social and data sciences. It was the perfect course for me.

I started at UCL in 2021 and, during the academic year, did as many internships as possible, mostly in tech and AI. There was a lot of hype around AI, but I felt it was justified. Every day, I was seeing new use cases emerging, and it seemed like an exciting time for young people to be part of what felt like a dot-com-era-style boom.

While at university, I came across a company called CoLoop, which used AI to synthesize research material into PDFs. I was struggling to read all the articles for my course, and the summarization tool was a real problem-solver. I used it a lot.

When they made a change to the user interface that I didn’t like in 2022, I wrote some code to fix it and shared it on GitHub. I shared the post on CoLoop’s Facebook group, and the founder ended up seeing it. It got me an internship that summer, because I think it demonstrated how interested I was in the product.

At CoLoop, I met fellow intern James He, a student at the University of Cambridge. We ended up co-authoring an academic paper in 2023, which was published in the British Journal of Psychology. The paper explored whether large groups of AI chatbots could mimic collective human behavior.

The idea — that thousands of chatbots could form communities that interact and communicate like humans — formed the basis of Artificial Societies, a company James cofounded in 2024.

At the time, I had started a one-year master’s degree in social data science at the University of Oxford. I spent about 10 weeks perfecting my 1,000-word application for it and didn’t apply for anything else.

The course taught me about natural language processing, quantitative text analysis, and the application of machine learning — all essential for understanding how today’s AI products actually work. Once you grasp the mechanisms, you begin to see ways to improve them.

Throughout my postgraduate studies, I stayed in touch with James. After I graduated, he invited me for a trial with his team. If it didn’t work out, I planned to apply for roles at other AI startups and larger companies, like Mistral and Anthropic. In September, Artificial Societies hired me as a research engineer, where I build AI models, the infrastructure to support them, and run simulations.

My advice: find a startup you’re passionate about and demonstrate your interest

My advice for other graduates seeking jobs in AI is to focus on products you genuinely like in the startup space. Everyone will say they want to work at OpenAI or Google, but if you can find a specific startup that really speaks to you, it’s easier to demonstrate your interest.

You can show that enthusiasm by proposing a new feature, building a small tool for their product, or simply engaging with their user community. It could lead to an internship, like it did for me. Even if it doesn’t turn into a full-time role, you’ll meet like-minded people who might one day found a company and offer you a job down the line.

You can’t fake interest or passion — and proving you have them is, in my experience, the best way to get hired.

• Melania Trump’s style has been closely watched since she became first lady.
• Her best first lady looks mix her personal style with a professional edge.
• Melania Trump has also worn some controversial outfits over the years.

Melania Trump has been showing a new side of her style in her second tenure as first lady.

She returned to the White House in January, striking a markedly different, more subdued tone with her attire than when President Donald Trump first took office in 2017.

Since becoming first lady, Melania Trump’s style has often been a source of attention, as some of her outfits have been controversial.

Take a look at some of the best and worst looks she’s worn while Donald Trump has been in office.

• Satya Nadella thinks Microsoft needs a reboot for AI just like it did in the early cloud days.
• Nadella tapped a new advisor to “rethink the new economics of AI,” according to an internal memo.
• This advisor previously helped force a cultural reckoning at Microsoft when cloud computing emerged.

Satya Nadella believes Microsoft needs to completely rethink its business model for the AI era, and he’s turning to an executive who influenced the company’s cloud reboot 15 years ago.

Nadella tapped Rolf Harms as an advisor on AI economics to help with the ambitious plan, according to a memo the CEO sent top Microsoft executives this month.

Harms wrote the white paper “Economics of the Cloud” in 2010 that helped force a cultural reckoning at Microsoft and pave the way for the company’s cloud-computing success.

“We need to rapidly rethink the new economics of AI across the company — just as we once did with the cloud,” Nadella wrote this month in his message, a copy of which was obtained by Business Insider. “This platform shift is all about building a new AI factory and family of Copilots and agents that drive diffusion and usage across the full stack.”

AI companies are facing mounting questions over whether massive infrastructure investments will pay off. Microsoft took its foot off the AI spending pedal earlier this year, helping to stoke these concerns. However, in recent weeks, the company has doubled down again through huge new deals with OpenAI and Anthropic.

The dynamics were similar in the early days of the cloud. Back then, big tech companies spent heavily to build data centers even though the payoff was uncertain, as some observers worried whether customers would adopt the new technology.

The 2010 missive Harms coauthored “had profound impact on how we completely rethought our business models,” Nadella wrote in the early November memo to Microsoft executives.

The white paper was considered a watershed moment in cloud computing, and helped make the case for Microsoft’s investments by crunching the numbers to show why customers would eventually use large-scale cloud services to save money despite concerns about security and availability.

At the time, people at Microsoft complained to Harms that he was “throwing bombshells into their org,” according to Nadella.

“His response was, ‘they’re already there, I’m just helping you find them,'” Nadella wrote. “And this is the same mindset we need to take today as our business becomes much more capital and knowledge intensive.”

AI will require a similar reboot, the CEO wrote, and he’s expanding Harms’ role to include working closely with Nadella and Microsoft’s top executives, advising them on how to adapt to the new economics of AI, from infrastructure to platform technology and applications.

Harms was a director of corporate strategy when he coauthored the 2010 paper. Business Insider featured him in a 2021 article on the power players helping Microsoft with AI.

Now Harms works under Cloud + AI boss Scott Guthrie as a corporate vice president. Harms will continue to report to Guthrie.

Harms’ “new scope will extend beyond AI Infra as we take a new approach and gain a clear understanding of how existing categories will be transformed and new categories will be birthed as we navigate this shift,” according to Nadella’s memo.

Microsoft did not comment when asked about the memo.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at astewart@businessinsider.com or Signal at +1-425-344-8242. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics will not release an October jobs report due to the government shutdown.
• November’s jobs data release is delayed to December 16, and will include some data from October.
• That puts the report after the Fed’s final meeting of the year on December 9 and 10.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Wednesday that it will not release an October jobs report, citing a lack of data collection during the government shutdown.

BLS said it could not collect household data from the Current Population Survey, “which is not able to be retroactively collected.” That information is central to the monthly jobs report and is used to calculate the unemployment rate.

The collection period for November 2025 data will also be extended, BLS announced, and extra processing time will be added. The Bureau will now release data on December 16, rather than the originally scheduled December 5. That report will also include data on job creation in October from the business establishment survey.

This means that the Federal Reserve will not have access to the most timely jobs data before its last meeting of the year on December 9 and 10. The Fed relies on monthly unemployment and job vacancy data to make decisions, and the last full jobs report was released in early September.

The Bureau is releasing the September jobs report on November 20, after delaying publication during the shutdown.

Following BLS’ announcement, CME Fed Watch’s prediction of a hold in the December meeting rose from roughly 50% to 66%.

The Bureau also said that it will not publish a separate Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for September, but will include that data in the October report scheduled to be released December 9.

The government shutdown lasted for a record 43 days, impacting funding and operations across all agencies.

• First lady Melania Trump is keeping a relatively low profile during President Trump’s second term.
• She divides her time between homes in Florida, New York, and DC.
• She most recently welcomed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia to a state dinner.

It’s a refrain dating back to the first Trump White House: Where’s Melania?

First lady Melania Trump, who remained an enigmatic figure during President Donald Trump’s first term, has kept an even lower profile during his second.

Ahead of the inauguration, Melania Trump told Fox News that she planned to divide her time between the White House, Trump Tower in New York City, and Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.

This schedule has made her an infrequent White House presence, with a select few appearances at public events each month, although September was a busier time for public appearances for the first lady, thanks in large part to the Trumps’ state visit to the UK.

The first lady’s recent muted fashion choices could also indicate her desire to remain out of the spotlight. At White House events, she has largely appeared wearing neutral basics in beige, cream, and gray. It’s a departure from the bold outfits she often chose during Donald Trump’s first term.

A spokesperson for the Office of the First Lady declined to comment.

Take a look at the first lady’s White House activities and appearances thus far.