Starlink Outage, xAI-Kalshi Tie-Up, Tesla Troubles & Neuralink’s $1B Ambition

To say Elon Musk is a popular name in the tech industry would be an understatement.

Aside from his controversial, headline-grabbing comments, Musk is a leading figure in numerous successful tech companies, some of which include Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, X, and Neuralink.

All these companies operate in diverse sectors, yet find intersecting areas.

For example—Elon Musk’s X was acquired by Elon Musk’s xAI.

X is the social media platform previously known as Twitter, and xAI is a company engaged in artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The merger will allow xAI to train from X content, while X will offer users access to the company's prized chatbot Grok. The move drove the combined valuation up to $113 billion.

Same same—but different—but still same

Next example—Elon Musk’s SpaceX invested in Elon Musk’s X’s xAI.

The investment included a commitment of $2 billion that will help it compete with rivals and was part of a $5 billion equity round that was marked by Morgan Stanley in January. Musk also floated the possibility of Tesla investments.

Another example—Elon Musk’s Tesla rolled out Elon Musk’s xAI’s Grok in vehicles.

Acting as an in-car conversational AI assistant, Grok will be pre-installed in all new vehicles delivered on or after July 12, 2025, with older vehicles gaining access through over-the-air updates. While conversations with users will serve as fodder for Grok's training, Tesla confirmed they will remain anonymous and not linked to users or their vehicles, according to the FAQ section on its website.

Suffice it to say, being connected to such a wide range of industries will come with days that bear both good news and bad news—and the past week has been a mixed bag for Musk.
 

Starlink’s Outage

On July 23, T-Mobile announced the public launch of T-Satellite, coming out of beta testing, which will be “available to anyone who wants it—including Verizon and AT&T customers!”

“With 650+ satellites in orbit, the largest satellite-to-mobile constellation on the planet aims to connect you almost anywhere you can see the sky. It's already helping save lives during disasters and providing an extra level of safety for those who love to explore the great outdoors,” said T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert, whose announcement came first.

On July 24, Starlink confirmed a global network outage, one that lasted for approximately 2.5 hours and affected over 60,000 users—as per Downdetector, the peak number of reports was 64,004.


“Starlink is currently in a network outage and we are actively implementing a solution. We appreciate your patience, we'll share an update once this issue is resolved,” read the confirmation post on X.

Starlink is owned and operated by SpaceX.

The incident drew the attention of Elon Musk, who provided updates during the outage, saying, “Service will be restored shortly. Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

As per Michael Nicolls, the VP of Starlink Engineering at SpaceX, the outage occurred due to the failure of key internal software services that operate the core network.

“The network issue has been resolved, and Starlink service has been restored. We understand how important connectivity is and apologize for the disruption,” Starlink posted upon resumption of services.
 

xAI-Kalshi Tie-Up Brings Grok To Prediction Markets

On the brighter side, xAI and Kalshi announced that the two are partnering to bring Grok to prediction markets, where xAI’s powerful Grok will power real-time analysis of news, historical data, and economic events to support users trading on Kalshi’s federally regulated prediction trading platform.


“Effective immediately, Kalshi and xAI are partnering to bring Grok to prediction markets. Two of the fastest growing companies in America are now on the same team,” reads xAI’s post announcing the partnership, which also sported a demo video, while Kalshi’s post simply read, “Kalshi 🤝 @xAI.”
 

Tesla Troubles

What’s life without ups and downs?

It’s been a good few weeks for Tesla, having launched its robotaxi—finally—and delivered its first self-driving vehicle that drove itself from Gigafactory Texas to its new owner’s home, which was around 30 minutes away.

Despite these positives, there were some issues, including Tesla’s Texas tests tainted by mistakes as its competitors drove ahead. At the same time, public safety advocates are looking to ban Tesla’s self-driving vehicles.

On the flip side, Tesla entered the Indian market with its Model Y, albeit costing $70,000, significantly more than the model’s U.S. pricing, due to high import duties. Again, bittersweet moves.


Of course, these problems aren’t helped by the fact that Tesla’s sales are declining, even if they’re doing well.

Mounting pressure from Chinese automakers that are marketing cheaper and more efficient electric vehicles (EVs) and autonomous vehicles (AVs) are eating away at Tesla’s hopes to retain pole position in the sector.

As such, Tesla’s sales fell 13% in the first half of this year.

Tesla remains optimistic, though, with CEO Elon Musk saying Tesla is “getting the regulatory permission to launch” robotaxis in several states, including California, Nevada, Arizona, and Florida. The goal is to reach “half the population of the U.S. by the end of the year.”

So far, Tesla’s robotaxis have only seen a limited launch, with availability restricted to a select few social media influencers and content creators. These tests too included one person in the passenger seat who was acting as a “safety monitor,” but no one in the driver's seat.
 

Neuralink’s $1 Billion Ambition

When it comes to optimistic plans, Elon Musk envisions a bright future for Neuralink.

Talking to investors, Musk spoke of plans to implant 20,000 people a year with Neuralink chips by 2031. By which time, he expects the chips to generate around $1 billion in annual revenue.

Further plans include opening and operating five large clinics that offer at least three versions of its device, including Telepathy (communication between a human’s brain and machines), Deep (to treat tremors and Parkinson’s disease), and Blindsight (helping those who are blind or visually impaired).


This news comes as the company revealed that it implanted two more patients over the weekend, taking its total number of patients with its brain-computer interface (BCI) devices to nine.

“We successfully completed both P8 and P9 [Patient 8 and Patient 9] this weekend, our first time performing two surgeries in one day. Both participants are recovering well and in great spirits. We are looking forward to supporting them on their Neuralink journey,” read Neuralink's post.
 

X Community Notes

Recently, X launched a pilot test that expands the use of its Community Notes system—the idea is to test if posts can be recognized for being liked by users who usually have different perspectives.

A small group of contributors will see new callouts on select posts based on early and limited Like signals. After which, contributors will be asked to rate these posts and provide more feedback, which will help refine an open-source algorithm that can “identify posts liked by people from different perspectives.”

If a post receives high enough cross-perspective ratings, it will show that it has been liked by people with different perspectives. Contributors involved will receive notifications when their input contributes to such recognition.

Contributors can also see a feed of posts with these callouts in the Got Likes section of the Community Notes site.


Do you think Elon Musk’s companies will lead innovation in the technology industry, or do you think rivals will play spoilsport to his ambitions?

Let us know in the comments below!