Elon Musk has denied recent reports claiming that he worked illegally when launching his career in the U.S., after the claims were widely reported over the weekend to be contradictory to his recent political statements regarding illegal immigration.
On Saturday, the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post claimed in a report that Musk was not legally allowed to work at the time that he was launching Zip2, which would later go on to sell for around $307 million in 1999. Although Musk arrived in the U.S. in 1995 for a graduate program at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, he never enrolled in his courses, and shortly thereafter he dropped out and started Zip2 with his brother Kimbal.
In the report, the Post notes that Musk’s dropping out of school would render him without a legal backing to remain in the country, though he has already denied the claims in a post on X.
President Joe Biden later reiterated the claims during a Democratic campaign event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Saturday (via CNBC), to which Musk responded on X.
“I was on a J-1 visa that transitioned to an H1-B,” Musk said in the post in the early hours of Sunday morning. “They know this, as they have all my records. Losing the election is making them desperate.”
The Post report also said that Musk’s former business associates at Zip2 were concerned about his legal status and the risk of his deportation.
According to six former associates and Zip2 shareholders cited in the report, Musk told co-workers at the time that he was in the country on a student visa. Former Zip2 board member, investor, and later CEO Derek Proudian highlighted agreement amongst investors that Elon and Kimbal’s immigration was of concern at the time—especially if the company was aiming to go public.
“Their immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a company in the U.S.,” Proudian said. “We don’t want our founder being deported.”
“We want to take care of this long before there’s anything that could screw up,” Proudian added, alluding to the company’s potential for an initial public offering (IPO).
The report also claims that another large shareholder who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the topics said that another minor problem had drawn attention to the brothers’ immigration issues.
While Elon has never publicly stated that he worked without proper legal status, The Post also said it obtained emails between Musk and other early Tesla executives, in which he did express not having a legal backing to remain in the U.S., though he pointed to Zip2 as a potential solution—potentially corroborating his denial of the claims if he did in fact transition to an H1-B visa before becoming a U.S. citizen in 2002.
“Actually, I didn’t really care much for the degree, but I had no money for a lab and no legal right to stay in the country, so that seemed like a good way to solve both issues,” Musk said in a 2005 email to Tesla co-founders Martin Eberhard and JB Straubel obtained by the Post. “Then the internet came along, which seemed like a much surer bet.”
“I was legally there, but I was meant to be doing student work,” Musk also said in a podcast in 2020. “I was allowed to do work sort of supporting whatever.”
The reports and Musk’s denial come as the Tesla and SpaceX head has been posting several times a day on X about illegal immigrants, following his endorsement of Republican candidate Donald Trump in July, and his founding of the America PAC political action committee (PAC) in support of the former President’s campaign.
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What are your thoughts? Let me know at zach@teslarati.com, find me on X at @zacharyvisconti, or send us tips at tips@teslarati.com.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s latest Tesla tunnel truck mod “fits like a glove”
The Boring Company has modified a Tesla powered tunnel truck to carry freight containers underground.
The Boring Company has found a second job for the Tesla hardware it already runs underground. In a post on X, Elon Musk’s tunneling company showed its latest Prufrock Liner Truck modified to carry a standard 20 foot shipping container. “Using TBC tunnels to transport freight,” the company wrote. “The latest Prufrock Liner Truck (using Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units) has been modified to carry a standard 20′ shipping container. Fits like a glove!”
The photo shows a red container sitting on a long, low white chassis parked outside, with drive hardware visible at one end. The Boring Company did not say where or when freight hauling would start, which customers it has in mind, or how many trucks it is converting.
Using TBC tunnels to transport freight.
The latest Prufrock Liner Truck (using Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units) has been modified to carry a standard 20’ shipping container.
Fits like a glove! https://t.co/VV0phWK4fc
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) October 19, 2026
Until now, the liner trucks have hauled concrete. Teslarati reported in August on Liner Truck 3, which uses Model 3 battery packs and drive units to move more than 22,000 pounds of precast tunnel segments to the boring machine. It has 28 miles of range, tops out at 12 mph, and is piloted remotely from the company’s operations center in Texas. The freight version appears to be the same platform with a different bed, and The Boring Company has not said whether it will also be remotely piloted.
Freight has been on the company’s menu for years. When TBC updated its product lineup in 2021, its freight tunnel was described as sized to fit a standard shipping container, “barely.” The company later used the idea at Tesla’s own factory, where Prufrock 3 dug a tunnel to Giga Texas that now moves finished Cybertrucks away from the production line.
The Boring Company closed a $3 billion Series D in September at a $23 billion valuation, and Teslarati has covered how that money is tied to a UAE tunneling push and a faster Nashville build. In Nashville, Prufrock MB1 and MB2 are mining at the same time, and a third machine is expected to launch in late October. Each machine needs a steady supply of liner trucks, so any design that works for segments and containers alike gives the company more use out of the same Tesla parts.
The Vegas Loop remains the only Boring Company system open to the public, and it moves passengers in Tesla vehicles. A freight service would be a separate product, and the post gave no indication that one is close to launch. For now, it is a truck, a container and a short caption saying they fit together.
Elon Musk said he is planning to give “every one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, stating that “this will be the first of many.”
SpaceX went public earlier this year, and its stock price has been relatively stable since leveling off shortly after its IPO. Based on its current price, it’s a gift of just over $10 billion to children across the United States.
It appears to be closely related to President Donald Trump’s bank accounts for children, which were set up earlier this year as Trump Accounts.
Just hours earlier, Anthropic had announced the establishment of its Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, “a new wholly-owned entity dedicated entirely to public benefit.” Musk responded by stating he recommended “giving the shares directly to the public,” and that he would be doing it that way.
Just a little bit later, Musk said children across the U.S. would be getting a share from him:
Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America.
This will be the first of many.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026
There are roughly 70 million children, meaning someone under the age of 18, in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk’s ownership of SpaceX stock shows he has around 849 million Class A shares of SpaceX stock, according to filings with the SEC.
Elon Musk revealed in a post on X that “Permits were impossible to get,” explaining the fate of The Boring Company’s most ambitious East Coast proposal.
The comment responded to a query about what became of his July 20, 2017 announcement that he had “just received verbal govt approval” for an underground Hyperloop connecting New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., capable of carrying passengers from the Big Apple to the Nation’s Capital in just 29 minutes.
The Boring Company receives verbal ‘approval’ to build NY to DC Hyperloop tunnel
The 2017 post, which envisioned city-center stations and multiple elevators in each city, sparked immediate scrutiny. Local and state officials in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D.C. said they had no knowledge of any approval. A White House spokesperson confirmed only “promising conversations” about the transformative infrastructure.
Musk clarified shortly after that there was “still a lot of work” to do for formal approvals.
@cybrtrkguy Permits were impossible to get
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026
Limited progress followed, as Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s administration issued a conditional utility permit and supported work near Fort Meade. In 2018, Washington, D.C., granted a preliminary permit for site preparation and excavation on a vacant lot at 53 New York Ave. NE in the NoMa neighborhood, which The Boring Company said could become a station.
A draft environmental assessment for a D.C.-Baltimore segment was released in 2019. Yet, by April 2021, the company had removed the project from its website, and the Federal Highway Administration reported receiving no indication of further interest. Communication with Maryland officials had ceased.
The full corridor would have required coordination among the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, the Federal Highway Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service, and other agencies.
Environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, utility clearances, and approvals for novel infrastructure added to the overall complexity of the project and its approval.
Speculation on the permitting barriers centers around a few factors, but a multi-state, multi-level route involving unproven high-speed vacuum-tube technology inherently triggers exhaustive safety, environmental, and engineering reviews that can stretch for years, even for conventional projects.
There are also other elements, of course, like officials who may face political exposure if a privately funded, untested system encountered anything such as cost overruns, delays, or safety issues. On the outset of this project, there were limited things such as engineering plans or demonstrated technology maturity, which also added to the potential skepticism.
The East Coast vision for Boring Co., once framed as a privately funded revolution that could reshape Northeast travel, quietly ended without construction of the promised network. Musk’s recent statement frames the outcome as a regulatory impasse, unfortunate but not unexpected.
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Elon Musk will give ‘every kid in America’ a SpaceX share in 2027
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