Elon Musk not invited to top UK investment summit
According to BBC reports, Elon Musk, the world’s richest individual, has not been invited to the UK government’s International Investment Summit, following his controversial social media posts during last month’s riots.
The unrest erupted across the UK after a stabbing incident in Southport, where three children attending a dance class were killed. Musk, the tech mogul, took to X (formerly Twitter), predicting a civil war in the UK and launching repeated criticisms at Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The October summit is a critical event where the prime minister aims to secure tens of billions in foreign investment from the world’s top investors.
Musk, who attended last year’s event and played a prominent role in November’s AI Summit, including a conversation with then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, has not been asked to return. Both the government and Musk have been approached for comment.
During the riots in August, Musk posted and later deleted a conspiracy theory on X, suggesting that the UK was constructing “detainment camps” for rioters on the Falkland Islands. His remarks were strongly condemned by ministers at the time, who labeled them “totally unjustifiable” and “deplorable.”
It is understood that these comments are the reason for his exclusion from the upcoming event on October 14, which will gather hundreds of the world’s largest investors. Scheduled just two weeks before the Budget, the summit is being promoted by the government as a major opportunity to boost foreign investment and stimulate the UK economy. The Labour Party had promised to hold this event within its first 100 days in office.
Under the previous Conservative government, Musk—who owns X, Tesla, and SpaceX—had been discreetly given tours of potential UK sites for a gigafactory to produce electric vehicles and batteries.
He has previously told journalists he opened a site in Germany and not the UK partly because of Brexit.
He is a regular at the equivalent French summit. In July, he attended a three-hour lunch with top executives with President Emmanuel Macron ahead of the Olympics earlier this summer.
Under his ownership of the site formerly known as Twitter, Mr Musk lifted the ban on far-right figures, including on the Britain First group.
The UK is considering a tougher Online Safety Act, after the role of misinformation in the widespread racist disorder in August.
He is the world’s richest person and has used his platform to make his views known on a vast array of topics.
Bloomberg estimates his net worth to be around $228bn.
That’s based largely on the value of his shares in Tesla, of which he owns more than 13%. The company’s stock soared in value – some say unreasonably – in 2020 as the firm’s output increased and it started to deliver regular profits.
Since bursting on to the Silicon Valley scene more than two decades ago, the 53-year-old serial entrepreneur has kept the public captivated with his business antics.
Born in Pretoria, South Africa, Mr Musk showed his talents for entrepreneurship early, going door to door with his brother selling homemade chocolate Easter eggs and developing his first computer game at the age of 12.
For a long time Mr Musk, who became a US citizen in 2002, resisted efforts to label his politics – calling himself “half-Democrat, half-Republican”, “politically moderate” and “independent”.
He says he voted for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and – reluctantly – Joe Biden, all of them Democrats.
But in recent years he’s swung behind Donald Trump, who is a Republican. Mr Musk officially endorsed the former president for a second term in 2024 after his attempted assassination.
