Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur and owner of social media platform X, has publicly accepted responsibility for a major outage that left the site inaccessible for nearly two hours on Saturday.
Addressing the incident on X itself, Musk acknowledged the need for "major operational improvements" after the failure of the platform’s failover redundancy system, which was expected to prevent such disruptions. The site resumed normal service by 11:00 am (1500 GMT) on Saturday.
“I must be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out,” Musk wrote, adding that he would be dedicating himself to working “24/7” and even sleeping in conference, server, or factory rooms to address the issues.
The outage comes at a time when Musk is juggling multiple high-profile responsibilities, including leading Tesla, SpaceX, and his AI venture xAI, alongside his recent controversial attempts to streamline the US government workforce through his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). His efforts to slash thousands of government jobs have drawn widespread criticism and coincided with a dip in Tesla’s share price.
Following the backlash, Musk appears to be stepping back from his government efficiency role to concentrate more on his core technology ventures. The imminent launch of SpaceX’s Starship rocket — which has previously experienced explosive failures during test flights — is among the critical projects requiring his attention.
This outage and Musk’s pledge to ramp up operational oversight underscore ongoing challenges in managing the rapidly evolving digital platforms amid competing business priorities.
