Tesla’s ad spend on X has shrunk to almost nothing

Tesla spent $400,000 advertising on Elon Musk’s social media platform X in 2024, according to a new regulatory filing. But the automaker appears to be on track to spend just a fraction of that in 2025 as sales have struggled.

In the first two months of 2025, Tesla spent $10,000 on X ads, putting it on track to spend only $60,000 annually unless it radically increases its advertising for the remainder of the year. During the same time period last year, it had already spent $200,000 on X, Tesla disclosed. Tesla’s spending slowed considerably after those first two months, paying another $200,000 across the remainder of 2024. 

Tesla never used to advertise. It wasn’t until CEO Elon Musk gave in to shareholder pressure in 2023 that he said his company would try it out. Ads for the company’s cars started showing up in Google results and on YouTube in late 2023 and early 2024, and also on X.

It’s unclear if spending has picked up on X since February, though Google’s Ads Transparency database shows Tesla still has around 700 active advertisements across Google’s properties like Search and YouTube. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Elsewhere in Musk world, Tesla disclosed that it paid SpaceX around $800,000 for the use of one of the rocket company’s private jets — an agreement that Musk usually takes great advantage of in order to shuttle around the headquarters of the various companies he oversees. That said, even that expense seems to be on track to be reduced in 2025. Tesla only paid SpaceX around $40,000 through February 2025 for the use of the jet.

Protecting Musk during all that travel is not cheap, either. Tesla revealed in the proxy that it paid a security company owned by Musk $2.8 million in 2024 — an increase from the $2.4 million it paid when it first engaged the security company in 2023. That security company earned $500,000 from Tesla through February 2025, and like last year, the automaker notes that this only represents a “portion of the total cost of security services concerning Mr. Musk.”

But the biggest transaction between Musk companies last year came from xAI, which actually paid Tesla $198.3 million. Nearly all of that was for Tesla’s Megapack battery storage products, which xAI is using at its data center in Tennessee. xAI paid Tesla another $36.8 million for Megapack products through the first two months of this year, too.

Tesla’s success has been good for Musk’s brother Kimbal, too. Not only is he a board member, but the new proxy filing revealed that Tesla paid his drone company, Nova Sky Stories, $300,000 for the show it put on at the automaker’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024.