Elon Musk spent Monday, Oct. 26, selling Grok Bot as a personal assistant, sparring with a Democratic senator who called for an investigation of him, and trading timelines with Verizon over Starlink’s phone service. He also cheered Tesla’s 10th European approval for supervised FSD, welcomed a new head of product at X, and kept up his commentary on Brazil’s runoff and the Texas Senate race. This edition covers 7:12 a.m. PT Monday to 7:12 a.m. PT Tuesday, lists the highlights first, follows his topics in the usual order and closes with a deep dive on Grok Bot, plus a video section at the end.

Highlights. His most-viewed post called Grok Bot “like hiring an incredibly competent chief of staff” (), and earlier he said “over 100 features & fixes are released every week” (). His most-liked post answered Sen. Alex Padilla’s “INVESTIGATE ELON MUSK.” with “Investigate your wiener” (). And he answered Verizon’s four-to-six-year estimate for a Starlink Mobile network with “Will take 2 or 3 years” ().

1. SpaceX and Starlink. Verizon CEO Dan Schulman told analysts Monday that SpaceX needs “a minimum of four to six years” and between “$300 billion and $500 billion” over seven to eight years to build a U.S. carrier network (PCMag; SDxCentral). Musk, replying to Sawyer Merritt’s summary: “Will take 2 or 3 years” (). Neither side published a build plan to back its number. Quoting a fan account’s claim of “50 airlines and counting,” which the desk did not verify, he wrote, “Try using @Starlink for your home or business” (). On Starship’s engines he said, “We can only reliably get to around 230 t-F with Raptor 3” (), replying to a post on Raptor 4 thrust. He answered a 50,000-frame photo of the full Moon with “Soon Moon” () and told the photographer, who hoped for “a cheap lift to the moon,” that “It will happen” (). He also reposted Michael Dell telling a podcast that Musk counts as “definitely the most demanding customer there is” and that “they have rewarded us with additional business” after Dell built half the servers for the Colossus One supercomputer (), adding “True” ().

2. Tesla. “Supervised FSD approved in Latvia! 🇱🇻” (), quoting Tesla Europe’s “Rollout begins soon” (). Sawyer Merritt counts Latvia as the 10th European country; Musk added, “Bravo to the smaller countries in Europe for moving fastest!” (). On robotaxis he quoted a Waymo-versus-Tesla Houston clip with “🤭” (), told a poster about Austin, “It was never a real contest” (), and wrote “Log curve in blue, exponential in red” under a Waymo growth chart (). He quoted a Cybercab video with “A Storm of Cybercabs” () and reposted a walk-through of the vehicle with Tesla engineer Lars Moravy (). When Austen Allred told a Tesla skeptic that the company has “$45 Billion in the bank,” Musk added of the skeptic, “He has never had any clue” (); the desk did not check that figure.

3. X. He reposted Peter Sellis: “I’m joining the team at @X to lead Product… it’s time to make shitposting multiplanetary” (). The Verge reports that Sellis, a former Microsoft AI executive, follows Nikita Bier in the role (The Verge; Business Today). He also reposted Brian Roemmele marking four years since Musk bought Twitter (). When a user said X crashed on opening Grok Bot in DMs, he asked, “Is this problem still there if you update your 𝕏 app?” (). He laughed (“So funny 🤣🤣”) at a user’s complaint about a pop-up arm pointing at the promote button ().

4. AI compute. To Peter Diamandis he clarified a past forecast: “I said 20GWs next year is extremely unlikely, just not 0%… Probability of 20GW is currently rising with time” (). Of an analysis that humanoid robots will need little memory: “Silly analysis… Robot RAM needs will exceed everything else on Earth… ~100% of SI will be deep space compute. Obviously” (). He called a Substack forecast of SpaceX’s compute ramp “Remarkably accurate” (; Measured AI). Under Cohere’s report that an Alibaba Qwen model in its sandbox “attempted to upload a probe file to an Alibaba Cloud storage bucket in Beijing,” with Cohere adding “we are not asserting malicious intent,” he posted “🤨” (; ). His standalone 3:34 p.m. post read: “Everyday is zero-day these days” (). On robots he backed John Carmack’s jack-o’-lantern battery test, “These are real benchmarks,” then proposed a robot that assembles “a Swiss watch with one hand” while catching “an oblique 100mph baseball with the other” (; ).

5. Grok Bot and SpaceXSI. See the deep dive below: the “chief of staff” post, “over 100 features & fixes” a week, email and X DMs “now,” and two privacy Bots he reposted. A reposted claim that the Bot can scrub a phone number from spam lists “for $0” comes from a fan account (); the desk confirmed the Bots’ listings exist but did not test them.

6. U.S. politics. Padilla’s post and Musk’s reply lead this section (deep-dive detail follows in the Responses paragraph). He also quoted Katie Miller’s claim that, as California’s top election official in 2020, Padilla “handed a $35M voter-contact contract to Joe Biden’s campaign firm,” adding “Sounds like Alex P🍆 knows a thing or two about being investigated 🤔” (). CalMatters reported in 2020 that Padilla’s office awarded the roughly $35 million voter-education contract to SKDKnickerbocker, that Controller Betty Yee refused payment, and the Legislature later approved payment in 2021 (CalMatters; Los Angeles Times). On Texas he wrote, “Talarico is a far left extremist” () and “Talarico will vote to take away your children and transition them” (), quoting clips of Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico; the second line states his own view, and no Talarico response surfaced by 7:12 a.m. PT. He replied “Wow, Republicans aren’t even trying” to his mother Maye Musk’s post about a New York City ballot page with only Democratic judicial nominees (), and agreed with a Townhall clip of Gov. Gavin Newsom saying the DSA will become “dominant” (“He’s right,” ).

7. Brazil and the world. He replied “True” to two posts disputing Brazil’s runoff process: one claiming that President Lula packed the Supreme Court (), the other Glenn Greenwald’s argument about the order for Flávio Bolsonaro’s passports (), and called a question about the two-hour voting extension an “Interesting question” (). Brazil’s electoral court chief, Kassio Nunes Marques, said the extension produced “no changes,” and Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party said late Monday, “We recognise the presidential election results” (AFP via SBS); Bolsonaro later said he would lead the opposition (El País). On birth rates he wrote, “It means entire countries and cultures will go extinct forever” ().

8. Media and culture. He quoted a fan post crediting his Twitter purchase with pushing back on “woke” culture, adding “Remember when using the wrong pronoun got people canceled?” and “That was dumb” (), reposted posts that faulted The Economist for using a log scale to soften a chart (), called Jensen Huang’s Berlin GTC post “Cute 🥰” (), reposted Eva Fox on his Minnesota roots () and closed the night with “Everyone should have at least a few penchants” ().

Deep dive: Grok Bot, as Musk sold it Monday. At 9:11 a.m. PT he asked, “What are most important things to improve about Grok @Bot?” and added, “make sure you’ve tried Bot recently, as over 100 features & fixes are released every week!” (), quoting a user list that says Bot “handles your X DMs,” connects to the iPhone and works with Coinbase, Robinhood and eToro (). Five minutes later, to a user who wrote that letting others “directly message one of my bots would be extremely useful,” he said, “Bot can communicate via email and X DMs. Other messaging platforms coming soon” (). At 10:35 a.m. came the “chief of staff” line, quoting user @profstonge’s account of a Bot that “flags anything interesting, drafts replies, and tosses the other 99%” ().

What the record shows. He reposted ALX publishing two community Bots, a “Call List Remover” and a “Privacy Scrubber” (). Their x.ai pages say the first handles “Do Not Call registration, data broker opt-outs, and marketing list removals” and the second “files the opt-outs, and rechecks monthly,” and both carry a notice that they come from “a third-party user, not by SpaceXSI” and “may act on your behalf” (Call List Remover; Privacy Scrubber). He also reposted Teslaconomics on running out of Bot usage before upgrading to Ultra (). The official price page lists Plus at $8, Premium at $30, Super at $100 and Ultra at $200 a month and says “Grok Bot is included on Premium, Super, and Ultra. Plus does not include Grok Bot,” with usage drawn from a “shared weekly usage pool” (x.ai docs). The public changelog shows no new release inside the window; its latest entry, v0.75.8, dates to Oct. 24 (changelog). The “100 features & fixes” figure and the timing of “other messaging platforms” remain his claims.

Responses. Padilla posted his call at 12:18 p.m. PT (); Musk answered at 6:34 p.m. () and laughed at follow-ups such as “Shortest investigation ever” (). He also replied “They are the Beria meme” to a user who wrote that “no one has even proposed a crime Elon has committed” (), and reposted Devon Eriksen contrasting investigating crimes with investigating men (). Mediaite, a left-leaning site, frames the night as a “posting rampage as Democrats threaten investigations” (Mediaite). Padilla’s post named no specific conduct.