Washington: Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who recently donated $277 million to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, has been appointed as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under the Trump administration.

Elon Musk has emerged as one of the most influential and controversial powerbrokers in the new Trump administration. He spent at least US$277 million (about A$360 million) of his own money to help Donald Trump win re-election,

Elon Musk had sharp words for a private-sector partnership touted this week by the Trump administration to hasten the development of artificial intelligence infrastructure. “They don’t actually have the money,” Musk said of two of the participants in the $500 billion initiative, OpenAI and SoftBank, on his social media site X.

"Donald Trump's Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, has refused to give Elon Musk an office in the West Wing, sticking DOGE in the Eisenhower building, which is across the road from the White House. She's also making him report to her."

On President Trump’s first day in office, Elon Musk already has a coveted White House email address. A source tells The Hill that Musk, the billionaire who will head up the Department

The Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk is making another hiring pushing, asking for "world-class talent" to apply.

Trump has granted Musk and his DOGE colleagues access to a trove of federal data with little transparency requirements.

Lawmakers say Musk's apparent misunderstanding of the way government programs work could threaten his whole agenda.