Elon Musk’s nearly half-a-billion dollar bet on Republican midterm victories is a day late and many dollars short, but whether the world’s richest person’s political investments were all for nought remains to be seen.The tech billionaire donated at least $474 million to Republican candidates ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, nearly twice what he donated ahead of the 2024 presidential election. That sum included around $200 million to election efforts in Texas alone. Yet Musk had little to show for it: Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton and Gov. Greg Abbott were both trounced by Democratic opponents. Shares of SpaceX and Tesla, which are both headquartered in Texas, were down on Wednesday following the news.Musks’s other donations included $30 million the the Congressional Leadership Fund, the primary super PAC back of House Republicans, as well as $44 million to other Republicans groups and candidates working to elect federal officials. He joined a16z’s Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz ($116.4 million) and OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman and his wife Anna ($50 million) as the party’s biggest donors for the midterms.The shock of the hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign spending without the intended results was a clear example of the risks associated with political donations.“I think this might just be the biggest defeat for big money in politics in American history,” Logan Phillips, founder of the election forecasting site Race to the White House, told Fortune. Musk is certainly acquainted with this risk—and while he may not have seen the election outcomes he poured unprecedented amounts of money into, the jury is still out on if he has lost the good and influence of key Republicans, or if he’s laying the groundwork for the 2028 election, campaign finance experts argued.Musk did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.The argument for $474 million not wastedWhile the results of the election prove money isn’t the make-or-break factor in electing candidates, Virginia Commonwealth University political science professor Alex Keena argues it’s better wielded in the context of setting the table for future political fights.“Those of us who study campaign money have been sort of realizing this for the past decade: It’s not about helping someone win,” Keena told Fortune. “That messaging domination, it’s just not going to happen with money. Instead…first and foremost, money is affecting what we’re talking about.”Political donations rather serve the primary purpose of dictating the topics a party publicly discusses or pursues, such as climate change, data centers, or economic reform. By that standard, Musk could very much still have influence on the future of the Republican party.The magnitude of Musk’s donations also indicate a level of commitment to President Donald Trump, who could prove to be an ally to him as he races against time to complete a SpaceX-Tesla merger that Democrats have signalled to heavily scrutinize. “He basically gets to steer a political party,” Keena said. “This is one of the biggest influences of money. It’s not just about who wins. It’s about setting the agenda and what types of issues we talk about.”The argument for Musk’s shrinking influenceThat agenda may only take Musk so far. While Trump has threatened to “veto everything” a Democratic majority in the House and Senate pass, Democrats can leverage subpoena powers, which don’t require the president’s signature. Officials will want to investigate Musk’s public companies and his role in the federal government, which included the Department of Government Efficiency gaining illegal access to sensitive data while failing to achieve one of its goals of decreasing the federal deficit.“We definitely have a lot of questions about Elon Musk’s role in DOGE and it is something we plan to investigate,” Sara Guerrero, a spokesperson for top Oversight Committee Democrat Rep. Robert Garcia of California, said last month.Musk’s very public and very impactful role in the federal government may be one reason why his campaign efforts fell short, according to Casey Michel, author of United States of Oligarchy: How America’s Wealthiest Ally with Dictators, Weaken the U.S., and Destroy Democracy.Michel told Fortune that Musk’s DOGE was effectively a fourth branch of government that could leverage its political powers for private sector gain. A Washington Post analysis published last month found two dozen former DOGE staffers leveraged government connections to enter the private sector and backed or founded startups that raised more than $500 million in venture capital and funding. Following Musk’s official departure of DOGE in May 2025, his companies minted an estimated $10 billion in government contracts, led by SpaceX.The public flaunting of power could have soured Republican voters on Musk, or at least lessened his political influence, Michel argued.“I’m struggling to think of a clearer example of what happens to an oligarch when they place themselves front and center in a political system like we saw with Musk over the last two years,” he said. “This was always the risk that he was running in injecting himself, quite literally, into the White House, as well as dominating the financial or campaign donation landscape, and in a certain sense, it’s not surprising to see this kind of blowback generated. “This makes clear at the end of the day that Musk’s financing is no longer the asset that it once was in 2024,” Michel added, “but is now a very clear liability both to those who are receiving it, like the Ken Paxtons of the world, but also to himself.” Will Musk donate as much in 2028?There’s reason to believe that regardless if Musk’s political stock has gone up or down, he could still be a major donor in future elections.“This is like him deciding to go get Starbucks on the way home from work,” Keena said.There’s some truth behind the sentiment. Jennifer Heerwig, a political sociology professor at SUNY Stony Brook University, said one significant predictor for someone making a political contribution is their income.“Assuming that he remains the world’s richest man, I wouldn’t find it shocking to see him again entering politics and making huge donations to super PACs,” she told Fortune. “Whether or not he’ll do it at the same scale, I think, remains to be seen.”Musk has appeared to change his mind on political donations in the past. In May 2025, he said he could cut back on political spending, clarifying he would donate if he saw a reason, but that he currently saw no reason.“I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” Musk said in an interview with Bloomberg at the Qatar Economic Forum at the time. “I think I’ve done enough.”This story was originally featured on Fortune.com