Elon Musk has officially announced he’s stepping down as a U.S. special government employee and the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE.  The move follows Musk’s cooling relationship with the Trump administration and slumping Tesla sales tied to his political advocacy. Despite his announced departure, Musk gave a shout-out to President Trump for the chance to tackle government waste, and he insisted that DOGE’s mission isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Since launching, the organization has already slashed budgets across agencies, cut jobs, shut down departments, and stirred up plenty of controversy along the way. Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff, and Anthony Ha unpack who else is departing DOGE, and why Silicon Valley’s relationship with politics is entering, as Kirsten put it, the “find out” stage. Listen to the full episode for more of the week’s tech headlines, including: GameStop bought million of bitcoin, and the move is giving us 2021 déjà vu Neuralink’s million raise, valuing Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface startup at billion The New York Times and Amazon’s landmark AI licensing deal and what it signals for how editorial content powers generative AI Nvidia’s tale of two earnings, and why the forecast is not as bleak as CEO Jensen Huang makes it seem Equity will be back next week, so don’t miss it! Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.  Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes here. #elon #dips #doge #silicon #valley