Elon Musk’s right-hand man in charge of cost-cutting is now recruiting staff at the Department of Government Efficiency, according to a report.
Steve Davis has remained loyal to Musk for years, working across his companies and even sleeping overnight in the Twitter offices with his wife and newborn during Musk’s acquisition in 2022 when the billionaire demanded his staff be “extremely hardcore,” according to a Bloomberg report.
The aerospace engineer-turned-executive is known for driving a hard bargain — and is now helping to lead DOGE, Musk’s new effort at reducing government spending under President-elect Donald Trump, the report said. He is working at DOGE while continuing to work as president of the Boring Company.
Trump appointed both Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead DOGE, which is not a government agency but a new task force imagined by Musk to issue sweeping spending cuts.
The Boring Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Boring, Musk’s construction and equipment company that seeks to mitigate traffic by building more underground tunnels, has raised about $800 million in capital. But Davis remains as frugal as ever. He is known for signing off on costs as low as a few hundred dollars, sources told Bloomberg.
The tough negotiator angles for the lowest prices with product suppliers on raw steel, sensors and even small items like hose fittings to save Boring cash, sources told Bloomberg.
Musk ordered Davis to find a cheaper alternative to a $120,000 part. After weeks of working on it, the engineer did it – for just $3,900, to which Musk sent a simple “Thanks,” according to a biography of Musk.
He is famous for telling staffers working on negotiations to “go back and ask again,” according to the report.
Davis began working for Musk in 2003 at SpaceX, just after graduating from Stanford University with a master’s degree in aerospace engineering.
By 2016, Davis was at the head of the Boring Company, where he splits his time between Las Vegas and Bastrop, Texas, near the company’s two main facilities. In Bastrop, he stays in a mobile home alongside the workers in their own mobile homes, where he can often be seen talking on the phone late into the night while pacing back and forth, sources told Bloomberg.
Davis would regularly schedule meetings at 7 p.m. or later, joining remotely while eating his dinner, according to sources.
Davis kept to such tight deadlines at Boring that he would send employees on flights between the two facilities to deliver machine parts instead of waiting for commercial shipping, former employees told Bloomberg.
At one time, a key machine part was swept off course while on its way to Las Vegas via a delayed freight truck, according to former employees. Davis’ deadline was so strict that Boring paid for an employee’s relative who lived in the area to track down the truck driver and get him back on the road, according to the report.
Like Musk’s other companies, Davis had to deal with a number of government roadblocks while at Boring.
Boring built tunnels to connect a Las Vegas convention center to two nearby hotels, and they remain closed to the public more than a year after construction finished. Nevada’s safety administration fined Boring more than $100,000 after an investigation uncovered worker complaints of toxic muck falling overhead from conveyor belts and gunk falling and spilling over onto the work site.
He multitasked his way through college, working full-time at SpaceX and as the owner of a yogurt shop while earning his doctorate in economics at George Mason University in Virginia.
Davis’ professor, Alex Tabarrok, said the young engineer “had so much energy, and was so entrepreneurial” that he refused to give up any of his jobs.
“It’s been kind of exciting to see him become one of Elon’s most trusted right-hand men,” he said.