Three Names, Pair by Pair

27 Oct 2026

No room for all three. We looked for places the record puts Larry Fink, Elon Musk and Ken Griffin together and found none that holds all three. Each pair shares something, but much of it is firms, not people: a BlackRock team votes shares for clients, and Citadel Securities is a company in which Griffin is the principal shareholder. Everything below is a documented act or someone’s own words, and a connection is not evidence of wrongdoing.

2 Dec 2016

A forum is named. On 2 December 2016 President-elect Donald Trump announced a President’s Strategic and Policy Forum of business leaders, to meet him “frequently.” Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone chaired it, and BlackRock’s Larry Fink was one of the first 16 members. Elon Musk and Ken Griffin were not on that list.

14 Dec 2016

Musk joins. On 14 December 2016 the transition team added three members: Uber’s Travis Kalanick, PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi and Elon Musk, then chairman and chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla. From then on, Fink and Musk were named members of one body. Griffin was not.

3 Feb 2017

The State Dining Room. The forum met President Trump at the White House on 3 February 2017, and the White House published the transcript. Each member introduced themselves: “Larry Fink, BlackRock,” and later “Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX.” Griffin was not a member.

1 Jun 2017

Musk leaves. On 1 June 2017, after the president announced that the U.S. would leave the Paris climate agreement, Musk wrote that he was departing the presidential councils. TechCrunch reported he had served on Trump’s economic advisory board and a manufacturing jobs council. Fink stayed on the forum.

16 Aug 2017

The forum ends. Amid the debate over Charlottesville, members left the president’s councils. NBC’s sources said a dozen forum members agreed on a call to dissolve it and Schwarzman told the White House, and Trump then tweeted that he was ending both councils. Fink told BlackRock staff he “could no longer in good conscience participate in the Forum.” Musk had been gone for two and a half months.

25 Jan 2021

Citadel, Melvin and Robinhood. On 25 January 2021 Citadel funds and partners and Point72 announced $2.75 billion for Melvin Capital, for a non-controlling share of its revenue; Melvin’s Gabe Plotkin told Congress it was not “bailed out.” Separately, Robinhood routed customer orders to Citadel Securities, which paid for them: 34% of Robinhood’s 2020 revenue, by Robinhood’s own filing. Griffin runs Citadel and is principal shareholder of Citadel Securities, and Tenev told Congress Robinhood routes to seven market makers on uniform terms. No source in this story shows that Citadel or Citadel Securities had any part in Robinhood’s limits.

26 Jan 2021

“Gamestonk!!” At 4:08 p.m. on 26 January 2021, with meme-stock trading surging, Musk posted that word and a link to the wallstreetbets forum. House committee staff wrote that Robinhood employees saw a spike in new accounts right after. The report does not say the post moved GameStop’s price.

31 Jan 2021

The Clubhouse questions. On 31 January 2021 Musk, a guest on a live audio show, took over the questioning and had Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev explain the week. Musk asked: “To what degree are you beholden to Citadel?” Tenev called the rumor of pressure from Citadel or other market makers “just false,” and when Musk asked whether market makers would have a say in who leads the clearinghouse, Tenev said he had no reason to believe that and that it was getting into “kind of the conspiracy theories.”

18 Feb 2021

The hearing. On 18 February 2021 the House Committee on Financial Services held its “Game Stopped?” hearing online with six witnesses, Griffin and Tenev among them; Musk and Fink were not witnesses, and the transcript names no Fink or BlackRock. Asked whether anyone in his organization talked to Robinhood about restricting purchases, Griffin answered: “Absolutely not.” Representative Stivers asked Plotkin whether Musk’s post targeted him because Melvin had once shorted Tesla, and Plotkin called guessing at Musk’s motives “pure speculation.” In 2024 an appeals court upheld the dismissal of the one antitrust suit alleging that Robinhood and Citadel Securities coordinated, without deciding whether an agreement was plausibly alleged.

3 Aug 2022

The Twitter subpoena. In August 2022, as Twitter sued to make Musk complete his $44 billion purchase, a subpoena notice for Griffin was filed. Bloomberg News called it a sweeping list, with more than a dozen investment firms and the banks on it, and wrote that Griffin’s involvement, if any, was unclear. A subpoena asks for documents; it is not a finding about anyone.

5 Apr 2024

BlackRock and Citadel Securities. In April 2024 BlackRock added Citadel Securities, with banks and a clearing firm, as an authorized participant of its iShares Bitcoin Trust, bringing the total to nine; the role is creating and redeeming the fund’s shares. In May 2024 the two were among the investors in the new Texas Stock Exchange, in which BlackRock called itself a founding investor. These are two firm-to-firm ties we found, and there may be more. Citadel Securities is separate from Citadel, and Griffin is its principal shareholder; we found no link between BlackRock and Citadel itself.

13 Jun 2024

Two votes on one award. BlackRock says it supported Musk’s 2018 Tesla award despite “concerns regarding the structure and magnitude of the award,” and Vanguard says its funds did not. In June 2024 shareholders voted again on ratifying it, and Tesla says holders of 72% of shares excluding Musk and related persons supported it. BlackRock and Vanguard each say their funds voted for it: BlackRock adds that this “should not be taken as a general endorsement,” Vanguard that looking back removed its concern. These are votes cast by stewardship teams for clients, not by Fink.

2 Feb 2026

Money and a partnership. In December 2024 xAI, which The Irish Times calls Musk’s AI startup, named BlackRock among the investors in its $6 billion Series C; the sources do not say how much. In March 2025 BlackRock, Microsoft and MGX announced that xAI would join their AI Infrastructure Partnership, which Fink said creates “unique investment opportunities for our clients.” In February 2026 SpaceX acquired xAI. Neither Fink nor Musk is named in xAI’s round announcement.

Feb 2025

Griffin on Musk. In February 2025, at a UBS conference, Griffin thanked Musk “from the bottom of my heart” for his work on the federal DOGE cuts. “Is he breaking a lot of glass?” Griffin asked. “Absolutely.” In the same talk he criticized the president’s tariff plan. These are Griffin’s public words.

22 Jan 2026

Fink and Musk, in person. On 13 May 2025 Fox Business saw both at the Saudi royal court in Riyadh with President Trump, and listed both as speakers at that day’s investment forum. On 22 January 2026 Fink, as the World Economic Forum’s interim co-chair, interviewed Musk on stage at Davos and said: “he’s a great friend.” On 24 September 2026 the White House invitee list for Xi Jinping’s state dinner named both. We found Griffin on none of these lists.

15 Sep 2025

A filing, not a finding. On 15 September 2025 Tesla’s proxy listed Vanguard at 6.9%, BlackRock at 5.7% and Musk at 19.8%, a figure that counts 303,960,630 shares from options under the 2018 award. Federal rules let institutions file the short Schedule 13G only if they did not buy to change or influence control; that is the filer’s own statement, not a finding. Whether big index holders have influence is disputed: in August 2025 a judge largely refused to dismiss a suit by Texas and 12 other states against BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street, which the firms contest and which is pending.

6 Nov 2025

Austin, November 2025. Tesla’s shareholders approved a new award for Musk of 423,743,904 restricted shares, at a meeting held online and at Gigafactory Texas. The filing gives totals, but the count includes shares owned by Musk and Kimbal Musk, and it does not say how any named holder voted. Vanguard published that its advised funds supported the award, while other Vanguard fund shares were voted by investors’ own policy choices. We found no BlackRock bulletin on this meeting.

19 Dec 2025

The court’s last word, for now. In January 2024 the Delaware Court of Chancery found the directors failed to prove the 2018 award was entirely fair, and rescinded it. On 2 December 2024 it refused to give the June 2024 vote effect. On 19 December 2025 the Delaware Supreme Court reversed the remedy, reinstating the 2018 plan and awarding the plaintiff $1 in nominal damages; it said the Justices have varying views on the liability finding, and did not decide it.

27 Oct 2026

What the record shows. No room we found holds all three, and no document we read shows any of them acting together. Fink and Musk shared a forum, a meeting and later a stage at Davos, and Fink’s firm and a Musk company share an investment round and a partnership. Griffin and Musk share a Clubhouse question, a subpoena list and Griffin’s public praise, and BlackRock and Citadel Securities share a fund’s participant list and an exchange’s investor list. A connection is not evidence of wrongdoing, and no source here says otherwise.

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