From pioneering space exploration at SpaceX to reshaping social media at Twitter (now X), Steve Davis has been a constant figure in Elon Musk’s orbit for over two years. Now, the 45-year-old engineer faces his most ambitious challenge yet: Helping the world’s richest man streamline the US government. According to a recent New York Times article, Davis has emerged as the de-facto day-to-day leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a bold cost-cutting initiative given to Elon Musk by the US President Donald Trump.
Davis’s relationship with Musk began more than 20 years ago when, as a Stanford aerospace engineering student, he was handpicked by Musk to join SpaceX as its 22nd employee. Since then, Davis has become one of Musk’s most trusted confidants, earning a reputation as a relentless cost-cutter and a problem-solver willing to tackle any task—no matter how daunting or unfamiliar. “Steve is like chemo,” Musk reportedly said during a transition meeting before Trump’s inauguration. “A little chemo can save your life; a lot of chemo could kill you.” For Musk, Davis embodies the ideal employee: an engineer with an unwavering work ethic and a knack for eliminating waste, even if it means ruffling feathers or slashing jobs.
Elon Musk’s go-to man Steve Davis “hates wastage”
According to an article in Fortune, former colleagues describe Davis as someone who thrives on challenges, diving into projects with little regard for his own expertise — or lack thereof — in a given area. This tenacity has made him indispensable to Musk across multiple ventures, from SpaceX to The Boring Company and X. At The Boring Company, where Davis served as a top executive, ex-employees recall his hands-on approach to efficiency. Typically dressed in jeans and a ball cap, he demanded long hours and a high work ethic from his team, scrutinizing every expense — no matter how small. Spreadsheets and documents were confined to free tools like Google Suite, and even minor outlays faced intense pushback. “He hates waste,” one former employee told Fortune, noting that Davis insisted on being involved in all decision-making.
This cost-cutting ethos reportedly followed Davis to Twitter, where he took on a similar role after Musk’s acquisition of the platform. “He was the one in charge of finding everything we were spending money on, who we don’t need, what offices we can close,” a former Twitter employee recounted, speaking anonymously to Fortune. Davis’s meticulous oversight kept budgets tight, though it sometimes slowed decision-making as every expense required his approval.
Now, as Musk turns his attention to DOGE, Davis’s track record makes him a natural fit for the role. In the lead-up to Trump’s inauguration, his name surfaced in reports by Bloomberg and the New York Times as a central figure in Musk’s latest mission to slash government bloat. Colleagues who have worked closely with Davis believe he’s capable of executing Musk’s vision, no matter how ambitious or impractical it might seem to outsiders.
“He’d be able to carry out any task Musk gave him,” one colleague old the publication, acknowledging that such determination could come at the cost of jobs or entrenched systems. For Musk, who once likened Davis’s waste-eliminating prowess to a life-saving treatment, the stakes are high. DOGE represents a chance to apply the same efficiency-driven mindset that transformed SpaceX and X to the sprawling bureaucracy of the federal government. Whether Davis’s “Chemo” approach will cure inefficiencies or prove too aggressive remains to be seen.
