type: timeline_event Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Elon Musk at the White House on February 13, 2025, in a meeting that took place hours before Modi's formal official visit with President Trump. Reuters reported that the meeting covered space exploration, artificial intelligence, and "good governance"—the last subject an awkward framing given DOGE's controversial operations. The meeting raised immediate questions about whether Musk was functioning as a U.S. government official or as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, as Starlink's entry into the Indian telecommunications market was reportedly on the agenda.
When asked about the meeting, President Trump told reporters he was not sure whether Musk had attended as "a CEO or White House employee," an answer that highlighted the fundamental ambiguity of Musk's dual roles. Fortune and The New Republic noted that this ambiguity was precisely the problem: if Musk was a government official, his meeting with a foreign head of state about his private companies' business interests constituted a profound conflict of interest; if he was a private CEO, his access to the White House and foreign leaders on the basis of his government role was equally problematic.
Within weeks of the Modi-Musk meeting, Airtel—one of India's largest telecommunications companies—announced a partnership deal with Starlink to offer satellite internet services in India. Rest of World reported in March 2025 that the Airtel-Starlink deal came weeks after the Modi-Musk White House meeting, suggesting the meeting may have facilitated or accelerated business negotiations that would benefit Musk's SpaceX subsidiary. The episode illustrated how Musk's unprecedented combination of government authority through DOGE and private business interests created opportunities to use White House access for commercial gain in ways that would have been prohibited for formal government employees.