Lovers and haters are erecting monuments for their favorite tech billionaire, Elon Musk.
Just north of the US-Mexico Border, near Brownsville, Texas, sits Starbase, SpaceX’s massive rocket launch and development site. In 2025, the surrounding area became incorporated as the City of Starbase, with a population of more than 500 residents, though thousands of people work at the complex.
Recently, Starbase has turned into a locus of monuments tied to Musk and the achievements — or excesses, depending on your point of view — of his companies.
A French foundry group, Atelier Missor, shared photos on X last week, showing its progress in erecting a statue near the complex.
The group wrote that the monument depicts Prometheus, a Greek mythological figure, holding a torch, and is supposed to stand 50 feet tall. Prometheus is famously known as the titan who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to humanity.
Last year, Atelier Missor wrote on X that it wished to offer “a colossal titanium statue of Prometheus to Starbase,” adding that “SpaceX makes humanity dream.” The group has also publicly reached out to Musk about its plans.
It’s unclear whether the CEO ever responded to the post directly or whether Atelier Missor contacted him privately. Musk has interacted with Atelier Missor’s X posts before, giving the group props for some of its concepts.
Atelier Missor did not respond to a request for comment.
One unlikely group is also leading the charge for another Musk monument, but for entirely different reasons.
Cards Against Humanity, the makers of the raunchy, fill-in-the-blank card game, made a public call-to-action on Thursday to raise money for a monument intended to “f—k with Elon Musk.”
A spokesperson for Cards Against Humanity told Business Insider that SpaceX’s activities at Starbase had damaged the parcel of land the company purchased in 2017 to slow down the first Trump administration’s plan to build a wall on the US-Mexico border.
Cards Against Humanity
The spokesperson added that it has been working to restore the area, but those plans are also complicated by new housing for SpaceX employees.
The land dispute went through the courts in 2024, when the game company sued SpaceX over the property and reached a confidential settlement the following year. Cards Against Humanity said at the time that SpaceX later removed its equipment from the property.
“When we first purchased this land, it was a beautiful lot surrounded by nothing but a peaceful river and open fields,” the spokesperson wrote. “Now, it’s surrounded by a ‘town’ called ‘Starbase’ — corporate hellscape littered with broken rockets and ugly mansions for Musk’s s—t-eating executives.”
The company organized the “Official Elon Musk is a Sad Little B—h with No Friends Monument Design Committee” and is collecting $10 from contributors to the initiative.
The spokesperson said over 12,000 members have signed up as of Thursday evening, and the company raised about $150,000.
When asked what Musk represents to Cards Against Humanity, the spokesperson said, “the kind of humanity we’re actually against.”
A SpaceX spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Another monument was put up near Starbase two years ago, commissioned by a crypto outfit that launched a memecoin called ElonRWA.
The cofounder of ElonRWA, who has only been identified online as Louis XXII, told Artnews at the time that the statue was meant to resemble a poorly-drawn version of the SpaceX CEO that had gone viral on the internet.
“We wanted to bring this meme into the real world,” Louis XXII told Artnews. “How could we have an impact on the real world? We are a bunch of guys on computers active on X, but we wanted to touch more people.”
Sergio Flores/AFP via Getty Images
In April 2025, the statue was defaced with large gashes around the right cheek and chin, ABC News reported. The vandalism occurred around the time of nationwide protests against Trump and Musk, when the CEO helped lead DOGE’s efforts to cut federal spending.
A large pink sticker resembling a bandage was later placed on the cheek.
