Wearing a smile and a t-shirt with the Jolly Green Giant logo on it, Steve Davis looks about as far from Elon Musk’s shadowy henchman as you could imagine.

The photo, obtained exclusively by the Daily Mail, was taken in 1997 during Davis’s senior year at high school in Massachusetts. Back then Davis, now 45, was simply a ferociously clever geek known for his goofy sense of humor and competitive streak.

Today he is one of the most powerful men you’ve never heard of and, perhaps, one of the most reviled, beside his boss at the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk.

‘My friend who was once a fun outside-the-box thinker is now a drone — blindly subservient to a corrupt billionaire on a self-enriching power trip,’ a one-time friend of Davis told The Rolling Stone.

Adam Green, a progressive organizer who reportedly befriended Davis a decade ago, was also quoted in a New York Times article that decried Davis’s ‘unprecedented’ requests for access to government databases – inquiries, mind you, that exposed damning facts of federal mismanagement, including the revelation at least seven million people on the Social Security rolls are dead.

Indeed, Davis’s latest work – after laboring for more than 20 years as Musk’s most trusted lieutenant at SpaceX, the Boring Company and X (formerly Twitter) – has made him the target of liberal outcry, while ruthless DOGE cost-cutting has seen him branded the ‘grim reaper.’

Musk has even once admitted that efficiency-obsessed Davis is ‘like chemo’, explaining: ‘A little chemo can save your life; a lot of chemo could kill you’.

Yet the true story of Davis, as uncovered by the Daily Mail through a series of interviews with friends, is far more nuanced than the left-wing caricature.

Steve Davis’s latest work – after laboring for more than 20 years as Musk’s most trusted lieutenant at SpaceX, the Boring Company and X (formerly Twitter) – has made him the target of liberal outcry. (Pictured: Elon Musk and Steve Davis in 2018). 

This photo, obtained exclusively by the Daily Mail, was taken in 1997 during Steve Davis’s senior year at high school in Massachusetts. Back then Davis, now 45, was simply a ferociously clever geek known for his goofy sense of humor and competitive streak. 

While some with whom we spoke were shocked by his current role, others defended Davis and described him as a friendly, somewhat eccentric guy, who was often the smartest person in the room.

‘He’s not a machine, he’s not a cyborg, he’s a person – and an interesting one at that,’ said Matthew Goldstein, a former classmate of Davis at Sharon High School in the sleepy Boston suburb of Sharon, Massachusetts where they both grew up.

Davis – who has regularly put in 100-hour work weeks grew up in privilege in a $1 million home. His father was a surgeon.

He graduated in the class of 1997: the school yearbook shows a young Davis often wearing a cap, which covered up his hair, parted in the middle.

Next to his senior year profile photo, he wrote in text speak – a form of slang used in digital communication – that said: ‘SARC + RIDIC – ILUV IT’ (Sarcastic and ridiculous – I love it.’)

Davis wrote for Euphony, the student magazine, and in addition to being a member of the computer club and Amnesty International, he was an avid tennis player.

It was on Davis’s watch as team captain that the boys’ tennis team enjoyed their 12th straight undefeated season. Tall and athletic, Davis also played basketball and, according to his high school yearbook, defeated opponents ‘easily’.

Appropriately for a man who would go onto excel in shaving zeros off the bottom line, Davis was treasurer of the senior class planning board.

Goldstein remembers Davis excelling academically – he was named co-valedictorian of his year.

‘Steve took a lot of AP classes,’ he said. ‘He was a brilliant guy, but he wasn’t a show off.’

Goldstein also noted that he and Davis liked to play poker but Davis was never in it for the money, always for strategy – the bluffing and the game.

‘It tells you more about what Steve is like – he’s a thinker, he can plan, he can read the room,’ said Goldstein, who recounted how Davis could changing his playing style to counter whatever opponent he was facing – and was also chasing the next ‘challenge.’

In one computer coding class all the other students opted to code a simple board game – but Davis did Monopoly.

‘I remember thinking wow this guy is smart,’ Goldstein said. ‘He was eating it up. But that was Steve. I don’t think there was enough at high school to challenge him’.

When it came to other teenage pursuits, Davis was not as adept.

He dated several girls during high school, the Daily Mail was told, but he never had any serious relationships, was always, ‘on the quieter side.’

Davis graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business – whose alumni include one Donald J. Trump – and went on to earn a Masters degree in aeronautics from Stanford University.

It was out of this program that Musk, who had just made a fortune from selling PayPal, plucked Davis in 2003. He became the 14th employee at the newly established Texas-based SpaceX but he worked out of Washington DC.

While there, Davis began a long-standing habit of juggling multiple ventures.

He earned a Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and gave free rein to his inner goofball by becoming an investor in a yogurt shop and a bar.

Davis – who has regularly put in 100-hour work weeks grew up in privilege in a $1 million home. His father was a surgeon. He graduated in the class of 1997: the school yearbook shows a young Davis often wearing a cap, which covered up his hair, parted in the middle.

Davis wrote for Euphony, the student magazine, and in addition to being a member of the computer club and Amnesty International, he was an avid tennis player.

In one computer coding class all the other students opted to code a simple board game – but Davis did Monopoly.

Steve Davis (pictured third to the right in the back) dated several girls during high school, the Daily Mail was told, but he never had any serious relationships, was always, ‘on the quieter side.’

The yogurt shop, Mr Yogato, opened in Washington’s tony Dupont Circle neighborhood just three months before the first successful launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 1 ship in 2008.

Davis’s offbeat sense of humor was on full display with the so-called, ‘Rules of Yogato’ posted on the store wall which said that customers who got a trivia question right got 10 percent off the bill. Customers who dressed as the tennis legend Bjorn Borg got 25 percent off.

Davis’ bar, named Thomas Foolery, was similarly irreverent.

Patrons played Plinko to determine the price of their drinks: Smirnoff Ice would cost between $1 and $5 depending on how you did.

Patrons who performed Anna Kendrick’s ‘Cup Song’ from the film Pitch Perfect – a movie which Davis has watched in theatres 7 times – got $1 off cocktails.

In a 2013 interview Davis reflected that the jokes were ‘probably’ due a ‘deficiency of maturity’.

Davis’s rise through the ranks in SpaceX appears to be partly due to his ability to save Musk money while still getting his rockets off the ground.

One of his early challenges was reportedly designing a device to steer the rocket. The necessary component was sold for $250,000. Davis figured out how to fashion it for less than $5,000. After months of work Davis did it for just $1,800 and when he emailed Musk, the billionaire reportedly replied: ‘Ok’.

To Goldstein it all tracks with the kid he knew back in high school. He explained, ‘If Steve was fixing potholes he’d think, “It costs $10 to fill a pothole. Can we do this for $2?”

‘Then he’d think, “Why do we have potholes, and can we figure out a better system to prevent them?” Regardless, he’s going to fix the pothole.’

By 2016 Musk had put Davis in charge of the Boring Company, his startup that aims to create underground tunnels to solve gridlock with sites in Las Vegas, Bastrop and Austin, both in Texas.

Once again, Davis showed his eccentricity, giving the Boring Company’s drilling machines names like Prufrock, a reference to the anxiety riddled lead character in T.S. Eliot’s poem, ‘The Love Story of J. Alfred Prufrock.’

According to the LA Times, Davis would often work late into the night and demanded the same work ethic from his staff.

They recalled being sent on flights between Austin, Texas, and Las Vegas to personally deliver urgently needed parts. Davis did not want to rely on commercial mail carriers.

By this point, it appears, Davis’s devotion to Musk was total and the tech titan’s trust in him immense, so when the billionaire bought Twitter in 2022, he sent in Davis to help run it.

According to the 2024 book ‘Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter,’ Davis ‘saw Musk as his North Star and his life’s mission was to help Musk achieve his idol’s dreams’.

The book quotes Jared Birchall, Musk’s money manager and ‘wingman’, as saying: ‘If Elon asked Steve to jump out of a window, he would do it’. But Davis’s relentless work ethic did not win him universal admiration.

He was named in a lawsuit filed by former Twitter employees in May 2023. Their central claim was that Musk breached the terms of their employment.

He earned a Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and gave free rein to his inner goofball by becoming an investor in a yogurt shop and a bar.

Davis’s offbeat sense of humor was on full display with the so-called, ‘Rules of Yogato’ posted on the store wall which said that customers who got a trivia question right got 10 percent off the bill. Customers who dressed as the tennis legend Bjorn Borg got 25 percent off.

Davis’ bar, named Thomas Foolery, was similarly irreverent. Patrons played Plinko to determine the price of their drinks: Smirnoff Ice would cost between $1 and $5 depending on how you did. 

Today Steve Davis is one of the most powerful men you’ve never heard of and, perhaps, one of the most reviled, beside his boss at the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk.

The lawsuit, which is being contested, states that Davis demanded $500 million in savings from the company and started the necessary cuts by an edict to not pay the rent on Twitter’s office.

Davis allegedly slept at the office along with his newborn baby and Nicole Hollander, 42, then his girlfriend now his wife, who is a real estate agent working for SpaceX.

Among the other contested claims in the legal papers reviewed by the Mail is that Davis ordered staff to build a bathroom next to Musk’s office, so X’s owner didn’t have to cross the office floor with his security team every time he needed to go to the restroom.

Twitter staff were allegedly told not to bother seeking the required permits – and to simply get an unlicensed plumber to do it.

But Davis’s role with DOGE is his most high profile – and controversial – to date.

He is the reportedly the brainchild behind the email sent to US government employees, which resulted in the ‘Fork in the Road’ missive that offers a pay-out to bureaucrats who voluntarily resigned.

‘There’s a reason he’s Musk’s guy,’ Goldstein told the Daily Mail. ‘He’s one of the smartest human beings we probably have out there as far as problem solving goes.

‘It’s very easy to find bad stories about Steve. It’s harder to find the good ones.’