While stumping for Donald J. Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign, Elon Musk said he could cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. After Mr. Trump took office and placed Mr. Musk in charge of the budget-slashing so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Mr. Musk lowered that projection by half, to $1 trillion in the upcoming fiscal year.

In a cabinet meeting on Thursday, Mr. Musk appeared to set his group’s goal lower still.

“I’m excited to announce that we anticipate savings in ’26 from reduction of waste and fraud by $150 billion,” Mr. Musk told Mr. Trump, referring to the fiscal year, which runs from the beginning of October 2025 to the end of September 2026.

Mr. Musk’s group has slashed budgets and fired thousands of workers around Washington, but so far the DOGE website indicates that it remains far from reaching his goal of $1 trillion in savings next year. As of Thursday, the site claimed $150 billion in savings, with an itemized list of some of the purported cuts.

It was unclear if Mr. Musk meant to say that the $150 billion was merely what his team had found so far — meaning that $1 trillion in savings was still possible — or if that $150 billion was all it expected to find.

A White House official said $1 trillion in savings remained “the goal.”

Unlike a previous cabinet meeting, during which Mr. Trump had Mr. Musk speak at the outset, Thursday’s meeting began with the president asking Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to speak. Mr. Musk spoke later, and briefly.

In his remarks, Mr. Musk said that he answered someone who asked how he finds fraud in government by saying, “Actually, just go in any direction — that’s how you find it.” He described it as a “target-rich environment.”

But the website that Mr. Musk’s group has used to tout its savings has been plagued by errors, including triple-counting the same cancellations and claiming credit for cutting programs that ended under President George W. Bush.

Mr. Musk’s critics outside the administration — including Stephen K. Bannon, the far-right provocateur and former senior Trump White House official — have said publicly that the cost-cutting effort is directionally correct, but that Mr. Musk is unlikely to achieve $1 trillion in cuts.