Elon Musk and Grimes just welcomed their baby boy. Here's how the eccentric CEO makes and spends his $38.2 billion fortune.
- The Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Canadian recording artist Grimes welcomed a baby boy on Monday night. Musk tweeted that they'd named the baby "X Æ A-12."
- Despite having a lot of mouths to feed, Musk won't receive any form of payment or compensation from Tesla until the electric automaker reaches a $100 billion market cap, he said in January 2018.
- Musk, the owner of a $100 million real-estate portfolio, also recently vowed that he will sell "almost all physical possessions" and "own no house" in a tweet Friday.
- A notorious workaholic, Musk doesn't spend his money on lavish vacations or expensive hobbies; he even said he planned to spend his 48th birthday improving Tesla's logistics.
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The couple named the child "X Æ A-12 Musk," Musk tweeted, leading fans to speculate if the name has a hidden meaning. Speculation about the pregnancy has been flying since Grimes first hinted she was expecting in a cryptic social media post in January before officially confirming the pregnancy nearly two months later. The new baby is Musk's sixth child and Grimes' first.
Musk has a $38.2 billion fortune to support his family with, despite never having taken a paycheck from Tesla. The CEO refuses his $56,000 minimum salary every year. In January 2018, Tesla announced it would pay Musk nothing for the next 10 years — no salary, bonuses, or stock — until the company reaches a $100 billion market cap. If and when that happens, Musk could potentially overtake Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world.
Keep reading to find out what we know about how Musk amassed his fortune and how he spends it.
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Musk and Canadian singer Grimes, his on-again, off-again girlfriend, welcomed a baby boy on May 4. They named the child "X Æ A-12 Musk," Musk tweeted.
Source: Business Insider
Decades before becoming a father of six and amassing a $38.2 billion fortune, Musk taught himself to code as a child growing up in South Africa. By the time he was 12, he sold the source code for his first video game for $500.
Source: MONEY
Just before his 18th birthday, Musk moved to Canada and worked a series of hard labor jobs, including shoveling grain, cutting logs, and eventually cleaning out the boiler room in a lumber mill for $18 an hour — an impressive wage in 1989.
Sources: MONEY, Esquire - Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
Musk got a pay cut to $14 an hour when he started a summer internship alongside his brother, Kimbal, at the Bank of Nova Scotia after cold-calling — and impressing — a top executive there.
Sources: MONEY, Esquire - Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
After he arrived for his freshman year at Queens University in 1990, Musk quickly picked up a side hustle selling computer parts and full PCs to other students. "I could build something to suit their needs like a tricked-out gaming machine or a simple word processor that cost less than what they could get in a store," Musk said.
Sources: MONEY, Esquire - Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
Within two years, Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania on a partial scholarship.
Sources: MONEY, Esquire - Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
To cover the rest of his tuition, Musk and a buddy would turn their house into a speakeasy on the weekends, charging $5 at the door. "I was paying my own way through college and could make an entire month's rent in one night," Musk said.
Sources: MONEY, Esquire - Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
Musk graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics and an economics degree from the Wharton School and moved to Stanford to pursue his PhD.
Source: MONEY
He left the program within days to found an internet startup with his brother. They started Zip2, a city guide software for newspapers, with $28,000 in seed money from their father.
Source: MONEY
Four years later, in 1999, they sold Zip2 for $307 million, earning Musk $22 million. He invested more than half of his earnings to cofound X.com, an online banking service.
Source: MONEY
The company quickly merged with its rival and became PayPal, with Musk as the majority shareholder. In 2002, eBay bought PayPal and Musk walked away with $180 million.
Source: MONEY
Musk turned his attention to his new space exploration company, SpaceX, after leaving PayPal. A few years later he cofounded electric-car maker, Tesla, and then SolarCity, a solar power systems provider. The success of these companies eventually launched him into the billion-dollar club — but not before he went broke.
Source: VentureBeat
In late 2008, Musk divorced his first wife and it took a toll on his finances. A year later, Musk said he "ran out of cash" and had been living off loans from friends while trying to keep his companies afloat.
Sources: VentureBeat, Forbes, TechCrunch
But when Tesla debuted on the stock market in 2010, Musk's fortune sky rocketed. By 2012, he appeared on Forbes' richest list for the first time with a net worth of $2 billion.
Source: Forbes
Over seven years later, Musk has amassed a $38.2 billion fortune — and he's not shy when it comes to spending it.
Source: Bloomberg
The CEO reportedly owns more than $100 million worth of residential property in California but vowed to sell it all and "own no house" on May 4.
Source: The Real Deal, Variety, Business Insider
Musk went on a buying spree in Los Angeles' ritzy Bel-Air neighborhood starting in late 2012, when he purchased a 1.67-acre estate for $17 million. The mansion has a two-story library, a home theater, a gym, and 1,000-bottle wine cellar. It is now for sale.
He also listed the neighboring ranch-style home he owns, which once belonged to Gene Wilder, at the same time.
Source: Variety, CNBC, Business Insider
As the leader of one of the preeminent auto-makers, it's no surprise Musk has an affinity for cars. Back in 2013, he paid $920,000 at an auction for the Lotus Esprit submarine car used in a James Bond movie.
Source: MONEY, CNBC
In addition to driving Teslas, Musk owns two gas-powered cars: a Ford Model T and a Jaguar E-Type Series 1 Roadster.
Source: MONEY, CNBC
Despite having funds to spare, Musk isn't a fan of lavish vacations — or any vacations for that matter. In 2015, he said he'd only taken two weeks off since founding SpaceX about 12 years earlier.
Sources: Inc., Quartz
Musk has five children with his ex-wife Talulah Riley. In a 2014 tweet, Musk said he takes the kids on an annual camping trip. "I'm a pretty good dad," he said. "I have the kids for slightly more than half the week and spend a fair bit of time with them. I also take them with me when I go out of town."
Sources: Twitter, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
But by August 2018, Musk told The New York Times that he had taken to working 120 hours a week. "There were times when I didn't leave the factory for three or four days — days when I didn't go outside," he told The Times. "This has really come at the expense of seeing my kids. And seeing friends."
Source: The New York Times
Musk said on an earnings call in 2017 that he doesn't have a desk at the Tesla factory: "I always move my desk to wherever — I don't really have a desk actually — I move myself to wherever the biggest problem is in Tesla. I really believe that one should lead from the front lines, and that's why I'm here."
Sources: Business Insider, Fortune
Musk admitted to spending "many late nights" at Tesla's Nevada Gigafactory re-writing software during a production sprint for the Model 3.
Source: Fortune
For a story published in August 2018, Business Insider reporters spoke with 42 Tesla employees, who said Musk is a visionary, but also unpredictably demanding.
Source: Business Insider
Musk said in June 2019 that he even planned to spend his 48th birthday on June 28 at work, improving the company's "global logistics."
Source: Business Insider
Musk told CBS' "60 Minutes" that he is, in fact, "somewhat impulsive" and doesn't "really want to try to adhere to some CEO template."
Source: Business Insider
Not only does Musk spend a ton of time at Tesla, he also spends a lot of his money on the company. In the first six months of 2018, he bought more than $35 million worth of shares in Tesla.
Source: CNN
Musk also invests a lot of time, energy, and resources into SpaceX.
Source: Business Insider
SpaceX has raised more than $2.2 billion to develop, build, and launch Starlink, an effort to cover Earth in ultra-fast broadband internet and build the prototype of its Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), a gargantuan reusable space vehicle designed to bring people to Mars, reported Business Insider's Dave Mosher. The company was valued at $33.3 billion in June 2019.
Source: Business Insider, CNBC
Musk also helms The Boring Company, which he founded in 2016 to develop and construct an underground tunnel in Los Angeles in an effort to mitigate traffic. In December 2018, Musk debuted the first prototype.
Source: Business Insider
According to The New York Times, The Boring Company raised over $112 million in 2018 — and more than 90% of it came from Musk.
Source: The New York Times
In 2012, Musk signed The Giving Pledge, vowing to donate the majority of his wealth during his lifetime. Though he's already in the business of improving our environment and the future during his day job, Musk has made sizable donations to causes he cares about, including a $10 million gift to the Future of Life Institute to regulate artificial intelligence.
Sources: Twitter, Business Insider
Musk found himself in legal trouble with the SEC in 2018 after he tweeted that he had obtained the funding to take Tesla private, which moved the company's stock price. Musk reached a settlement with the SEC in April 2019.
Source: Business Insider
Musk moved Tesla share price again on May 1, sending it down 13% after tweeting "Tesla stock price is too high imo."
Source: Markets Insider
At the end of the day, the multibillionaire says he enjoys inexpensive hobbies like listening to music, playing video games, and reading books. "Hang out with kids, see friends, normal stuff," he said. "Sometimes go crazy on Twitter. But usually it's work more."
Source: Quartz
Musk's Twitter habits once again got him into legal trouble after Musk called the British cave diver who helped rescue a Thai soccer team a "pedo guy"; the diver sued Musk for defamation. A jury ruled in Musk's favor in December 2019.
Source: Business Insider
Musk has had plenty of headline-making outbursts both on- and offline. When a metal ball shattered the "armored glass" of Tesla's Cybertruck during a demonstration in November, Musk said "oh my f---ing god."
Source: Business Insider
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