Elon Musk Net Worth: How Much Money Does Elon Musk Give to Charity?

By Sirjan Chetri Last updated May 30, 2022

Elon Musk Net Worth: Elon Musk is the founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer at SpaceX. He is also an angel investor, CEO, and Product Architect at Tesla, Inc.

The founder of The Boring Company, and a co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI. Both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and the Forbes real-time billionaires list say that Musk has the most money in the world.

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Early Life of Elon Musk

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, on June 28, 1971. Musk purchased his first computer when he was ten years old and taught himself to program.

He sold his first piece of software, a game called Blaster, when he was 12 years old. He moved to Canada at the age of 17 to attend Queen’s University, but left in 1992 to attend the University of Pennsylvania to study business and physics.

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Musk earned an undergraduate degree in economics before going on to complete a second bachelor’s degree in physics and a PhD in energy physics. However, he dropped out of Stanford University to pursue a career in the internet boom.

Elon Musk Career

Musk sold Zip2 for $34 million in stock options and $307 million in cash in 1999. Elon Musk went on to found X.com, which was later purchased by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion in stock.

Musk founded SpaceX the same year. He joined Tesla the following year. He currently owns 47 percent of SpaceX and 21% of Tesla.

Elon Musk made his fortune by bringing his ideas to life. His early fascination with technology blossomed into a career that made him the world’s wealthiest person as of 2021.

What Is Elon Musk’s Net Worth?

Elon Musk is worth $201 billion dollars. He is best known for being the CEO and CTO of SpaceX, the CEO and chief product architect of Tesla Motors, and the chairman of SolarCity.

He wears many hats and is constantly topping his latest project. Not only that, but he is the world’s wealthiest person and the wealthiest person in modern history.

Tesla Salary

Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, does not receive a salary. Instead, he has a highly unusual and extremely lucrative bonus plan that is linked to the company’s market capitalization milestones.

Tesla was valued at around $50 billion at the time the plan was devised. There are a total of 12 milestones based on market cap increases of $50 billion.

Elon achieved all the milestones and was thus eligible to receive the entire $100 billion bonus plan. After the Board of Directors confirms that the milestone has been met, shares related to this plan are released quarterly.

Elon Musk Success

Zip2 Corporation, Musk’s first company, was an online city guide. Zip2 was purchased for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock options by a division of Compaq Computer in 1999.

Musk also co-founded X.com, an online financial services and payments company, in 1999. The following year, an X.com acquisition resulted in the formation of PayPal, as we know it today, and in 2002, PayPal was purchased by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock.

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), Musk’s third company, was founded in 2002 with the goal of developing spacecraft for commercial space travel.

By 2008, SpaceX had established itself, and NASA had given the company the contract to transport cargo to the International Space Station, with plans to transport astronauts in the future.

Tesla Motors was next, a car company dedicated to making affordable, mass-market electric vehicles. Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla in 2003.

Elon, Ian Wright, and J.B. Straubel were the company’s first employees and were named co-founders retroactively. Tesla Motors raised $226 million in its initial public offering in June 2010, with Daimler taking a stake in the company and a strategic partnership with Toyota.

Musk and SpaceX made history in 2012 when they launched an unmanned capsule into space aboard their Falcon 9 rocket. In 2013, he unveiled a concept for a new mode of transportation called the Hyperloop, which would allow commuters to travel between major cities at speeds of more than 700 mph.

In contrast to railroads, the Hyperloop would travel via tubes. Musk estimates that the Hyperloop will take 7 to 10 years to build, test, and deploy.

Personal Life of Elon Musk

Musk has had two marriages. He was married to author Justine Wilson from 2000 to 2008. They share custody of their five surviving sons. He married Talulah Riley, his second wife, in 2010.

They divorced in 2012, remarried a year later, and divorced again in 2016, making their split official. In 2018, he began dating Grimes, a Canadian musician born Claire Elise Boucher. In December 2021, they “semi-separated,” but remained close.

They’re so close that they recently welcomed a daughter through surrogacy. Exa Dark Siderael is the couple’s second child, following their son X A-Xii, who was born in 2020. According to a Vanity Fair interview, Grimes has not ruled out having more children with Musk.

Real Estate

Elon previously owned real estate worth $100 million in California alone. He still owns a 100-year-old, 16,000-square-foot villa on nearly 50 acres in the Northern California town of Hillsborough.

In 2017, he paid $23.364 million for this home. He owned six homes in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Bel-Air at one time in Southern California.

A 20,000-square-foot house he bought for $17 million in 2012, a 7,000-square-foot house he bought for $20 million in 2015, and a 9,300-square-foot house he bought for $24.25 million in 2016 were among his Bel-Air properties.

Elon shocked the world in 2020 when he announced his intention to sell all of his worldly possessions, beginning with his Los Angeles homes. He kept his word and proceeded to sell each house. In December 2020, he sold four homes at once to a single buyer.

How Much Money Does Elon Musk Give to Charity?

Musk pledged to give away the majority of his wealth during his lifetime, following in the footsteps of Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett.

According to The New York Times, he reportedly donated $6 billion worth of Tesla stock to undisclosed charities in 2021. Musk tweeted in October 2021 that he’d donate $6 billion to the UN World Food Program if they could prove it would end world hunger—and the organization responded with a plan;

As a result, some believe they were the recipient of his donation. He made a $10 million donation to the Future of Life Institute in 2015, which focuses on artificial intelligence regulation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are Justine Musk and Elon Musk still married?

Griffin and Xavier, twin boys, were born in 2004 through in vitro fertilization, and Damian, Saxon, and Kai, triplets, were born in 2006. She announced that she and Musk were divorcing on September 13, 2008. Their children are shared between her and Musk.

Elon Musk has how many children?

He’s the father of seven children from three different marriages.

How tall is Elon Musk and weight?

Elon, who is 50 years old, is 1.88 m (6ft 2in) tall, according to reports. He is said to weigh 82 kilograms.

Are Elon and Grimes still a couple?

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, and Grimes, who had been dating for more than three years, have broken up.