Elon Musk: What we're
looking at over there,
that's a quarter section of the Falcon 9.
[Narrator] From SpaceX to Tesla,
Elon Musk is the face of
some high-profile companies,
and his current net worth
is around $20 billion.
Where did all this money come from,
and where does it all go?
Here's how Elon Musk makes
and spends his billions.
Musk grew up in South Africa
and taught himself how to code.
At just 12 years old,
Musk sold the source code
for his first video game for $500.
Then, at age 24, Elon
and his brother, Kimbal,
founded Zip2 with $28,000
of their father's money.
Zip2 provided a searchable
business directory,
almost like an online version
of the Yellow Pages with maps.
Four years later, the brothers
sold Zip2 for $307 million.
Musk used his $22 million share
to cofound the
online-banking service X.com.
Via merger, X.com ended
up becoming PayPal,
with Musk as a majority shareholder.
When eBay purchased PayPal in 2002
for $1.5 billion,
Musk made $180 million from the sale.
Musk and other PayPal executives
like Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman
have become known as the "PayPal Mafia."
They took their gains from the PayPal sale
and put them into various
startups and funds.
Their investments and creations include
YouTube, LinkedIn, Uber,
and countless others
that have become major players
in Silicon Valley today.
Following the PayPal sale,
Musk founded space-exploration
company SpaceX.
SpaceX's self-described
mission is "to enable humans
to become a spacefaring civilization
and a multi-planet species
by building a self-sustaining
city on Mars."
The privately owned company
is valued at $33.3 billion,
according to CNBC.
Musk himself is the largest
individual shareholder
of SpaceX, with a 54% stake.
While SpaceX shoots for the stars,
Musk is most well-known for a company
that's at least a little
bit more down-to-earth.
Automaker and energy company
Tesla was founded in 2003.
It went public in 2010
and beat expectations
with a $2.2 billion market cap.
Just two years later, Musk made it
onto Forbes' richest
list for the first time,
with an estimated net worth of $2 billion.
Although Tesla helped
build Musk's fortune,
the future of the company remains unclear.
In 2018, Musk had to
pay a $20 million fine
and had to step down as
chairman for three years
after triggering an SEC investigation
when he tweeted about
taking Tesla private.
Still, the company's current valuation
is $32.8 billion.
He technically has a salary
of $56,000, for legal reasons,
but doesn't cash the paychecks.
Instead, all of his compensation
comes through awards
based on the company's success.
And if outer space and our
highways weren't enough,
another Musk venture
is looking underground.
Musk has also founded The Boring Company,
an infrastructure and
tunnel-construction company
that hopes to build underground tunnels
with an all-electric
transportation system built in.
Musk was inspired to start the company
after experiencing the
notoriously bad traffic of LA.
According to Musk,
The Boring Company's
first commercial tunnel
could be finished in Las
Vegas by the end of 2019.
This and other high-profile contracts,
like the one with
Chicago's O'Hare Airport,
has estimates for the company's value
as high as $16 billion.
With all of these ambitious projects,
Musk has amassed an incredible fortune.
Here's how he's known
to spend his billions.
Musk currently owns a $70
million real-estate portfolio.
His properties include
several Bel Air estates.
His first purchase, a $17 million mansion,
includes a two-story library,
a home theater, a gym,
and a thousand-bottle wine cellar.
And of course, the Tesla cofounder
has an affinity for cars.
His car collection includes a $920,000
Lotus Esprit submarine car
used in a "James Bond" movie,
a Ford Model T, and a Jaguar
E-Type Series 1 Roadster.
As you can imagine, Musk
is a bit of a workaholic,
so he's not spending money on vacations.
In a 2015 interview, Musk
claimed to only have taken off
two separate weeks since
founding SpaceX in 2002.
Instead, a lot of Musk's money
goes right back into his companies.
The New York Times reported that 90%
of the $112 million that
The Boring Company raised
came from Elon Musk.
And in 2018, Musk bought more than
$35 million worth of shares in Tesla.
He has also signed the Giving Pledge,
started by Warren Buffett
and Bill and Melinda Gates,
vowing to donate the
majority of his wealth
during his lifetime.
Musk has made a number of donations
to important causes he cares about,
including $10 million to
the Future of Life Institute
for regulating artificial intelligence.
Elon Musk has become somewhat
of a controversial figure,
but his journey to becoming a
rocket-scientist billionaire
remains impressive.
And if humanity does
end up living on Mars,
it could be thanks to Musk.
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