Is Elon Musk the Richest Man on Earth or Most Leveraged?

On October 5, 2024, Elon jumped on the back end of the Trump campaign like it was a life raft. He got on that campaign like a hungry raccoon on a CyberTruck. He jumped on the stage with the gratitude enthusiasm of a drowning man getting a second chance at life. And if you look at his investments last year, maybe he was.

Elon Musk founded Zip2, sold it to Compaq, and was a co-founder of PayPal. I won’t delve into his whole back story, but he left PayPal either “Due to resulting technological issues and lack of a cohesive business model” or “after a power struggle with board members over the company's strategy and branding” or my personal favorite, “because of his preference for Microsoft Windows over Unix.”

Elon made millions when he left PayPay. I’m not questioning that the fact that Elon Musk had money. The man had money. The key word is had.

TWITTER/X

In August of 2024, the Wall Street Journal had an article titled “Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover Is Now the Worst Buyout for Banks Since the Financial Crisis.”

The article says, “Loans of around $13 billion have remained ‘hung’ for nearly two years, bringing in interest payments but weighing on banks’ balance sheets.” WFJ also said, “The $13 billion that Elon Musk borrowed to buy Twitter has turned into the worst merger-finance deal for banks since the 2008-09 financial crisis.”

Yikes. And to clarify, they’re referring to Elon’s portion of Twitter/X investment.

Twitter or X is estimated to be worth only a measly 21% of what was paid for it. Elon did not buy it outright, it was a leveraged buyout (LBO). He got investors like P. Diddy and a Saudi prince among others.

Despite lots of publicity around this purchase, Elon only owns 42% of Twitter/X. To secure the loans to buy his part, Elon used his Tesla stocks. (More on why this matters below.)

Musk was fined during the purchase of Twitter because he didn’t report within the legal time frame that he bought more than 5% of of shares. The lawsuit asked the court to order Musk to "pay disgorgement of his unjust enrichment.” He ended up paying a $20 million fine.

xAI

Elon also owns 54% of xAI. The recent DeepSeek shake up may have lessened the shine on this new promising company. Who “owns” xAI? BlackRock, Fidelity, Sequoia Capital and others allegedly participated in a funding round, and of course Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, and Kingdom Holding, who also own part of the ill-fated Twitter also own part of xAI.

In February 2024, in an article titled “What’s The Point of Elon Musk’s AI Company?”The Verge said this, “Elon Musk’s xAI has filed paperwork to raise cash. The pitch seems pretty thin - and the AI space is very competitive.”

And it turns out, they may have been correct in those statements. The headlines about DeepSeek over the past few weeks are as follows:

• WSJ: Silicon Valley is Raving Mad About a Made-In-China AI Model

• Axios: DeepSeek Erodes AI Industry’s “Size Is Everything” Faith

• Business Insider: Is DeepSeek the Worst Nightmare for VCs? Venture Investors Are Rattled, But Some See A Silver Lining

• Crunchbase: Will DeepSeek Burst VCs AI Bubble?

• Trending Topics EU: DeepSeek: The Race of AI Supremacy is Over and the US Has Not Won

Although Musk may not have predicted this new DeepSeek AI company to sideswipe his AI company, jumping on the caboose of the Trump train definitely helped Elon secure more money for xAI.

On December 5, 2024, Reuters said this:

Dec 5 (Reuters) - Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI said on Thursday it has raised around $6 billion in equity financing as it races to compete with other AI firms.

The funding comes at a time xAI is looking to increase its footprint in the artificial intelligence industry by expanding its Memphis, Tennessee, supercomputer to house at least one million graphics processing units.

Musk, who launched xAI last year, expanded his lawsuit against ChatGPT maker OpenAI last month saying OpenAI illegally sought to monopolize the market for generative artificial intelligence and sideline competitors.

It’s worth noting that Twitter/X, and xAI are not currently publicly traded companies so they do not have to make public their financial information. Apparently Elon regularly complains about public companies because you have to follow rules and be transparent with financial information. And the fact that he’s so routinely publicly angry about legal transparency requirements, makes one question what is going on at his non-publicly held investments.

If it sounds like Elon’s original purchase of Twitter with Tesla stock is like robbing Peter to pay Paul, well let’s discuss what was happening with Peter (Tesla).

TESLA

In 2024, month after month, Tesla was selling fewer Teslas. According to AP, the 4th quarter of 2024, “Analysts polled by FactSet expected Tesla’s average sales price to fall to just over $41,000 in the quarter, the lowest in at least four years.”

Q4, (October, November and December) 2024 was going to be disastrous for Tesla. And Tesla, a publicly held company, was going to have to share these Q4 results at the end of December. So Elon, the face of the company, was going to have to find a financial miracle before the end of 2024. And he did.

WHY WAS TESLA LOSING SALES?

In August 2024, Tesla had to recall almost 2 million cars because of software glitch, the hoods were opening while people were driving.

In addition to sluggish sales, in October 2024, the same month Elon jumped (literally jumped) into the Trump campaign, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched another investigation into 2.4 million Tesla vehicles equipped with Full Self-Driving (FSD) software after four reported collisions, including a fatal 2023 crash.

According to a PBS News article from October 2024:

Tesla has twice recalled “Full Self-Driving” under pressure from NHTSA, which in July sought information from law enforcement and the company after a Tesla using the system struck and killed a motorcyclist near Seattle.

The recalls were issued because the system was programmed to run stop signs at slow speeds and because the system disobeyed other traffic laws. Both problems were to be fixed with online software updates.

Critics have said that Tesla’s system, which uses only cameras to spot hazards, doesn’t have proper sensors to be fully self driving. Nearly all other companies working on autonomous vehicles use radar and laser sensors in addition to cameras to see better in the dark or poor visibility conditions.

How it’s going in 2025:

In January 2025, Tesla sales plunged 59% in Germany alone after he endorsed the far right AfD party and also publicly did Nazi salutes which is illegal in Germany. In France, which has the largest Jewish population in Europe, Tesla sales fell 63%.

In January 2025, the NHTSA opened (another) investigation into Tesla vehicles because of crashes involving the Actually Smart Summon (ASS) feature that allows owners to move their cars remotely. The investigation (if allowed to be completed) could lead to a recall of up to 2.6 million vehicles.

Interesting that actual sales of Tesla were disastrous in 2024, then got even worse in 2025, yet stock prices rose because stocks don’t reflect the actual value of a company but rather the perceived potential.

*Saturday October 5, 2024 is the day that Elon jumped into the Trump campaign.

SpaceX

And lastly I’ll touch on SpaceX, of which Elon appears to only own 42%. Please bear with me, we’re almost done. I can assure you I did not have writing about Elon Musk on my 2025 bucket list, vision board or goals list. This isn’t interesting to me either, I wanted to write about travel, but this is important and there’s a point, so please stay with me.

Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with his PayPal money. Elon has publicly discussed the struggles with SpaceX after it almost went bankrupt in 2008. The company spent an unexpected amount of money in R&D as it faced multiple failed launch attempts, including a fire caused by a fuel leak.

Most recently SpaceX was in the news in October because it finally got a rocket to launch, and land. This was just days after Elon publicly backed Trump. Hard to say if this was just lucky coincidence.

NASA has a relationship with SpaceX. I won’t speak to rumblings of who this relationship benefits most, but suffice to say that SpaceX needs government contracts.

According to ABC News today, “SpaceX has received more than $18 billion in federal contracts over the last decade, with NASA making up $13 billion of that.”

NEURALINK

Honestly, I really thought I was done. Obviously Musk took “diversify your investments” to heart. If you’re thinking, “OMG, how many companies does this guy half own?” Me too.

Neuralink is a privately held neuro-technology company that was founded in 2016. In addition to Elon Musk, other investors in Neuralink are allegedly: Founder’s Fund (Thiel), Craft Ventures, VY Capital, GV, DFJ Growth, Valor Equity Partners and Gigafund.

Here are a few headlines on Neuralink, if you wish to peruse:

DEBT FOR SALE

The past week’s news is that banks are selling Elon’s debt. (The above discussed worst financial decision for banks since the 2008/2009 financial crisis.) According to Bloomberg, "Morgan Stanley is selling $5.5 billion of X debt on Demand Surge. BILLION! Because “Musk’s White House ties have stirred a fresh interest in X debt.”

I assume a lot of America’s enemies as well as some of our allies would like to own the man who has the US president’s ear as well as access to the Treasury.

As Yahoo Finance put it, “Banks this week sold $5.5 billion in debt tied to Elon Musk’s 2022 buyout of Twitter, signaling that Wall Street's confidence in Musk is rising alongside the billionaire’s elevated status in Washington.”

Before the election, journalists touted Elon Musk was the “Richest man in the world.” But was he? Because he’s acting like the most desperate man in the world.

Elon takes big risks. I respect that. With big risks come big rewards. But when you leverage the big rewards on another big risk, do the big rewards still come?

MUSK FOUNDATION

Stocks, homes, cash on hand, gold bars, philanthropy, one could argue these things are subjective in terms of how you should allocate your assets. But a weird little yellow flag that stands out to me that seems out of line within wealthy people behavior is Elon’s financial charity, Musk Foundation.

It seems his “charity” ranks somewhere between sad and questionable. The alleged wealthiest man on the planet has a charity with zero actual employees, funded by stocks, to perform ‘charitable’ things that only seem to benefit his companies.

The Musk Foundation is supposedly run or owned by Elon and his brother Kimbal Musk, who owns or owned a Colorado restaurant group as well as Nova Sky Stories, a drone company. It is possible there are 2 other employees or were 2 other employees associated with the family.

As a reference point, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has over 2,000 employees and he’s only the 7th richest person in the world, George Soros foundation has 800 employees, the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network has 200-500 employees…. The number of employees in billionaires non-profits can range from hundreds to thousands, but it always expands past just family members.

Additional articles that don’t make his charity sound any better:

In terms of taxes, wealthy people need charities to give away money to offset all the money they’re bringing in. Average Americans donate to things and write it off their taxes, but it doesn’t really move the needle on what they end up having to pay in federal taxes. But wealthy donors receive the biggest tax breaks for philanthropic giving.

“Rich people get huge tax breaks,” according to ProPublica.

By using stocks as donations, he can write off capital gains. I get it, it’s not that out of the normal, but, hear me out, you don’t really need a philanthropy to offload money if you’re not making money. Do you really need employees for your non-profit if there’s not profit to demand the need for fully functioning a non-profit?

Elon Musk, on paper, has not lived as a benevolent man. It appears his goal in life is transporting people to Mars, obviously he means wealthy, paying people. Sure he gave CyberTrucks to fight LA firefighters, but likely because he couldn’t sell them for what he wanted and he needed some positive PR.

LIFESTYLES OF LEVERAGED AND PRETENDING

Between 2020 and 2021, Musk reportedly sold several multimillion-dollar homes to live a minimalist lifestyle and reduce his carbon footprint. Architectural Digest says in 2021 Elon Musk was renting a $50,000 pre-fab home from SpaceX, “With plans to spend more time in space than Earth, it came as no surprise that Musk downsized and shed most personal possessions.”

Allegedly the humble ranch pre-fab home was on SpaceX land in Boca Chica, TX, or the equivalent of sleeping at the office.

Some people decide to down size their home because their 12 kids are grown and out of the house, or because want to get in touch with nature or not be owned by their possessions. Some people do actually sell assets to release the clutch that a consumer driven lifestyle has on their soul. But a lot of people down size because they simply have less income. People don’t go from fab homes to pre-fab homes unless there’s a story.

So prior to getting on the Trump campaign, Elon was renting a cozy pre-fab house in Texas. Maybe because he wanted humility, but likely because he lost his prosperity.

According to Realtor.com:

Though he has owned various homes in the past, in 2020, the billionaire made the surprising decision to sell “almost all of his physical possessions.”

In a series of posts shared on X, which was then known as Twitter, Musk shared that he planned to “own no house,” with reports at the time revealing that he was giving up every property he still owned.

*This was also reported on several reputable publications like Business Insider, Detroit News, TMZ, (lol) and Financial Post

If we’re being honest, it seems like Elon sold California properties and moved to a pre-fab home in Texas like everyone else who has ever moved from a Bel-Air mansion to a trailer in Texas, because circumstances demanded it.

No coincidence that in October 2024 after climbing aboard the Trump life raft, Elon started spending again.

By end of October 2024, Fortune reported that he “bought three mansions.”

Austin-American Statesman says “Elon Musk buys $35 million Texas compound.”

In December of 2024 Musk was rumored to buy $100 million penthouse in West Palm Beach, presumably to be near Mar-A-Lago.

Seems like his days of caring about a carbon footprint and small living came to an abrupt end. It’s almost like something suddenly changed in Fall of 2024.

Usually the simplest most logical answer is the right answer. Elon Musk, probably like everyone else who upgrades from a small home, did it because financial circumstances changed. Based on his timeline, his circumstances changed when he joined the Trump campaign.

People are like stocks, we have trends over time, every day we go up and down, but we base our value, not on our past success or our current circumstances, but our future success. Wealthy people get this. They may be trending down, but most know that if they’re patient, over time they’ll go back up. So when I see a wealthy person, like the “richest man on earth” acting erratic, selling homes, setting up a questionable charity, owing billions in debt, faking a giveaway, my first thought is, “maybe he’s not as wealthy as he wants us to think.”

When normal people can’t afford to do something, they simply say, “I can’t afford that right now” and it’s okay. I guess when you’re Elon Musk, you say you’re focusing on lowering your carbon footprint.

Ironic that the way he was actually able to lower his carbon footprint was by being part of the administration that is getting rid of the agency tracking carbon footprints.

Leading up to Oct 2024, Elon Musk was behaving like someone who was losing money, and the companies he has partial ownership of were definitely losing money.

Elon’s actions aren’t the actions of some rare enlightened individual, but rather the actions of almost every other person on the planet. We spend less money when we have less money, and we spend more money when we have more money.

FLYING HIGH

Elon “Carbon Footprint” Musk also famously had a feud with the FAA because it is legal to track where planes fly. For some reason flight enthusiasts were tracking planes he flew in. I don’t know why, probably to highlight the irony of him pretending to be focused on a lower carbon footprint.

According to Google AI overview, Musk flew 441 flights in 2023, and 355 flights in 2024. I’m sure this information is somewhat muddled as the passengers on the flights could have been Elon, his family or other employees. The flight tracking seems to also be tracking SpaceX corporate jet.

*Yes, I just sourced an AI overview, that’s where we are now.

YOU SEE WHAT YOU SEE

It appears, based on information publicly available, that Elon Musk was financially compromised and has used the Trump presidency to turn his situation around.

You don’t become the greatest skateboarder of all time without being obsessed with skateboarding, you don’t become a hockey GOAT without being obsessed with hockey, and you don’t become one of the wealthiest people on the planet without being obsessed with money.

There’s no logical scenario where Elon Musk, a man with multiple legal woes, billions in debt, a man who had been slapped on the hand multiple times by different US government agencies, woke up one day and thought, “You know what? I don’t care about money any more. I’m going to volunteer my time and energy and make it my life’s mission to help find hidden stolen money for the good people of the United States, where I was neither born nor raised.”

It’s not impossible, but highly improbable to overnight go from routine run-ins with the federal government to a dutiful civil servant with absolutely no agenda.

2025

When you are doing good things, you hire good people. Elon knows this, he understands the importance of good hiring practices. He had to hire lots of talented people over the years because he was never trained in automotive engineering, rocket science or any of the things his companies actually do.

There are probably thousands of highly skilled seasoned forensic accountants that meet the MAGA criteria of being white male conservative Christian that would gladly help Elon on his Treasury hunt.

But he didn’t hire a fleet of top notch experts with loads of experience as one might expect. He hired interns with no experience in the field of forensic accounting. Guys not old enough to legally rent a car, a few not even old enough to drink. Prefrontal cortex is fully developed at age 25, none of them are there yet. Avis and Hertz wouldn’t trust these guys with a Ford Taurus, but they are Elon’s pick to handle personal information of 330 million people and $6 trillion dollars of federal money?

These are the young, smart, naive guys you recruit when you’re planning a heist. These are the guys you leave behind in the vault when it’s empty and the police are on their way. Because you can find talented smart employees willing to work in top government positions, but it’s hard to find qualified scapegoats.

“But how could Elon give away millions of dollars during the campaign if he was broke?”

Everyone assumed Elon was giving away his own money, but was he? Or was he just the face guy handing out checks?

According to articles, the money wasn’t given to random people who signed up for a sweepstakes, but rather to people carefully selected by the campaign to work for the campaign as spokespeople. In layman’s terms, a “campaign spokesperson” is also called a hired actor or talent.

Maybe if you’re a Trump fan, you don’t care the details behind why you’re getting money. But the details matter if you look at it from the perspective of how campaigns are allowed to spend money. Campaign money is allowed to be spent on hiring people for the campaign.

According to Business Insider:

It was later revealed that it was not random at all and that America PAC was hand-selecting recipients.

In October, Philadelphia County District Attorney Larry Krasner sued Musk and his super PAC, characterizing it as an illegal lottery scheme.

But Judge Angelo Foglietta of Philadelphia's Court of Common Pleas allowed the giveaway to continue in Pennsylvania, writing in a decision that Musk's giveaway failed to meet the criteria required for a lottery under Pennsylvania law.

So legally it wasn’t an illegal giveaway because it wasn’t actually a giveaway, sweepstakes or lottery. The people weren’t “winning” but were being hired, and knew they were being hired. Tyler VanAkin who was the last person to “win” a “check” was already working on the Trump campaign.

According to Business Insider,

A year-end FEC filing by America PAC shows that VanAkin was paid $1 million on November 12, 2024, a week after his win was announced, for his services as a "spokesperson consultant."

The other announced winners are also listed in the filing, but only VanAkin received income from political committees, per the Financial Times.

It’s not clear why all the winners are listed in the FEC filing, but only one received “income from the political committees.” I assume the others were paid something, but it’s a little unclear why “winners” would be listed in the filing, but not paid by the PAC.

It is strange that the very last person to win the “giveaway” already worked on the campaign. I can suspend my disbelief to see how someone in his campaign could have randomly won, but we now know the “winners” were carefully selected. And it’s odd that he was allegedly the only one listed as actually being paid if the articles are correct.

And if it wasn’t a sweepstakes according to Pennsylvania law, and more of an employment situation, then was the “salary” negotiable? Instead of a million dollars, would one be offered the average actor pay for such a gig? As spokespeople, or hired actors, would one sign an NDA to never speak about how much one was paid, or the behind the scenes details of the “work” project?

In theory, an NDA could promise money in the future when someone actually has it, and not payout immediately. And a hired actor would probably stay silent and honor the NDA for the promise of future wealth, like royalties.

AP news says most of the money in the America PAC came from Elon Musk… MOST of it? So not all the donated money coming from “World’s Richest Man.”

VIBE CHECK

I don’t have access to the personal financial information of Elon Musk, but I don’t need it. I see how wealthy people act and it’s not like that. It’s not desperate.

Even compromised rich people act like everything is fine even when they’re being gently put in the squad car, shrugging it off like it’s a misunderstanding. When normal rich people are losing everything and selling off homes, they confidently roll their eyes and say things like, “This neighborhood was getting stale anyway.” They always calmly produce an excuse, but it’s never been ‘I’m selling my earth assets so I can spend more time in space.’ Americans bought that lie?

I assume at one point or another, anyone who owns a company has legal entanglements and ups and downs, so his actual financial situation, whether compromised or not, isn’t what concerns me the most.

The problem is his vibe is all wrong. He’s not giving off confident world’s richest man energy, but nervous leveraged energy. I don’t know if Elon Musk is/was broke, but I know he acts like he’s broke.

“Million dollar checks.”

“Free Money!”

When wealthy people have the public, big check Price Is Right giveaways, the price is usually not right. When rich people are secretly losing money they often donate or pledge money to look like they have a surplus. The phrase ‘you have to spend money to make money’ should be ‘you have to look like you already have money to make money.’

Quiet hearty donations are a sign of great wealth, but flashy public giveaways are sometimes, not always, a sign of a desperate attempt to look wealthy. Why would you need to play the part if you know you’re the real deal?

Most Americans, if you put them in the room with the top 50 richest Americans, would probably only recognize about 4 of them. Why? Because most extremely wealthy people don’t want to draw any additional attention to themselves because they don’t feel like they need it.

Sure, we pay attention to celebrities, musicians, actors, producers, but that’s not who the top richest people in the world are. Taylor Swift is a new billionaire, but the dude who owns the restaurant chain, Raising Cain’s is worth 9 times more, and Americans don’t know his name or face unless they watch Shark Tank.

Extremely wealthy people are like deer. No one cares what they are doing off in the woods. For the most part, society leaves them alone. Most people don’t care what deer are up to, unless they come in our lane, then we care. If we have slam on brakes and swerve so we don’t die, then we’re paying attention to the deer. If we have to run off the road, we absolutely start to care. If that deer gets us in a car wreck that costs us money, compromises our health or kills someone, then we definitely start talking about finding the deer a fenced in habitat.

Like all the other top wealthy people, Americans don’t really cares about Elon’s financial success or failure. Not really. Most Americans don’t care how Elon gets his money… unless his financial wins are on the backs of American taxpayers or if he’s trading American confidential information, then we start to care. If he’s part of a US Treasury heist, we care.

If I had removed his name and presented all the known information that I have shared so far, you might read it and think, “this guy sounds sus.” What we know about Elon Musk publicly is just the tip of the iceberg, we have no idea how under water the rest of the iceberg is.

In researching Elon, he seems a lot like Trump, someone who hasn’t actually created much in his lifetime other than offspring, but hired other people to do things and made a lot of his money off pretending to actually have money. Biography.com says Elon moved to Canada to avoid military duty in South Africa, so he and Trump have that bond as well.

The 2025 news narrative seems like the GOP is setting up to pin crimes on Elon, and Elon is planning to use the young alpaca haircut whiz kids as his scapegoats.

If Elon Musk had sold his 7 homes and stayed hidden in the woods, no one would have thought anything of it. But he ran out in our lane and made us swerve. And unfortunately now we’re forced to pay attention.