| Formation | 2001 |
|---|---|
| Founders | |
| Type | Non-operating private foundation |
| EIN 85-2133087 | |
| Legal status | 501(c)(3) organization |
| Headquarters | Austin, Texas |
| Elon Musk | |
| Revenue | 20.5 million (2023) [1] |
| Endowment | $536 million (2023) [1] |
| Website | www |
The Musk Foundation is a US-based charitable foundation funded and directed primarily by entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk. The foundation is dedicated to promoting renewable energy, crewed space exploration, pediatrics, science and engineering education, and the "development of safe artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity". [2] At the end of 2022, the foundation had assets of US$5 billion, $4.5 billion of which were in the form of shares in the carmaker Tesla. [3]
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Personal Companies Politics In popular culture
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The Musk Foundation was established by Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal Musk in December 2001. It was initially registered in Los Angeles. [4] [5] It is now based in Austin, the capital of Texas. [6] The foundation has no employees or full-time staff. It is managed by an unpaid board of directors consisting of Elon Musk and employees of his family office, Jared Birchall and Matilda Simon. [7]
The foundation was initially endowed with $2 million. [8] From 2012 to 2015, it received a further $3 million. In 2016, Elon Musk donated Tesla shares worth $254 million to the foundation, thus avoiding tax payments that would have been due if he had sold the shares. [9] In 2020, the foundation received another $4 million. [10] Due to the increase in the price of Tesla shares, the foundation's assets rose to $3 billion by the end of 2020. [11]
In 2021, Musk donated more Tesla shares to the Musk Foundation, worth $5.7 billion at the time. According to estimates, he may have avoided up to $2 billion in taxes that would have been incurred if he had sold the shares. [7]
Musk also donated Tesla shares in 2022, this time worth $1.95 billion. It is not yet known whether and to what extent these went to the Musk Foundation (as of February 2024). [12]
From 2002 to 2018, the foundation gave $25 million directly to nonprofit organizations, nearly half of which went to Musk's OpenAI, [13] which was a nonprofit at the time. [14] By 2020, the foundation had granted around 350 donations with a total volume of an estimated $100 million, including for Musk's non-profit organizations Ad Astra and OpenAI. Other donations went to the University of Pennsylvania, the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, the AI think tank Future of Life Institute, the X-Prize Foundation for the Global Learning X-Prize, the nature conservation organizations Sierra Club and National Wildlife Federation, Oxfam and the Clinton Foundation. [15] [16] [7] [17] Other beneficiaries included his brother Kimbal's nonprofit Big Green. [18] Elon Musk's favorite event – the Burning Man Festival in Nevada – was also donated to. [2] Most of these donations were anonymized. [19]
In September 2021, the Musk Foundation donated $55 million to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital as part of a fundraiser by SpaceX customer Jared Isaacman. [7] [20] In the same year, it provided $100 million for technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. [21]
In 2022, the foundation awarded – as in the previous year [22] – a total of $160 million in donation. [7] 10 million of this went to The Foundation, a new foundation set up by Elon Musk, which is preparing to establish a school in Austin. The Foundation received a further $100 million in 2023. [23] [24]
Both the selection of recipients of donations and a relatively low payout ratio have been criticized. In 2021 and 2022, the Musk Foundation awarded less than 5% of its assets in donations, after its assets grew to several billion dollars. This means that it fell short of the legal minimum donation required to maintain its tax-exempt status. [7] The Guardian criticized the fact that the foundation financed various projects of Musk and his family members, although this is not unusual for billionaires and wealthy donors. [2] The New York Times concluded that through 2022, about half of the Musk Foundation's grants went to organizations “tied” to Musk, one of his employees, or one of his companies. Musk's philanthropy would be “largely self-serving.” [7]
According to the biographer Walter Isaacson, Musk has little interest in philanthropy. He believes that he can do more for humanity by leaving his money in his companies and pursuing the goals of sustainable energy, space exploration and AI safety with them. [25]
On December 12, 2024, The New York Times reported the foundation again awarded less than 5% of its assets in donations in 2024. [26] [27]
Elon Reeve Musk is a businessman known for his key roles in the space company SpaceX and the automotive company Tesla, Inc. He is also known for his ownership of X Corp., and his role in the founding of the Boring Company, xAI, Neuralink, and OpenAI. Musk is the wealthiest individual in the world; as of January 2025, Forbes estimates his net worth to be US$421 billion.
Tesla, Inc. is an American multinational automotive and clean energy company. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, it designs, manufactures and sells battery electric vehicles (BEVs), stationary battery energy storage devices from home to grid-scale, solar panels and solar shingles, and related products and services.
Gary S. Gensler is an American government official and former investment banker serving as the chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Gensler previously worked for Goldman Sachs and has led the Biden–Harris transition's Federal Reserve, Banking, and Securities Regulators agency review team. Prior to his appointment, he was professor of Practice of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
GiveWell is an American non-profit charity assessment and effective altruism-focused organization. GiveWell focuses primarily on the cost-effectiveness of the organizations that it evaluates, rather than traditional metrics such as the percentage of the organization's budget that is spent on overhead.
Kimbal James Musk is a South African-born Canadian and American businessman and restaurateur. He co-owns The Kitchen Restaurant Group, a collection of restaurants in Colorado, Chicago, and Austin. He is the co-founder and chairman of Big Green, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has built hundreds of outdoor classrooms called Learning Gardens in schoolyards across the United States. Musk is also the co-founder and chairman of Square Roots, an urban farming company growing food in hydroponic, indoor, climate controlled shipping containers. Musk currently sits on the boards of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX; his brother Elon is the current CEO of both companies. He was on the board of Chipotle Mexican Grill from 2013 to 2019. He is the brother of Elon Musk, Tosca Musk, son of Errol and Maye Musk, and a major shareholder in Tesla.
MacKenzie Scott is an American novelist, philanthropist, co-founder of Amazon and ex-wife of Jeff Bezos. As of December 2024, she has a net worth of US$42.1 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index; owning a 4% stake in Amazon. As such, Scott is the third-wealthiest woman in the United States and the 38th-wealthiest individual in the world. Scott was named in the list of world's 100 most powerful women by Forbes in 2023 and 2021; including one of Time's 100 most influential people in 2020.
The Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) is a donor-advised community foundation serving the Silicon Valley region. It is the largest charitable foundation in Silicon Valley.
Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system as a joke, making fun of the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies at the time. It is considered both the first "meme coin", and more specifically the first "dog coin". Despite its satirical nature, some consider it a legitimate investment prospect. Dogecoin features the face of Kabosu from the "doge" meme as its logo and namesake. It was introduced on December 6, 2013, and quickly developed its own online community, reaching a peak market capitalization of over US$85 billion on May 5, 2021. As of 2021, it is the sleeve sponsor of Watford Football Club.
The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a nonprofit organization which aims to steer transformative technology towards benefiting life and away from large-scale risks, with a focus on existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence (AI). FLI's work includes grantmaking, educational outreach, and advocacy within the United Nations, United States government, and European Union institutions.
Kathaleen Saint Jude McCormick is an American lawyer and judge on the Delaware Court of Chancery, first as a vice chancellor from 2018 to 2021 and then as the current chancellor since 2021. She is the first female chancellor in Delaware history.
Elon Musk is the CEO or owner of multiple companies including Tesla, SpaceX, and X Corp., and has expressed many views on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from politics to science.
Tesla, Inc. has been criticized for its cars, workplace culture, business practices, and occupational safety. Many of the criticisms are also directed toward Elon Musk, the company's CEO and Product Architect. Critics have also accused Tesla of deceptive marketing, unfulfilled promises, and fraud. The company is currently facing criminal and civil investigations into its self-driving claims. Critics have highlighted Tesla's downplaying of issues, and Tesla's alleged retaliation against several whistleblowers.
Optimus, also known as Tesla Bot, is a general-purpose robotic humanoid under development by Tesla, Inc. It was announced at the company's Artificial Intelligence (AI) Day event on August 19, 2021, and a prototype was shown in 2022. CEO Elon Musk stated in 2022 that he thinks Optimus "has the potential to be more significant than [Tesla's] vehicle business over time." Media and expert opinions based on corporate showcases have been mixed.
Leo Koguan is an Indonesian-born Chinese American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He is the chairman and co-founder of SHI International Corp and was the third-largest individual shareholder in Tesla, Inc.
Jared John Birchall is an American business executive and a former banker. He is the chief executive officer of neurotechnology company Neuralink and the wealth manager of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk since 2016. As Musk's adviser, right-hand man, and fixer, Birchall holds executive or administrative positions in other endeavors of his including the Boring Company, Musk Foundation, xAI, and managing his family office.
Texas Institute of Technology and Science (TITS) is a proposal by Elon Musk to open a university in Austin, Texas.
Elon Musk is the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$486 billion as of December 2024, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and $464 billion according to Forbes, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla, Inc. and SpaceX. In November 2021, he became the first person in the world to have a net worth above $300 billion, and in December 2024, he became the first person to reach a net worth of $400 billion.
The Musk family includes Maye Musk, a model and author, Errol Musk, a businessman and politician, their children Elon Musk, Kimbal Musk, and Tosca Musk as well as nephew Lyndon Rive. Elon Musk's ex-wives are Justine Musk and Talulah Riley, and he has many children.
Yield Giving is an American foundation which is the primary philanthropic vehicle for MacKenzie Scott, the former wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. The organization's name is based on her philosophy of adding value in her philanthropy by giving up control to local organizations (localization).
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