Now the World's Wealthiest Person, What Kind of Mega-donor Might Elon Musk Become?

Following more than 700% growth in Tesla stock value over the past year, Elon Musk recently became the world’s richest person, with a net worth of roughly $203 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That title, it turns out, is somewhat volatile, as he briefly dropped back down to second place after Tesla stock took a recent tumble.

Regardless, Musk’s wealth has grown by some $150 billion over the past 12 months, making him one of a number of billionaires who saw their fortunes balloon in 2020. In case you were wondering, the amount his wealth increased in the past year is more than three times the annual budget of the NIH, around 17 times the annual budgets of the NSF and the EPA. And don’t even ask about the National Endowment for the Arts.

All of which is to say, as happened with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos when he took the lead in 2017, there is now higher scrutiny on the enormous amount of wealth Musk has within his grasp, and with that comes new attention to how, and how much of it he donates.

Philanthropy has not previously been a major target of either Musk’s mental bandwidth or his dollars—back-of-the-envelope math has shown that he’s given only a tiny portion of his wealth away so far, and his Musk Foundation website is famously terse. He did sign the Giving Pledge back in 2012, committing to give away at least half his wealth to charitable causes, although he did not submit the customary letter indicating his interests. At the time, according to Forbes, he was worth a paltry $2 billion.

Now that he’s worth over $200 billion, giving away anything like half his wealth is going to be a pretty big job, and the workaholic Musk may not be willing to take his focus off Tesla, SpaceX or the tunnel-digging Boring Company anytime soon. He’s always been one of those tech CEOs who prefer to impact the world through for-profit endeavors: Google’s Larry Page infamously suggested in 2014 that, rather than give his own fortune to charity, he’d be better off giving it to Musk and his companies.

In any case, assuming Musk remains the world’s wealthiest person—or at least high on the list—public attention will continue. Signs already point to a greater chunk of his money going toward philanthropy. Musk initially responded to his new ranking by tweeting, “How strange” and “Well, back to work…” But by the end of that day, he had followed up by soliciting philanthropy advice on Twitter.

You’ll recall Bezos did something similar back in 2017, and as we’ve seen with his giving, the decisions surrounding even a sliver of such massive wealth can have profound impacts on the corners of the nonprofit world that draw the attention of these mega-donors.

Musk’s philanthropic interests so far

So what kind of philanthropist might the guy who made millions from the internet only to make billions from electric cars become? Well, the bulk of his limited giving to date has moved anonymously through DAFs at Vanguard and Fidelity. Meanwhile, this is literally all that’s on the Musk Foundation website: “Grants are made in support of: Renewable energy research and advocacy; human space exploration research and advocacy; pediatric research; science and engineering education; development of safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity.”

Take that with a grain of salt, considering he established the foundation back in 2002, but it’s actually not far off from what we know of his philanthropic interests based on his businesses and sporadic giving to date. Musk doesn’t take on small professional challenges, and his philanthropy will likely be an extension of the same goals embodied by his companies. His obvious inclination is to address problems of global scale with technological solutions, and those areas seem likely to figure largest, or at least first, in Musk’s work as a philanthropist.

Tesla Inc., which develops electric cars, and solar and clean energy technology, seeks in part to speed the gargantuan goal of shifting transportation from fossil fuels to greener energy. His SpaceX aerospace company aims to reinvent space travel, interplanetary exploration, and even to extend permanent human habitation to Mars. These efforts reflect Musk’s big-picture concern about planet Earth and existential threats to humanity, and arguably suggest greater giving in climate and energy—causes that must be addressed on a huge scale to make a difference, and that are the sort of problems that Musk evidently is willing to take on.

Along these lines, the Musk Foundation has made environmental grants, according to tax records. He’s given at least $6 million to the Sierra Club, which reportedly came to light when Musk asked Michael Brune to vouch for him as was being skewered over donations to Republicans. He’s also given six-figure grants to the National Wildlife Federation, and given multiple times to Global Green USA, which works on climate and sustainability. He’s made smaller gifts to Conservation International and the BlueGreen Alliance.

We’ve previously outlined the concerns Musk has expressed about the development of artificial intelligence technology. For several years, Musk has been a voice of caution about the potential dangers of AI, one of the frequently cited areas of his philanthropy. He was a partner in the formation of the OpenAI research institute and company, and in 2015, gave $10 million to the Future of Life Institute, which studies existential threats to humanity, including AI. No doubt Musk will continue to make grants in this area of research.

Musk has also made some grants toward education, according to tax records, including to performing arts education group Bring on the Music, a handful of gifts to K-12 schools, and some higher ed donations. Just a few days ago, Salman Khan announced via Twitter that the Musk Foundation gave $5 million to his online learning platform Khan Academy.

The rest of the public record is kind of a mixed bag. He says he gives a lot to the ACLU. Health grantees include Doctors Without Borders, the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and World Spine Care. Oh, and his brother, restaurateur Kimbal Musk, started Boulder-based healthy eating outreach organization Kitchen Community, which morphed into a group called Big Green. Kitchen Community has landed nearly a half-million from the foundation, according to tax records. Kimbal Musk is also listed as the Musk Foundation’s secretary, treasurer and director of the foundation in the latest filings available, with Elon Musk the only other director, so make of that what you will.

What kind of a philanthropist will Musk become?

Perhaps just as important as the question of what Elon Musk will fund is the question of how Elon Musk will fund. If we look at his mega-donor predecessors, we might see some clues, but none seem to describe this highly idiosyncratic CEO.

It’s hard to imagine Musk following in the footsteps of Mark Zuckerberg, creating an expansive grantmaking operation and trying to split his focus between that and Tesla. He’s just got too many plates spinning already. And judging from scandal-prone CZI and Musk’s own tendency for, um, controversial decisions and statements, maybe that’s for the best.

But today’s public probably won’t sit back and wait for the 50-year-old to retire and spend his golden years building out his philanthropy. So maybe he punts the work to his brother or some trusted advisor. It does seem likely that Musk will fund or help create more research organizations—but also more entrepreneurial endeavors—that focus on specific problems he wants to address, rather than create a major, standalone philanthropic institution with its own buildings, staff and bureaucracy.

And it’s entirely possible he’ll operate more along the lines of what we’re calling the new “apex donors”—MacKenzie Scott, Jack Dorsey and Bezos—giving large amounts quickly and with little infrastructure. And yet, there’s something about Musk’s penchant for high-risk endeavors, and even bizarre behavior (recall the submarine fiasco, or the Joe Rogan incident) that give us the feeling we could be seeing something quite different—an impulsive strain of philanthropy rarely seen at this level of wealth.