Elon Musk and Grimes have a baby boy, perhaps named X Æ A-12 – but how did the Tesla CEO, now a father of 6, make his US$38.2 billion, and what does he spend it on?
The sky is no limit for the entrepreneur who at 12 sold source code for his first video game for US$500, later worked in a timber mill, went on to co-found PayPal, set up Tesla, and now has his sights set on space
Elon Musk and Grimes have a new baby boy. The couple named the child “X Æ A-12 Musk”, Musk tweeted, leading fans to speculate if the name has a hidden meaning.
Speculation about the pregnancy has been flying since Grimes first hinted she was expecting in a cryptic social media post in January before officially confirming the pregnancy nearly two months later. The new baby is Musk's sixth child and Grimes' first.
Musk has a US$38.2 billion fortune to support his family with, despite never having taken a paycheck from Tesla. The CEO refuses his US$56,000 minimum salary every year. In January 2018, Tesla announced it would pay Musk nothing for the next 10 years – no salary, bonuses, or stock – until the company reaches a US$100 billion market cap. If and when that happens, Musk could potentially overtake Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world.
Keep reading to find out what we know about how Musk amassed his fortune and how he spends it.
Musk and Canadian singer Grimes, his on-again, off-again girlfriend, welcomed their baby boy on May 4. They named the child “X Æ A-12 Musk,” Musk tweeted.
Decades before becoming a father of six and amassing a US$38.2 billion fortune, Musk taught himself to code as a child growing up in South Africa. By the time he was 12, he sold the source code for his first video game for US$500. Just before his 18th birthday, Musk moved to Canada and worked a series of hard labour jobs, including shovelling grain, cutting logs, and eventually cleaning out the boiler room in a timber mill for US$18 an hour – an impressive wage in 1989.
