Musk's $5.7 billion "Charity Secret" exposed: money flows to his own Charitable Foundation
December 13 news, at the end of 2021, Elon Musk (Elon Musk) donated $5.7 billion worth of Tesla shares to a charity, which attracted attention. According to the latest tax filing, the donation was originally aimed at its own foundation, making it immediately one of the largest in the United States.
The Musk Foundation held $9.4 billion in assets by the end of 2021, according to the document. The foundation donated about $160 million to non-profits last year, its largest donation to date.
During this period, Musk's largest single donation was $55 million to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, followed by $54 million to the X Prize Foundation (X Prize Foundation). Musk worked with the foundation in 2021 to set up separate awards for carbon reduction projects.
Musk also made good on his promise to donate to school districts and non-profit organizations near Brownsville, Texas, near his SpaceX spaceport in Bokachka, according to other donations listed in the tax filing.
Musk, 51, has a personal fortune of $167.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. During the outbreak of the epidemic, COVID-19 moved his corporate headquarters, including Tesla, from California to Texas, along with the family charitable foundation.
The Musk Foundation's tax returns show that Musk, its financial advisers Jared Burchard (Jared Birchall) and Mathilda Simon (Matilda Simon) are directors of the foundation, but other employees are not listed in the document.
The largest foundation in the United States is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has assets of nearly $55 billion by the end of 2021. The Gates Foundation made about $6.2 billion in grants last year, according to its spokesman.
In November 2021, when he wanted to donate $5.7 billion worth of Tesla shares to charity, Mr Musk quarreled with politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren over inequality and the proposed "rich tax". At the time, he did not disclose the donation target of the money.
Large charitable donations help reduce what Mr Musk calls "the largest tax bill in American history". A few days before he completed a series of stock sales worth more than $16 billion, most of them nearly 23 million option awards, the Tesla chief executive wrote on Twitter that he would pay more than $11 billion in taxes that year.
Earlier this year, several donors said their main contact at the Musk Foundation was Igor Kurganov, a professional poker player turned philanthropist active in the so-called "effective altruism" field.
However, there is little clear evidence that this effective altruism has affected Musk's donation. Effective altruism is a philosophical movement that tries to have the greatest impact by carefully spending money to solve problems. Sam Bankman-fried (Sam Bankman-Fried) gave the cause a big boost, but his cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, declared bankruptcy last month.
The Musk Foundation has also donated $4 million to the Future Life Institute, which focuses on reducing the risks of artificial intelligence (AI) and biotechnology, both of which are top priorities for effective altruists. Musk and American movie star Morgan Freeman (Morgan Freeman) are advisers to the nonprofit group.
