Elon Musk's Current Investment Focus

Elon Musk is a businessman and investor known for his involvement in companies such as SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter (now X Corp). Musk's investment strategy primarily revolves around two areas: companies he starts or controls, and cryptocurrencies.

Musk has a unique, self-disciplined mindset about money and investing. He has said: I always invest my own money in the companies that I create... I don't believe in the whole thing of just using other people's money. I don't think that's right.

As of July 2024, Musk's net worth is estimated to be $221 billion, making him one of the wealthiest people in the world. Here is a list of some of his current and former investments:

- SpaceX: Musk owns about 44% of the space exploration technology company, which was valued at roughly $127 billion in May 2022.

- Tesla: Musk owns slightly more than 14% of the electric vehicle giant, which was worth more than $100 billion as of October 2022.

- Twitter/X Corp: Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022 and now owns an estimated 74% of the company.

- DeepMind Technologies: Musk was a key investor in this artificial intelligence company, which was acquired by Google in 2014.

- The Boring Company: Musk owns most of this tunnel engineering company, which was valued at more than $7 billion in October 2023.

- Neuralink: Musk owns a majority stake in this neurotechnology startup, which is working on brain-computer interfaces.

- OpenAI: Musk co-founded this nonprofit artificial intelligence research company in 2015.

- xAI: Musk's latest entrepreneurial effort, xAI is an artificial intelligence company that aims to compete with ChatGPT.

- Starlink: Musk's satellite internet company is not currently publicly traded, but it is estimated to be worth $150 billion.

- PayPal: Although Musk no longer has a stake in PayPal, he profited from its sale to eBay in 2002 and used the proceeds to invest in other ventures.

SpaceX

In addition to its work with NASA, SpaceX has also developed Starlink, a satellite internet constellation providing satellite internet access. Starlink has been particularly useful during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Musk sending Starlink terminals to the country to provide internet access and communication. SpaceX is also working towards its goal of reusable rockets, having successfully landed the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket on a land platform in 2015, with later landings on autonomous spaceport drone ships.

Neuralink

Elon Musk is the CEO of Neuralink and also its majority owner. The company was first publicly reported in March 2017 and has since received criticism for its animal testing practices, with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) alleging that Neuralink and the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) mistreated monkeys, causing them psychological distress, extreme suffering, and chronic infections due to surgeries.

Despite the criticism, Neuralink has achieved several milestones, including raising $205 million in funding in 2021 from investors such as Google, and developing an implantable device capable of transmitting neural signals wirelessly to a computer or mobile device. In January 2024, Musk announced that the first human had received a Neuralink brain implant and was recovering well.

The company's brain-computer interface (BCI) is designed to be fully implantable, cosmetically invisible, and capable of allowing users to control computers or mobile devices with their thoughts. Neuralink's technology has the potential to change lives, and the company aims to bring this technology from the lab into people's homes, with a focus on safety, accessibility, and reliability.

In the future, Neuralink hopes to restore capabilities such as vision, motor function, and speech, and eventually expand how we experience the world. The company is currently seeking people with quadriplegia to participate in a groundbreaking investigational medical device clinical trial for their BCI technology.

Cryptocurrency

Elon Musk, the world's richest person, has a simple investment strategy that revolves around two areas: companies he starts or controls, and cryptocurrencies.

Musk's cryptocurrency investments include Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin. He has been quite outspoken about some of his favourite digital assets, particularly Dogecoin, a meme-inspired cryptocurrency that began as a joke in 2013. Musk's support for Dogecoin is based on the fact that it seems like the "people's crypto". Many of his employees at SpaceX and Tesla own Dogecoin, and he believes that it is a better option for daily transactions than Bitcoin.

Musk's relationship with Bitcoin has been somewhat complicated. In February 2021, Tesla announced it had purchased $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and would accept it as a payment method. However, Musk later backtracked on this decision due to environmental concerns. Despite this, Musk has emphasised that he wants to see Bitcoin succeed and does not plan to sell his holdings.

In addition to his personal investments, Musk's companies, Tesla and SpaceX, also own significant amounts of Bitcoin. As of June 2022, Tesla held about 42,000 Bitcoins, worth about $1.3 billion.

While Musk's tweets about various cryptocurrencies have seemingly impacted their prices, experts warn that investors should not base their investment decisions on the opinions of celebrities or influencers. Cryptocurrency is considered a volatile, risky, and speculative investment, and investors are advised to only invest what they can afford to lose.

Twitter

Musk's initial bid for Twitter began in April 2022 when he disclosed a 9.2% stake in the company, making him the largest shareholder. A day later, Musk was offered a seat on Twitter's board of directors, which he rejected as he had offered to buy the company and take it private. There was much back-and-forth between the company and Musk, but the deal eventually went through, with Musk becoming "Chief Twit" in late October 2022.

Since taking over, Musk has made several changes to the platform, including:

• Charging a $7.99 monthly subscription fee for a "blue check".
• Lessening content moderation and reinstating previously banned accounts.
• Firing several top Twitter executives, including the former CEO Parag Agrawal, and taking on the role himself.
• In December 2022, he released internal documents relating to Twitter's moderation of Hunter Biden's laptop controversy in the leadup to the 2020 presidential election.
• In March 2023, Musk unveiled a new X logo, saying it would replace Twitter's blue bird, potentially setting up the company to enter the financial services industry.
• In May 2023, Musk announced that he had hired NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino to be Twitter's new CEO.

Despite the controversy, Musk has expressed his top initiatives for Twitter, which include promoting free speech, publicly displaying the algorithms governing content, and transforming Twitter into an "everything app" called X.

DeepMind Technologies

DeepMind has developed AI systems that play games better than humans. For example, in 2016, its AlphaGo program beat a human professional Go player, Lee Sedol, a world champion, in a five-game match. This achievement made headlines and was the subject of a documentary film.

Google acquired DeepMind in 2014 for a reported sum of $400-650 million, with the company becoming Google DeepMind in 2023 after merging with Google AI's Google Brain division.

Elon Musk is famously worried about the dangers of AI and the risk it poses to civilization. It has been reported that he invested in DeepMind to stay informed about the rapid development of AI technology, rather than for financial gain.

Frequently asked questions