It’s been revealed that Elon Musk donated some $5.7 billion to his own charity at the end of 2021.
A tax filing uncovered by Bloomberg News shows that the Musk Foundation held $9.4 billion assets at the end of 2021. The chief executive of Tesla sent $5.74 billion worth of the automaker’s stock to an unnamed charity in November 2021 during a spat with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren over a proposed wealth tax. He did not state which charity he had donated the money to at the time.
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The Musk Foundation sent approximately $160 million to non-profits last year. These included a $55 million gift to the St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis and $54 million to the X Prize Foundation that Musk partnered with in 2021 to offer a prize for innovative carbon removal projects. The charity also donated $4 million to the Future of Life Institute that focuses on reducing the risks of artificial intelligence and biotechnology.
Musk’s large charity donation would have also helped to reduce his 2021 tax bill, which he described as the biggest in U.S. history.
Details of Musk’s donation to his own charity came shortly after the entrepreneur lost his title as the world’s richest person to Bernard Arnault, the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton SE. Of course, Musk’s net worth fluctuates frequently given so much of his wealth is tied up in Tesla stocks which have dropped more than 50 per cent in the past year and almost 29 per cent since he purchased Twitter.