A look at Elon Musk’s vast web of Texas interests
Billionaire Elon Musk is well-known for the variety of companies he owns — from automaker Tesla to pioneering rocket company, SpaceX. He also owns the social platform X.
Most of these businesses now call Texas home. But X and Tesla are far from Musk’s only interests here.
A New York Times investigation has found that a web of some 90 companies and other legal entities have ties to Musk.
Kirsten Grind reported the story for the Times. She says it’s unclear what many of these companies do. Listen to the interview in the audio player above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: What got you and the Times interested in tracking companies tied to Elon Musk, specifically in Texas?
Kirsten Grind: I’ve actually covered Elon Musk for quite a few years and I do deep dives on him all the time. But me and my colleagues were really interested in his wealth, specifically.
So you hear all the time that he’s the richest man in the world, but there is very little that is known about how he’s spending his money. And honestly, through the course of this investigation, we figured out why that is. Because he’s hiding his funding very well.
Well, now you report that some 37 of the companies that you identified are actually tied to Musk’s personal use. Say more about that.
That’s right. So we have an incredible researcher here at the Times. We actually had to buy a database of companies in Texas at a pretty high cost and go through them to understand what Musk was doing.
And the way we were able to tie him to these companies and what they were spending money on was through people we knew were attached to him — for example, his long-time money manager, or maybe a good friend. And it was only then that we could sort of start to piece together this web of companies. It was a lot of work.
So were these companies incorporated in Texas, or what exactly? I mean, are these on the public record — that sort of thing?
That’s right. So they’re not incorporated because they’re what’s called limited liability companies – LLCs. They’re essentially shell companies and they’re all in Texas.
The reason we focused on Texas, because Elon Musk has private companies all over the country, it’s because we needed to whittle it down somehow. And of course, Texas is where Elon is basing all his operations where he moved in 2020.
Were you able to identify a kind of strategy behind all of this? Is it just a matter of convenience for him to set up shop in Texas or what?
It’s a really good question. I wish we had come up with a strategy. But instead, it was just really hard to figure out even what the private companies were spending money on, or if they were even attached to him versus, say, Tesla or SpaceX.
So we focused mainly on trying to figure out what it is he is using these private companies for. And what we ended up with was he’s buying a ton of land, properties, planes, other things that just aren’t readily available to see.
It seems like some of these companies are connected to the super PAC that Musk used to provide funding for President Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign, I gather.
I’m glad you brought that up. That was actually a big piece of our reporting that my colleagues and I drilled down on.
So much is known, of course, at this point about Musk funding Trump during his 2024 campaign. But he actually used these private companies that he formed in Texas to help pay for expenses from the super PAC.
And what that did is it essentially allowed him to make these purchases out of the public view. So you couldn’t end up tracking where millions of dollars went, according to the experts we spoke to and who went through this with us. So it was something a lot of them had never even seen.
» GET MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE: Sign up for Texas Standard’s weekly newsletters
Spending for the campaign, or for Trump personally…
For the super PAC. So he was essentially using these private companies to pay for expenses for the super PAC. But because that wasn’t a super PAC spending the money, it didn’t require the same amount of disclosure.
So, in fact, that meant we had no idea where a lot of this money actually went too.
I mean, it’s not unusual for people of extreme wealth to use LLCs to direct their wealth. Is there anything unusual in particular about what Elon Musk appears to be doing?
Not at all. It’s a very common strategy for the ultra wealthy. And a lot of the reason they do it is for privacy, right? So they buy a house. They don’t want anyone to know their address. They can put it in an LLC.
Now, the reason we focused on Elon Musk here is twofold. The first being, of course, he’s one of the richest people in the world, and we wanted to understand his spending.
But secondly, we wanted to show how complicated this strategy has become among the ultra wealthy. There are layers and layers of companies connected to many different people, so much so that I remember one expert said to me, some of these people can’t even keep track of their own companies.
Maybe you can clarify something. Do state or federal laws, maybe tax laws, require Musk to disclose the function or holdings of an LLC? I mean, I suppose in a way I’m sort of asking, is there any suggestion or whiff of any sort of potential wrongdoing in what you found?
That’s a good question. We did not, to be very clear, find any specific wrongdoing here.
This was more an exercise to show how he is spending his money. And we wanted to give the readers a shot at really understanding where all this wealth is going.
There isn’t a lot of disclosure around LLCs. That’s why a lot of times the ultra wealthy prefer them. But what we found really just shows you how complicated this whole thing has become and what he’s spending his money on.
What beyond that? Because I think of LLCs as a way to limit your liability, your personal liability. That’s what they’re there for, presumably, right?
Absolutely. So there’s three reasons why they’re used a lot by the ultra wealthy. The first I mentioned, which is privacy.
But there’s two other reasons, which are tax advantages. And we did not drill down into that. Interestingly, a lot of the questions we got from readers on the story was about how he was using this for tax purposes, which unfortunately we didn’t drill down into this time, but maybe next time.
And then the third is, of course, it limits your financial risk. If your company or venture goes bankrupt, or if it’s sued, it’s the LLC bearing the brunt of that, not you personally.
