Elon Musk, already one of the world’s wealthiest individuals, has now secured a record-shattering $1 trillion pay package, the largest ever granted to a corporate executive. Approved by Tesla shareholders, the compensation deal is tied to steep performance milestones — but if fully realised, it would catapult Musk’s wealth to unprecedented levels. His celebratory dance alongside a humanoid robot at Tesla’s annual general meeting quickly went viral, symbolising the audacity of both his ambitions and his new financial triumph.
The sheer scale of the payout has stunned economists and investors alike. A trillion dollars — a one followed by twelve zeroes — is more than the GDP of most nations and enough, critics say, to “end world hunger several times over.” The move has reignited debates about wealth inequality and executive compensation in the tech industry. Yet what fascinates the public even more is not how much Musk has earned, but how little he seems to spend.
Unlike other billionaires who collect mansions and yachts, Musk has long cultivated an image of minimalist austerity. In interviews, he has repeatedly said he “owns very few possessions” and avoids indulgence. In 2021, he told TED curator Chris Anderson that he doesn’t even own a home, often sleeping in friends’ spare bedrooms when travelling for work.
His former partner, musician Grimes, painted a similar picture in a 2022 Vanity Fair interview, describing Musk’s frugality as bordering on ascetic. “Bro lives below the poverty line sometimes,” she said, recalling how he refused to replace a mattress that had a hole in it. The couple once lived together in a $40,000 prefab house near SpaceX’s launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, with minimal furniture and no security.
Musk famously sold off seven of his California properties between 2020 and 2021, including a Bel-Air estate once owned by Gene Wilder, the actor best known for “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.” The total proceeds from the sales exceeded $100 million. “Don’t need the cash. Devoting myself to Mars and Earth. Possession just weighs you down,” he tweeted at the time.
While his real estate portfolio has vanished, Musk’s collection of cars and aircraft remains a reflection of his passions — and his contradictions. He owns a Ford Model T, the car that revolutionised the automotive industry, as well as a 1967 Jaguar E-Type Roadster and a McLaren F1, which he once famously crashed in the early 2000s. His 1976 Lotus Esprit, used in the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, is perhaps the most eccentric piece — a car that, in the movie, transformed into a submarine. Musk bought it for nearly $1 million and has said it inspired some of his ideas for Tesla’s engineering.
His private jet collection is equally notable. He owns several Gulfstream aircraft, each worth tens of millions of dollars, which he uses for frequent travel between Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink facilities. These jets, tracked closely by flight enthusiasts, have also drawn criticism for their environmental impact.
Musk’s philanthropy is another area of public scrutiny. While he has pledged billions through the Musk Foundation, reports — including a detailed investigation by The New York Times — have suggested that much of his giving is strategically aligned with his business interests or geared toward tax optimisation. According to tax filings, many of the foundation’s largest donations went to organisations connected to SpaceX, Tesla, or Musk’s educational initiatives.
For all his wealth, Musk’s personal lifestyle remains unusually restrained. He reportedly lives in a 375-square-foot modular home near SpaceX’s Starbase, though there have been rumours of a much larger property — a 14,400-square-foot compound in Texas, valued at $35 million, to accommodate his expanding family of 11 children.
Still, it is not mansions, yachts, or art that occupy Musk’s imagination — it is Mars. He has said many times that his ultimate goal is to use his wealth to make humanity multiplanetary. “All my assets are devoted to building a self-sustaining city on Mars,” he told Business Insider in 2020.
As for his new trillion-dollar payday, Musk is unlikely to spend it conventionally. Much of it will remain tied to Tesla’s market value, and his pattern suggests that he views wealth as a tool for engineering rather than indulgence — funding rockets, robots, AI systems, and other projects that bridge science fiction and reality.
Whether he will be remembered as a visionary builder or as a symbol of runaway capitalism remains to be seen. But as critics debate the ethics of his fortune, Musk seems focused on a different metric — not the dollars in his bank, but the distance between Earth and Mars.
