In 2020, Elon Musk announced that he was selling all his residences worth over $100 million. He said he wanted to live a more minimalist lifestyle and would live in a $50,000 house. hole. But when we look at satellite images, it's clear that while Musk may have fewer homes, his empire has only grown. Look how its space and tunneling centers in Texas have grown in the last two years. Or how a SpaceX city is being built near the border with Mexico.
New York, California, Texas, Nevada, Shanghai, Berlin – his companies operate all over the world. We traced his businesses, homes, and jets to determine the full scale of his empire. You could say this is where it all started: in a small office on Sherman Avenue in Palo Alto, California. This is where Elon Musk and his brother founded Zip2, a company that makes virtual city guides and interactive maps.
He sold everything to “live simply”
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His next move was to launch X.com, an online bank. Musk moved to an address just a few blocks away. In 2001, X.com changed its name to PayPal.
And when eBay bought the platform, Musk went from a rich person to super-rich. He earned $165 million from the sale. Then Musk launched two companies that shook up their industries. He used some of the money to create SpaceX in the early 21st century, as well as to invest in Tesla.
This building in El Segundo, California was SpaceX's first headquarters. That's not far from where the space exploration company now has one of its main rocket manufacturing facilities. Satellite photos show that it is marked with the letter “X”.
SpaceX currently operates in six locations across the country. In the company's early days, when the company's rockets launched from a U.S. base in the Pacific, Musk's mission to create reusable rockets was close to failure.
There were three unsuccessful launch attempts. Elon Musk said that the company almost went bankrupt. It was one of the worst periods in his life. However, the fourth attempt was successful. This allowed many new investors to join, and since then SpaceX has become one of the most valuable private companies in the world
Rockets built in California go to Texas for testing. This place hasn't changed much since it was created to make bombs during World War II.
Missile launch sites include Vandenberg Space Force Base on the West Coast, as well as the John F. Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Spaceport in Florida. It is the main launch site for Falcon 9 rockets, which can carry satellites into orbit and astronauts to the International Space Station.
Elon Musk's real estate, including the new SpaceX headquarters
The new home of SpaceX — and Elon Musk's dream of one day colonizing Mars — is Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas. As satellite images show, in recent years the site has transformed from a sleepy community with a handful of homes into a sprawling complex where Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rockets are built and launched.
The SpaceX headquarters is impressive
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Business Insider visited Boca Chica in 2019 and spoke to residents who were under pressure to sell their homes and move out to make way for SpaceX's expansion.
We don't know if they'll let us live out our days here, and that's terrifying
– said Maria Pointer, a resident of Boca Chica at the time.
Narrator: SpaceX has been slowly buying properties in the area for years.
However, he sent the offer to residents en masse, giving them only two weeks to make a decision, whether to take the money and leave or stay and try to deal with the experimental spaceships in the backyards.
Maria Pointer has moved out of the city, which has grown significantly since our last visit. In October 2024, the Super Heavy rocket's booster performed the first-ever launch and return maneuver. As with most of his business empire, Elon Musk moved his homes from California to Texas.
Until 2021, Musk lived a relatively lavish lifestyle. He had several residences in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, including a cluster of luxury homes on Chalon Road and Somera Road outside Los Angeles. Musk then unexpectedly announced that he was divesting most of his assets, including his homes.
Over the next few years, he did exactly that. His homes in California have sold for about $130 million. He still owns the property, but it is quite modest. He has a house in Boca Chica that he says he bought for just $50,000. hole.
Apparently he also has a prefab house from Boxabl that is similar to this one. He also purchased a home in the Austin area in February 2022. In 2024, The New York Times reported that Musk owned two more properties there, hoping that the mothers of his children would live nearby. This place by the Colorado River is further proof that Elon Musk is putting down roots in Texas.
Within a few years, these featureless farmlands were transformed into the base for Musk's next businesses, i.e. Starlink and The Boring Company, which builds underground tunnels for vehicles.
A closer look at satellite images suggests Musk is using his drilling machines to tunnel under the road. This is the location of the new headquarters of Company X, formerly known as Twitter, after Musk moves it from San Francisco in 2024, according to court documents.
Nearby there is a private school called Ad Astra, which was built with money from the Musk Foundation. Musk has often called for education reform and also built a school of the same name for his own children near the SpaceX base in Boca Chica.
Meanwhile, the Department of Government Performance, DOGE, is cutting the Department of Education's budget. However, Musk's ambitions go far beyond education. Over 100 houses are planned to be built on this plot as part of the Amazing Project. The community is to be named Snailbrook, a nod to his company's mascot, The Boring Company.
Elon Musk came up with the idea for The Boring Company while stuck in traffic in Los Angeles. So far, The Boring Company has only built one tunnel at the Las Vegas Convention Center, a test tunnel in California and one at the Tesla factory in Texas. However, there are plans for more, including one in Dubai.
Elon Musk said he wants to leave the lavish life behind
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Tesla went through “production hell”
The company has not yet realized Musk's dream of a Hyperloop vacuum train. Currently, it can only transport passengers between two points. Of course, we haven't forgotten about Tesla.
We need to produce many cars and stationary batteries to switch the world to sustainable technology as quickly as possible
– claimed Elon Musk.
Tesla is the most valuable car company in the world in part because of how futuristic its technology is. It deals with many innovations. It's not just an automotive company, but a technology company.
Musk became Tesla's CEO in 2008. That same year, the company released its first electric car, the Roadster.
The model was assembled in Menlo Park, California, based on a Lotus chassis from Great Britain. Then, during the production of the Model 3, they went through the famous “production hell”, trying to increase production to thousands of units.
— Did you expect such a production hell? – the journalist asked Elon Musk
– NO. It's worse than I thought. We introduced too many new technologies into the Model 3 at once, the billionaire replied.
Tesla almost went out of business several times, most notably in 2017 when production of the Model 3 began.Currently, the Model 3 is built here – at the massive Fremont factory. Like the rest of Musk's companies, Tesla's headquarters moved to Texas. Cybertruck and Model Y vehicles are manufactured in this complex on the outskirts of Austin. Its area is almost one square kilometer, and further expansion is planned.
Tesla's global reach is also growing. The gigafactory in China produces more cars than any other Tesla plant and also exports to Southeast Asia and Europe. However, Tesla's expansion plans face some problems.
Here is a video of protesters in a German forest against the expansion of the Berlin gigafactory. In March 2025, the protest against Musk and Tesla began as his moves to cut costs at federal agencies went into effect.
Meanwhile, Musk's plans to build a new Tesla plant in Mexico have stalled as the trade war between the United States and its southern neighbor intensifies. Musk also expressed interest in bringing Tesla to India, one of the fastest-growing electric vehicle markets.
Tesla's beginnings were not easy
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Elon Musk is leaving his mark on the climate
It is therefore not surprising that as it takes up more and more space, its carbon footprint also increases. In 2024, Musk's two private jets made 363 flights, emitting over 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide. Here is a map we created that shows each of his journeys.
Musk often flies from Austin to San Francisco or from California to Brownsville, Texas, where SpaceX is located. Many of his flights – I would say more than half – were related to politics. So he was around Palm Beach. He flew to Washington several times, and before the election he flew back and forth between swing states, especially Pennsylvania.
In 2021, Musk became the richest person in the world. He has since bought Twitter and now invests in other projects such as Neuralink and xAI. xAI has a really interesting database center in Memphis. They built it in a few months and it has 200,000. graphics processors. It is the largest data center in the world.
Musk's ambitions do not end with his involvement in politics. On the contrary. There are concerns that lucrative government contracts for companies such as Starlink and SpaceX will not only enrich Elon Musk even further, but also pose an obvious conflict of interest.
Elon Musk's ambitions reach Mars
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It seems like Elon Musk always has a card up his sleeve. Always working on a new idea. First, he plans a SpaceX mission to the Moon and then wants SpaceX to help colonize Mars.
It seems that all that remains to complete Elon's empire is to achieve his goal of colonizing space, especially Mars. SpaceX already has over 6,700 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit. And the Tesla Roadster, launched on a SpaceX rocket in 2018, is still orbiting the Sun. Musk, however, wants his real legacy to be a permanent human settlement on Mars. He plans to use his Starship rocket for this purpose.
Authors:
Grace Kay, journalist, Business Insider
Robert Leslie, producer, Business Insider
