In November, Elon Musk said that he donated about $6 billion in Tesla Inc. stock to charity.
Based on average prices on the days he sold the shares, the contribution was worth almost $5.7 billion, making it one of the largest to a charity in history. The transaction involved an unnamed trust, and the name of the charity was not included in the paper.
The gift came while Musk, Tesla’s CEO, was battling Democrats such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren over inequality and a potential wealth tax.
Around the same time, Musk said he’d sell shares if the UN could show it was helping to address world hunger, after the head of the organization’s food-aid arm proposed billionaires like Musk “step up now, on a one-time basis.”
Musk stated that a huge charitable donation made last year will assist decrease what he claimed would be the largest tax payment in US history. Bloomberg estimated in December that Musk might owe the IRS more than $10 billion as a result of exercising an abnormally large number of options in 2021.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, contributed more than 5 million Tesla shares in November, only days after the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) revealed details of a $6 billion strategy to combat world hunger.
Musk’s charity contribution was revealed in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that was made public on Monday. From November 19 to November 29, Musk gave a total of 5.044 million Tesla shares. The filing did not indicate which charity Musk gave to, but it did state that the transactions were carried out through a trust.
Musk’s namesake organization has gotten increasingly active in recent years, with substantial, eight-figure grants offered to a city near his South Texas spaceport, a $100 million carbon removal competition, and $5 million to two scientists for Covid-19 research. Previously, his foundation’s major contributions were to donor-advised funds, or DAFs, which hold charity monies in perpetuity.
The Musk Foundation, which previously included Musk’s brother Kimbal as a director, has lately added a fresh face to its board of directors. Several grant recipients interviewed by Bloomberg claimed Igor Kurganov, a prominent poker player-turned-philanthropist engaged in the effective altruism field, is their principal point of contact at the organization.