Tesla Made Musk A Billionaire, But All His Eggs Are In That Basket

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Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk has a major stake in the electric-car company, but how much the stake means to him is an important question to get an answer to. Musk’s investment in the company is “the majority of his fortune,” as before the venture the CEO “almost lost it all,” says a report from Motley Fool by Daniel Sparks.

Took loans from friends

If we go back to 2008, Musk earned around $200 million from eBay’s acquisition of PayPal, which he co-founded. However, despite the gain Musk was short of cash and had to take loans from friends to make a living. The crisis was revealed in a divorce court filing. The filing says that Musk invested all his cash in two start-ups: Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) and SpaceX, which ran into trouble owing to the recession.

During a Google Hangout in 2013, Musk had tears in eyes while revisiting some of the old memories, when he had to make tough choices about his future;

“I could either take the money that I had left and allocate it to one company, or two. It’s sort of like, you’ve got two kids and you’re not sure if you spread the food around, will both kids make it? It would have been a very unfortunate thing if both companies had failed because I spread what little I had left between the two,” Mush said.

Tesla makes majority of Musk’s fortune

The choices made by Musk have certainly paid off, but at that time, risking every penny would have been a tough decision to make. In 2008, Musk was almost on the verge of a nervous breakdown when both the ventures were not faring well, he told Business Insider. Both Tesla and SpaceX have performed well after going public with the former contributing the most to the fortunes of the self-made billionaire. Musk owns around 27% stake in Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) (including options), which is almost worth $5 billion. According to Forbes, Musk is worth around $6.7 billion, so majority of it is contributed by Tesla.

Also, the Tesla CEO, at a conference in Germany, two months ago, said that he won’t be selling his stake anytime soon: “I will be the last one to sell shares.”

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