In 2002, Elon Musk sold PayPal to Ebay and made about $175-$180 Million dollars from the deal. He famously said he put $100 Million into SpaceX, $70 Million into Tesla, and $10 Million into Solar City, and had to borrow money to pay rent. With a net worth of approximately $190 Billion, those investments clearly paid off, and history was made.
Since then, Elon has paved the way with his vision to get to Mars, and revolutionized the electric vehicle industry, all with the goal of preserving humanity.
But times have changed, and in 2022, as you know, Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 Billion.
At Green Media News, we started to think.. What happened? Did the money get to his head? When you are that rich, does the meaning of money completely disappear? What happened to the guy that wanted to preserve humanity?
So we decided to brainstorm what we would do with $44 Billion…
Well, if Elon wanted his own social media company he could still do that. We went on CodeCanyon and found out you can download the complete Twitter website code for $6. Then we went on Fiverr and found an app developer who would get it live for $100. Boom, your own Twitter for $106.
So, what to do with the rest of the money? Well, right off the bat we could have started 440 new SpaceX’s. That’s one option. Or 628 new Teslas.
We could invest $1 Million dollars into 44,000 cleantech, renewable energy, or sustainable start up businesses. Imagine what 44,000 ambitious entrepreneurs could do with $1 Million dollars…
But what if we got more creative? According to Live Science, you can build the Great Pyramid of Giza for $5 Billion, so you could have built 8 or so of those. According to Bloomberg, Elon could have dipped into more of his stock and bought the Roman Coliseum for $79 Billion.
Last, but certainly not least, he could purchase the most expensive man made object ever built – the International Space Station – for a measly $100 Billion. Heck, he probably could have gotten a better deal out of it since NASA announced they will decommission it by 2031.
At the end of the day, we’re just having some fun here, and we live in a time where if you start a successful business, you are completely free to do anything you want to with your money. If Elon wanted to, he could fill an entire pool with gold coins, jump in Donald Duck style, and there’s nothing we could do to stop him.
We just hope that Elon can get a hold on Twitter and turn it into something positive, and of course hopefully we got you thinking..
What would you do if you had $44 Billion to spend? Let us know.
Dylan Welch is the CEO and Host of Going Green, a podcast, website, and social media brand that highlights renewable energy, cleantech, and sustainable news.