The man who tweeted “Will own no house” in 2020 has quietly assembled more than 90 companies in Texas, used them to buy over 1,000 acres of land, two luxury hotel condos, and multiple houses for the mothers of his children. A New York Times investigation published today reveals just how far the gap has stretched between Elon Musk’s public austerity pitch and his private empire-building, raising fresh governance questions for Tesla shareholders already watching sales slide and market share evaporate.

The Fact: Musk controls at least 90 companies and legal entities in Texas, with at least 37 appearing to serve his personal interests, according to The New York Times’ analysis of millions of business, land, and property records.
The Delta: Several of these LLCs funneled nearly $80 million in services to America PAC during the 2024 election, a structure that campaign finance experts say obscured where the money actually went.
The Investor Impact: The blurred lines between Musk’s personal companies and his business empire, including SpaceX and Tesla subsidiaries, raise governance questions that Tesla shareholders should be watching closely.

Follow up article: Tesla’s Texas Escape Gave Musk More Than Legal Protection. The NYT Just Showed How Much More.

The NYT mapped Musk’s hidden Texas network for the first time

The New York Times obtained and analyzed millions of business filings from the Texas secretary of state’s office, plus property records from Travis and Bastrop Counties, to map a web of limited liability companies tied to Musk and his inner circle that had never been publicly documented as a network. The investigation found more than 50 of the 90-plus entities are subsidiaries or affiliates of his major businesses like SpaceX and Tesla. The remaining 37 appear largely personal.

At least 12 of those private entities have been used to accumulate more than 1,000 acres of land in Bastrop and Travis Counties. The largest single tract is about 530 acres just outside Austin, directly across from Tesla’s Gigafactory Texas. That land is owned by Horse Ranch LLC, formed in 2021 with Musk’s money manager Jared Birchall listed as manager. A Times reporter recently observed construction crews on the site.

Fifteen of Musk’s companies share the same P.O. box address in the Austin suburbs. His family office, Excession LLC, and another entity called Red Planet Ventures I LLC are among them. Musk’s voter registration lists the same P.O. box as his mailing address.

Musk’s LLC structure masked nearly $80 million in political spending

Four Texas-based companies provided almost $80 million in services to Musk’s America PAC during the 2024 presidential campaign, bypassing the transparency requirements that normally apply to super PAC spending, according to the Times investigation. Two of those entities, United States of America Inc. and Group America LLC, were created that same year specifically for this purpose. Musk also tapped Europa 100 LLC, one of his oldest LLCs originally used to pay his nannies, and Excession, his family office.

The companies paid for the controversial $47 petition checks to voters who pledged support for the First and Second Amendments, plus political consulting, travel, and food. Brendan Fischer, a director at the Campaign Legal Center, told the Times that Musk’s approach “undermines the spirit of the law” favoring transparency. While super PACs must publicly disclose each individual payment, private companies covering those same expenses face no such requirement.

Europa 100 also paid America PAC’s treasurer, Chris Young, a salary as high as $1 million, though the work Young performed for the company remains unclear.

The “no house” billionaire owns luxury condos, multiple homes, and decoy properties

Despite his 2020 pledge to shed possessions, Musk is tied to at least four LLCs connected to residential properties he has lived in or used, according to the Times’ review of property records, corporate filings, and interviews with people familiar with his living arrangements. Two luxury condos totaling over 7,000 square feet sit inside the Austin Proper Hotel, owned by AJG Growth Fund LLC. That company is managed by Antonio Gracias, one of Musk’s longtime friends, and is registered in Delaware. Musk and his partner Shivon Zilis moved into one of the units around 2022, according to three people with knowledge of the move.

Hotel staff were told to keep the floor numbers secret. Multiple sources told the Times that Musk has separately purchased “decoy” properties around Texas to keep people guessing about his actual whereabouts.

Starting in 2022, Musk used LLCs with generic names to buy three houses totaling about 31,000 square feet for mothers of his at least 14 children. One, Stratford House LLC, owns a property valued at approximately $6 million in the wealthy enclave of West Lake Hills, where Musk lived with musician Claire Boucher, known as Grimes, and their children.

The Bastrop County land grab connects to SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Snailbrook

Much of Musk’s personal land buying has concentrated in Bastrop County, about 45 minutes east of Austin, where the lines between personal and corporate use blur in ways that make governance analysis difficult. Steve Davis, a Musk lieutenant, used Earhardt Manor LLC to buy a ranch house in 2022. That property now houses operations for Musk’s Ad Astra school. A separate LLC tied to Birchall, BSP 2023 LLC, bought roughly 40 acres in April 2023 where Ad Astra sits. Davis also formed Gapped Bass LLC, which purchased about 215 acres nearby. That land houses facilities for The Boring Company and is where Musk is building his planned town, Snailbrook.

River Bottoms Ranch LLC, also established by Birchall in 2021, owns 110 acres in Del Valle where a large building was recently under construction. When a Times reporter visited, security guards asked her to leave. Business filings tie the entity to both Birchall personally and to Neuralink, Musk’s brain-implant company. A separate filing listed Three Little Pigs LLC as a parent company. (In 2020, Musk gave a Neuralink demonstration involving three pigs, which he called his “three little pigs demonstration.”)

SpaceX owns about 230 acres across the road from the Gapped Bass land. Friends and associates of Musk’s have also bought nearby, including SpaceX investor Randy Glein, who purchased more than 21 acres through yet another LLC.

EVXL’s Take

I’ve covered Musk’s Texas pivot from the Tesla angle for years now. We reported on Tesla’s reincorporation from Delaware to Texas in 2024, when Musk was furious over the court ruling on his $56 billion pay package. We tracked the shareholder vote on his nearly $1 trillion compensation package in November 2025. And we’ve documented extensively how his political activities have damaged the Tesla brand, with a Yale study finding over 1 million lost U.S. sales tied directly to what researchers call the “Musk partisan effect.”

This NYT investigation adds a new layer. The 90-company Texas network isn’t just about personal wealth management. It shows how Musk has built a structure where the boundaries between Tesla shareholders’ interests, SpaceX’s government contracts, political campaign spending, and personal real estate are deliberately opaque. When your CEO’s family office and his election-spending entities share the same P.O. box, that’s not an accident. It’s architecture.

For Tesla investors specifically, the governance concern is real. Texas law now lets companies set 3% ownership thresholds for derivative lawsuits, a provision Tesla adopted after its reincorporation. The original plaintiff who challenged Musk’s 2018 pay package owned nine shares. Under the new rules, you’d need over $30 billion in Tesla stock to bring a similar challenge. That’s not shareholder protection. That’s insulation.

Bloomberg currently pegs Musk’s net worth at roughly $670 billion. Forbes says $850 billion. Either way, this is the richest person in history, operating through a web of private companies designed to keep spending invisible, while running a publicly traded automaker whose sales dropped 8.6% in 2025 as the broader EV market grew 28%.

Expect more reporting from the Times on this. They acknowledged the 90-plus companies “most likely represent a small fraction of his overall empire.” Musk has ties to additional LLCs in California, Delaware, and Nevada. The full picture is probably much bigger. And for Tesla shareholders watching European market share halve in a single year while their CEO buys decoy houses and builds private towns, the question isn’t whether this matters. It’s how long the stock price can ignore it.

Editorial Note: AI tools were used to assist with research and archive retrieval for this article. All reporting, analysis, and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.