Elon Musk could renege on a longstanding pledge to give his fortune away to charity, at the urging of fellow right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel.
According to transcripts and audio of lectures reviewed by Reuters, tech investor Thiel said he had urged the world’s richest man to rethink his adherence to the Giving Pledge, warning him that some of his wealth would go “to left-wing nonprofits that will be chosen by Bill Gates.”
Thiel was speaking in September during a four-part closed-door lecture series in San Francisco.
Musk signed on to the Giving Pledge in 2012, two years after it was co-founded by Gates, the Microsoft billionaire who was then the world’s richest man. It calls on signatories to commit a large portion of their wealth to charitable causes either during their lifetime or through their wills.
Musk last week became the first person in history to have their public net worth rise above $500 billion, according to Forbes, although it has since dipped back below the half-trillion-dollar mark.
The SpaceX and Tesla CEO reportedly took the concerns seriously. Thiel said he even looked up actuarial tables to make his point. If Musk died in the coming year, Thiel calculated, he’d effectively be signing over $1.4 billion to Gates, a liberal philanthropist with whom Musk has long sparred.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Musk and Thiel for comment.
“What am I supposed to do—give it to my children?” Musk replied, according to Thiel. “You know, it would be much worse to give it to Bill Gates.”
During the lectures, the PayPal co-founder and Palantir boss went full theological, spinning out his fears of an “Antichrist” who would seize global power by claiming to avert nuclear war, AI catastrophe, or climate doom. That figure, Thiel warned, would impose a one-world government.
At one point, Thiel even toyed with the idea that Trump could be seen as the Antichrist himself, quipping: “Do you think Trump is the Antichrist? I will give you a hearing. And we should consider that.”
Thiel was one of the first major Silicon Valley giants to support Trump for president. He co-founded PayPal with Musk in 2000 and later co-founded the data company Palantir, as well as becoming the first outside investor in Facebook.
Musk regularly donates to charitable causes through the Musk Foundation, his nonprofit organization.
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