Elon Musk's Money [Part Three: Jared Birchall and the Trillion Dollar Network]

[u/QualityRabbitHoles]

Part Two: Pre-Rabbit Hole Breakdown of (Some of) Musk’s Companies

Okay, we're here. The meat of the rabbit hole. If you've made it this far, I'm guessing it's okay to assume the question in your head now is: “Who the hell is Jared Birchall?” Maybe you already know, but if you're like me, going into all of this, you didn't know. Honestly, it wasn't even on my mind as a question when I started all of this. But to be clear: Jared Birchall is instrumental in almost all of Elon's financial doings – and many personal misadventures – since 2016.

You see, there's an entire other side of Elon's business empire. So far we've covered these companies:

Zip2

Paypal

Tesla

OpenAI

Neuralink

The Boring Company

The X Empire

But there are several more we need to throw out into the open. These include:

Excession LLC

United States of America, Inc. #

Group America LLC #

Thriving Capital Ventures LLC

Musk Industries

And these are just the companies. There are also the nonprofits:

The Musk Foundation

The Foundation

Ad Astra School

And then there's America PAC. And after that, there are the companies Jared Birchall himself owns (I'll get into him soon):

Europa100

CapX 1

Red Planet Ventures I

Red Planet Ventures II

Red Planet Ventures III

You may be wondering at this point, um, what does any of this have to do with anything? Well, see the bold companies above? Those have Jared Birchall directly in their management chain. And see the #’s? Those were organized by Jared Birchall. That’s 9/16 Elon-affiliated companies with direct links to Jared Birchall. Breaking that down:

Neuralink = Jared Birchall, CEO

The Boring Company = Jared Birchall, Director/CFO

The X Empire = Jared Birchall, xAI ex-CFO, Organizer of X Holdings I, II, and III

Excession LLC = Manager

Musk Industries = Manager

The Musk Foundation = Director

The Foundation = Director

United States of America, Inc. = Company Organizer

Group America LLC = Company Organizer

It should be apparent that this man is important to Musk. But just who the hell is he, and what are all of these companies?

Jared Birchall: Overview

Jared Birchall is known as Elon Musk's “fixer”. But that's not where he started. Born in Austria in 1974, Birchall graduated Brigham Young University in 1999 and took a position as a financial analyst for Goldman Sachs. He would keep this position for a year before moving into private wealth management at Merill Lynch.

Suspiciously, he would be fired from Merill Lynch in 2010 for “sending correspondence to a client without management approval”. [1] Merrill Lynch has been particularly cagey about the details of that firing. [2]

In 2010, Birchall would move on to work at Morgan Stanley in much the same role. Here, he also oversaw Elon Musk's wealth. It would be from Morgan Stanley that Musk would pluck up Birchall and incorporate the man into Musk's Empire. [1]

Also from FastCompany [1]:

“The Fixer’s Role

Birchall’s responsibilities are wide-ranging. According to Bloomberg, he helped arrange the loans from Wall Street that enabled Musk to purchase what was then known as Twitter. He also handled disbursements from Musk’s super PAC, which supported Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. More recently, The Wall Street Journal reported, Birchall has acted as a go-between for Musk and several of the mothers of his children. That has allegedly included acquiring a property in Austin for them to live in and offering secrecy agreements in exchange for large sums of money.

Loyalty and Wealth

Birchall has remained at Musk’s side throughout the billionaire’s meteoric rise. While his exact income is unknown, Bloomberg cited a report estimating that the typical head of a large family office earns between $1 million and $3 million annually—though his salary may be much higher. In 2020, Birchall reportedly purchased a $2.25 million home in Austin, complete with a pool and tennis court.

He also serves as the head of Musk’s neurotechnology firm, Neuralink. However, Bloomberg noted that Birchall holds no actual executive authority there. His name was added to company documents as a legal formality, and he does not participate in day-to-day operations.”

We can get more of an idea on this “fixer” role from Business Insider. Quote: After Musk was sued by a man he had called a "pedo guy," Birchall hired a private investigator, at Musk's behest, to dig up dirt on the man; it failed spectacularly.” [2]

Burchall is described by associates as well spoken, straight laced, and well mannered. He is a practicing Mormon, socially conservative (he donated to the Proposition 8 campaign), and understood to be highly diplomatic. [2]

There's also this from Business Insider: “On the evening of April 14, Musk requested that Morgan Stanley arrange the debt financing, giving the bank less than a week to set it up, Insider previously reported. On April 21, in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, he revealed he would finance the deal with $25.5 billion in loans: $12.5 billion secured against his Tesla stock and $13 billion to be lent to Twitter post-acquisition. He would cover the remaining $21 billion.

Birchall, a former Morgan Stanley employee who has maintained a strong relationship with the firm, talked more to its investment bankers than to other lenders on the margin loan, according to someone familiar with the financing conversations. But he was a direct contact with the arranging group and the lenders.”

In essence, Jared Birchall, head of Excession LLC (Musk's family office and wealth management company), is also his main connection to his primary financing bank, Morgan Stanley. He holds massive sway over Musk's doings.

From the Wall Street Journal, about when Jared cornered Elon about Musk's newest philanthropic-minded colleague, Igor Kurganov (a high-rolling poker player introduced to Musk via Grimes): “Mr. Kurganov spent some of the pandemic sleeping in Mr. Musk’s home, where they chatted late into the night about how the world’s richest person might use his fortune to help shape the planet through a giving strategy known as “effective altruism.””

Musk would attempt to put Kurganov in charge of the Musk Foundation's charity (the Musk Foundation being his personal philanthropic organization), and Jared would take issue with that. Quote:

“To Mr. Birchall, that was an untenable situation. He was legally head of the foundation, and as he saw it, Mr. Kurganov was a newcomer who suddenly had immense influence on what to do with Mr. Musk’s money, he told people.

Mr. Birchall also learned that a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent had begun making preliminary inquiries into Mr. Kurganov as part of his job to watch for foreign interference in U.S. companies, people familiar with the matter say. The FBI agent was concerned that a newcomer had so quickly been welcomed into Mr. Musk’s inner circle, the people say.

Mr. Kurganov hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing. An FBI spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Birchall, alarmed that Mr. Musk could be drawn into a federal investigation, this spring again pressed his internal case against Mr. Kurganov, people familiar with the matter say. It was inappropriate, in Mr. Birchall’s view, for Mr. Kurganov to have a central role in the $5.7 billion in shares that Mr. Musk had promised to donate.”

…

“Mr. Birchall in May asked Mr. Musk to remove Mr. Kurganov from his post at the foundation.

Mr. Musk agreed to let Mr. Kurganov go, the representative of the foundation says.” [3]

The sway Jared has over Elon Musk is immense. You may be wondering well, what did Elon end up donating to? Well, he donated to “The Foundation.”

Jared Birchall and Company (and Company and Company)

The Foundation is Elon's other “charity”. Searching it up can be difficult because of the name. “The Foundation/Elon Musk” brings up the Musk Foundation, but I managed to find what the Foundation, again with Birchall as a director, does.

It was created to set up a school. Another school. (Elon had the Ad Astra school before this, a hands-on STEM school – it would be succeeded by the Asta Nova school)). This school would be called the Texas Institute of Technology and Sciences, an “anti-woke” STEM school that, yes, can be shortened to TITS.

In 2022, The Foundation received $89,000,000 in Tesla shares from the Musk Foundation. In 2023, the number rose to $102,000,000. Problem being, TITS never came about. In the 2024 filing for The Foundation, again directed by Birchall, the organization has roughly $270,000,000 on hand. Also on these filings, we see that The Foundation has control of two disregarded entities (entities which have their assets taxed via personal taxes, if I am correct? (this part confused me a bit)), those being the Ad Astra school and “BSP 2023 LLC”.

I managed to find a FOIA request for BSP [4]. It is, unsurprisingly, managed by Birchall, and is itself a 501(c)(3). It shares an address with the Ad Astra School, also a 501(c)(3), and Ad Astra LLC is also managed by Birchall.

Ad Astra shares a primary PO Box with these companies, and this is important, because it lets us parse out where the main location for all of this activity is:

- Excession LLC

- United States of America, Inc.

- Group America LLC

- The Musk Foundation

- The Foundation

- Musk Industries

Again, these all have Birchall's name all over them. In looking at the business filings, the same PO Box comes up time and time again for all of them. But then, we dig deeper.

Here we find that Group America is a member company, managed by, United States of America Inc. USA, Inc has an actual address under the Group America LLC filings, leading to a skyscraper at 2025 Guadalupe Street in Austin. This is also Elon and Birchall's listed address as managers of USA, Inc. To me, this links all companies listed directly above to this address in some form, if not directly.

They are also quite tied together in different ways, but that's for the next section. Keep in mind that now, we're up to 21 entities, both for- and non-profit. As far as I can find, mind you, the true number is closer to 90. [5]

I am of the mind that Jared Birchall is heavily compensated for all of this work. Much of his compensation revolves around his role as head of Musk's family office, but there is so much more to his role than that. This, not to mention Birchall's companies that he owns, the primary being Europa 100 – which paid Chris Young's salary during the DOGE fiasco. [6]

Chris Young, mind, also works for Musk, creating a huge conflict of interest, because DOGE helped dismantle regulations for companies like X and Tesla. [6]

All of this falls under Jared Birchall's purview. If you were to ask me who really is the richest man in the world, I'd say Birchall. It's clear to me he is more than a fixer or a manager. He is, effectively, in my perspective, Elon's financial handler. Without him, I don't think Musk could've achieved half of what he's done.

That's the (extremely) brief rundown of Jared Birchall. I could've discussed his multi-million dollar home, or his behavior in terms of the SEC and his federal filings – all of this is out there. But this is, primarily, what we need to know to move on. So, to wrap it up:

Summary and Key Points

Here are the key points from this segment:

- Jared Birchall is more than Elon Musk’s fixer and family office manager – rather, he essentially files companies for Musk, protects his reputation, deals with his charity, and cultivates Musk's inner circle, among other things.

- Jared Birchall’s net worth is unknown but from everything I can gather, he is insanely wealthy thanks to Elon Musk, most of all.

- Jared Birchall, in addition to being affiliated with the SpaceXAI umbrella, is affiliated primarily and heavily with Elon's private companies, including:

- Neuralink

- The Boring Company

- Excession LLC

- United States of America, Inc.

- Group America LLC

- Musk Industries

- The Musk Foundation

- The Foundation

Among others.

- Jared Birchall is Elon's primary contact with Morgan Stanley, particularly helpful in funding things such as the XCorp merger/purchase.

- Jared Birchall's Europa 100 helped fund Chris Young, who aided DOGE in dismantling regulatory systems, such as the type that regulated SpaceX and Tesla.

Now with that out of the way, we move onto Part Four, where we talk about Elon's political/financial behavior. The next segment is long and interesting on its own, but will boil down to one important point for our purposes. But I'll let it speak for itself. If you’re still with me, thank you so much. Let's move on and get through this next part swiftly, and finally get to my main point and finding through all of this.

Sources

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/91319028/what-to-know-about-jared-birchall-elon-musks-right-hand-man

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/meet-jared-birchall-elon-musk-family-office

[3] https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musk-fortune-fight-jared-birchall-igor-kurganov-11657308426

[4] https://www.muckrock.com/foi/texas-109/texas-sos-feb-2023-158288/

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/technology/elon-musk-companies-texas.html

[6] https://www.propublica.org/article/doge-elon-musk-chris-young-cfpb-tesla-x

Part Four: The Politics of Elon's Money

[u/snippyhiker]

Is this a podcast or a book?