After graduating in 1995, it wasn’t long before the brothers started co-founding and investing in companies. Their software company Zip2 was acquired by Compaq in 1999 and Kimbal invested in Elon’s start-up X.com, which eventually became part of PayPal.

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Does Kimbal have stakes in Elon’s companies?

Kimbal was an early investor in Tesla and has been on the board since 2004 with a 0.04 per cent stake. He has also been on the board of SpaceX since 2003, and is on the board of Mexican fast food chain restaurant Chipotle.

How else does Kimbal make money?

His non-profit organisation, Big Green DAO, is a decentralised autonomous organisation built on the Ethereum blockchain which gives members an individual vote on decisions. The cryptocurrency collective reaches 125,000 students in underserved communities every day, encouraging them to become real food farmers through his Learning Garden. However, Kimbal has admitted that mining virtual currency consumes too much energy and says Tesla has been ignorant of that.

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Do Elon and Kimbal have the same political views?

Kimbal gave US$2,800 to 10 of the Republican politicians who voted to have Donald Trump removed from office after the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol building, according to the SEC. Earlier that month, Kimbal had tweeted that Trump was a traitor to the US.

Elon, meanwhile, has described himself as socially liberal and fiscally conservative. He opposes President Joe Biden’s plans to impose a billionaires’ tax and Kimbal recently advocated for his brother, saying how he has made the highest ever American tax payment.

Is Kimbal a billionaire?

Kimbal has sold more than US$230 million worth of shares since Tesla went public on the stock exchange in 2010. Last July, he pledged all of his 599,740 shares in Tesla as collateral for personal loans. That was taken into account when Forbes estimated his net worth to be US$752 million in November 2021.

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Why is Kimbal a controversial Tesla board member?

Other shareholders have accused Elon of nepotism and raised issues with share option compensation of board members, including Kimbal and James Murdoch, being “excessive”. Activist and pension fund manager board members claimed Kimbal’s sibling relationship with Elon prevented him from properly carrying out his role as an independent director. Critics have also mentioned his lack of experience in the auto industry and claimed he has proven ineffective on the board of Chipotle, in failed attempts to oust Kimbal from the board in October 2021.

He’s being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for insider trading after it emerged that he sold US$108 million worth of shares (88,500) in November 2021. It was a week before Elon posted a controversial Twitter poll about whether he should sell 10 per cent of his shares in Tesla and the stock value took a plunge. Shares have dropped 33 per cent in the months after Elon sold US$1.1 billion worth of his stake.

However, Elon insisted to the Financial Times that Kimbal had no idea he was going to do a Twitter poll.