He was one of the first investors of Tesla
Tesla's unstoppable rising share price, tripling it's value from 2020, has made CEO Elon Musk, the richest person in the history of the world. However, Elon is not the only entrepreneur in the Musk family, and not the only one making the big bucks. Kimbal Musk, Elon's youngest brother, was one of the first investors in Tesla, and has sat among the company's board since 2004. The younger Musk also cofounded Zip2 and X.com, which later became Paypal, with brother Elon Musk in the dot-com era in the 90s and early 2000s.
He lived in an office with his brother Elon
At a USC Commencement speech in 2014, Elon said when he was starting his first company with Kimbal, they were so hard-up that they could only rent an office instead of an apartment, and slept on the couch. Zip2 was a web software start-up that created city guides for newspapers, that was founded by the Musk brothers in Palo Alto, California. Elon also mentioned that they showered at the YMCA, and only had one computer. The website was up during the day, and Elon was coding at night, seven days a week, all the time.
He sold all his assets and invested it into Tesla
Forbes currently estimates Kimbal's net worth to be around $700 million, primarily because of his 0.04% stake in Tesla, with options to purchase 172,250 more shares. Musk is also the director of Chipotle, where he owns $2 million worth of stocks, and also owns a stake in his brother Elon's space company, SpaceX, where he sits as one of the board. In 2008 at the peak of the recession, Kimbal sold all his assets and put them all into Tesla to help Elon's company survive, and told Vance that the Musk brothers have been very close to bankruptcy. However, Tesla survived the 2008 crisis and is now the second car company in America, with Ford being the first, to have never gone bankrupt officially, in it's entire existence.
He is a natural born entrepreneur
Kimbal's first entrepreneurship venture was a residential painting business with College Pro Painters in 1994, the same time Elon had started Zip2. The younger Musk also served as the CEO of OneRiot, an advertising network, which was acquired by Walmart-Labs in 2011. Kimbal has been supportive of his older brother Elon's business ventures, especially in hard times. Eventually, he would become fond of creating thousands of Learning Garden classrooms to help America's children learn about healthy food.
He left California to study Culinary in New York
Kimbal Reeve Musk, born September 20, 1972, is the youngest son of Maye and Errol Musk, who grew up in South Africa and went to Queen's University in Ontario, to follow his brother Elon. Kimbal and Elon cofounded Zip2, and was sold to Compaq in 1999 for $307 million dollars, which they then used to fund their next venture, X.com which later merged with Paypal and was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. While Elon stayed in California, Kimbal eventually moved to New York to study at the French Culinary Institute, and later opened The Kitchen, a community bistro in Colorado which has been named as one of America's Top Restaurants. After working with his brother Elon to launch Zip2 and Paypal, Musk shifted to an industry that he loved: the food industry.
He is waging war against America's processed foods
Nowadays, Kimbal's goal has been to revolutionize the food industry by producing healthy and unprocessed food through his dining start-up The Kitchen, a place where people can learn about the food that they eat, and how it is grown through his man-made Learning Gardens. Kimbal also created restaurants Next Door and Hedge Row, to further help improve access to fresh food across the US and wage war against America's processed food system. In 2011, Kimbal and a partner in The Kitchen restaurant group, started Big Green, a non-profit organization that provided educational outdoor gardens for schools across the US. Since it's opening, the company has created 378 school gardens and aims to open over 1,000 more in the next year.
He created educational ready-for-eating school gardens
Big Green sent a message that believes every child should have the opportunity to play, learn and grow in healthy communities. Along with co-founder Hugo Matheson, school gardens have been created to help boost children's fondness of healthy foods and lifestyle. Learning Gardens, which are out-of-doors classrooms, have also served a productive garden of plants fit for eating. These have soon become a medium for comprehensive mindset change regarding child nourishment, socialization and student achievement.
He cooked for firefighters at the 9/11 terrorist attack
Despite the Musk brothers' wealth, Kimbal told Input Magazine that neither he or Elon is obsessed about their massive net worth, as that would be boring. In 2001, Musk lived near the World Trade Center and was among the crowd that fled the area from the terrorist attacks of September 11. Although it was an undoubtedly tragic time, Kimbal following his passion, spent the next weeks cooking for firefighters at Ground Zero, which he says was a formative moment for him. Musk's intention was to go back to tech at some point, but since 9/11, he experienced this overwhelming sense of community which pushed him to open a restaurant and preach about fresh and healthy food.
He left tech for the food industry
With the firefighters, Kimbal saw how food brought people together, and realized community food was his mission and what he wanted to do. At that time, Musk decided to put one foot into the food business, and continued to work on the tech side with his brother Elon. After breaking his neck in a snow tubing accident in 2010, Kimbal realised it was time to put both feet in the food business and focus on his passion for real food, and reach the masses. Musk jokingly said that, every time he tries to stray from the path of food, he gets whacked, which is why he doesn't want to do that again.
He now lives in the Centennial State
Kimbal married Jen Lewin, who together helped him established The Kitchen. Together they had two children, Luca Musk, the eldest, and August, the younger Musk. The couple later divorced and Kimbal married Christiana Wyly, an environmental activist and the daughter of billionaire Sam Wyly. The Musk family lives in Boulder, Colorado where the couple oversees two branches of their restaurant, The Kitchen.
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