How tech tycoons blow their billions – from Elon Musk’s £1m James Bond ‘submarine car’ to Bill Gates’ trampoline room
LOCKDOWN has been a disaster for some people's finances – but not for the tech billionaires enjoying their sprawling hilltop mansions and million-dollar submarine cars.
On Monday, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos' wealth leapt by £10billion in a single day, taking his net worth up to £149billion.
The 56-year-old's wealth has spiralled upwards by £58billion since January as Amazon's share price continues to soar as a result of millions of customers using the site during the pandemic.
Bezos has been known to spend his staggering fortune on the finer things in life with new partner Lauren Sanchez after completing a historic £27.5billion divorce in 2019.
The Washington Post owner’s latest splurge was a reported £130million for a mansion in Beverly Hills - the most expensive house sale of all time in California.
But he's not the only jet-setting tech billionaire to lead a life of giant mansions, fast cars and gorgeous girlfriends.
Elon Musk - Underwater Bond cars and thousand-bottle wine cellar
Elon Musk has amassed a £58billion fortune thanks to his runaway tech business successes including PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX.
And the eccentric South African certainly knows how to spend it.
He owns a string of Bel Air estates in Los Angeles, the first of which was a £13.4million mansion that included a home cinema, two-storey library, and a thousand-bottle wine cellar.
The 49-year-old is currently selling seven of his houses worth a combined total of £78.7million.
And unsurprisingly for the co-founder of the world's most valuable car maker, Musk loves cars.
His titanic collection of motors includes a 1920 Ford Model T, a 1967 Jaguar E-Type Roadster, and the submarine Lotus Esprit from the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, which he forked out nearly $1million for.
Musk even owned an Aero L-39 Albatros Russian fighter jet, of which he once moaned: "Your butt hurts if you fly in it for more than an hour. The seats are really hard."
His fighter jet days now seem to be behind him as a more responsible father of seven, with his most recent child, X Æ A-12, born in May 2020.
Musk had the baby with Canadian musician Grimes who he began dating after splitting from his second wife, Talulah Riley, in 2016.
But despite his continuing wealth increases, it's not clear that his extravagant life of luxury will continue.
In May, he tweeted: "I am selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house."
Bill Gates - Superyacht getaways and trampoline rooms
Microsoft co-founder founder Bill Gates was the richest man in the world until Bezos knocked him off his perch in 2017.
These days, 64-year-old Gates has to make do with being the world's second richest person – with a measly £88.9billion fortune.
Like Musk, some of Gates' biggest splurges have been on property, recently purchasing a £33.8million oceanfront colossus near San Diego, California.
How rich is Jeff Bezos?
Bezos' £149billion is hard to get your head around. Let's say he decided to do the following:
- Eradicate global malnutrition, polio and malaria.
- Buy the entire Premier League.
- Get 10 F-22 Raptor fighter jets.
- Buy 10 Bugatti La Voiture Noires, the most expensive car in the world.
- Pay for everyone in China to have a Big Mac meal.
- Buy the five most expensive houses in London.
- Go on a four-year course at Vassar, the priciest college in America.
- Buy the world's most expensive yacht off Roman Abramovich.
- Spend a year on Richard Branson's privately owned Necker Island.
- Put on a Rolling Stones concert at the world's biggest stadium and buy all the tickets.
- Buy a Mr Whippy for every kid in the UK.
- Pay for a spa day for all British key workers.
- Pay off the entirety of the US' medical debt.
- Pay for the Royal Family and all Licence Fees for a year.
- Buy every American a Freddo.
If he did all that, he'd still have enough left over to make him worth more than the GDP of Jamaica.
Source: .
The vast house comes with a health spa, two guest houses and a ten-man hot tub.
But even that house is absolutely eclipsed by Gates' legendary £100million home in Washington.
The palatial estate, named Xanadu 2.0, boasts seven bedrooms – one for each year it took to build.
Inside, £63,000 of computer screens display paintings and artwork that can be changed at the touch of a button to suit the occupant's preferences.
It also has real works of art in its private library, including a 16th-century Leonardo da Vinci manuscript that Gates bought at auction for £24.2million in 1994.
And Xanadu even has its own trampoline room.
"[The trampoline room] seems kind of over the top but my kids love using it to work off their excess energy," Gates previously said.
But he says he thinks his biggest indulgence is his private jet, reported to be 19-seat Bombardier BD-700 Global Express, which costs £31.4million.
And while he doesn't own it, he's previously treated his family to a holiday aboard the 439-foot superyacht Serene, which he chartered for £3.9million a week.
He does own a string of luxury cars, however, including pricey Porsches – adding another this year when he revealed he'd snapped up a new £146,000 Porsche Taycan Turbo S.
But by far, most of Gates' money will be given to philanthropic causes after he co-founded The Giving Pledge, which encourages the world's wealthiest people to give away at least half of their personal fortunes.
Mark Zuckerberg - Electric surfboards and Hawaiian estates
Like Gates, Zuckerberg has pledged to give up the majority of his staggering fortune, even saying he'd give up 99 per cent of his Facebook shares in 2015.
But he's still been known to use part of his £70.5billion fortune on some incredible indulgences.
The 36-year-old university dropout has been known to own 10 houses in four different places with his wife Priscilla Chan, including a recent £46.5million spend on two adjacent waterfront estates in Lake Tahoe, California.
One of his houses in Palo Alto is even serviced by a custom digital butler, Jarvis, which can do things like tell jokes, play music, and make toast for his family.
Despite the glamorous houses, he's been associated with living a more understated life than you might expect with modest tastes for a man of his wealth.
He's been spotted driving several modest cars, including a black VW Golf, which cost around £24,000 new.
But he does reportedly own a £1.1million Pagani Huayra hypercar, which has a terrifying 238mph top speed.
And he's quick on water too – he owns a £9,400 eFoil electric surfboard, which he was recently spotted using off the coast of Hawaii while wearing excessive suncream on his face.
Local Hawaiians are currently trying to stop Zuckerberg purchasing land on the island of Kauai, where he already owns a sprawling £78.7million estate.
Jack Dorsey - Cliff-top LA mansions
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey may only have a meagre £5.7billion to his name, but he certainly knows how to live the Silicon Valley dream in style.
The 43-year-old, who recently pledged to give away £787million to a coronavirus relief fund, also lives a fairly extreme life of taking ice baths every day and reportedly eating just seven meals a week.
But like other billionaires, he too has snapped up speedy cars, dated models, and bought mind-blowing bachelor pads.
After buying one amazing cliff-top mansion overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco in 2012 for £7.9million, he bought the house next door for £17.2million six years later.
He also owned a £3.5million house in Los Angeles which was occupied for a while by model Raven Lyn Corneil.
Dorsey dated the Sports Illustrated beauty in 2018, while his other gorgeous exes include model Lily Cole and ballet dancer Sofiane Sylve, reports.
Like other billionaires, most of his cash is going to go on charitable endeavours.
As on 11 July, his Covid-19 relief organisation Start Small has dispersed £128,637,827 to over 40 grantees.
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In his announcement of the fund, Dorsey said the initiative's focus will eventually shift to health and education for girls and universal basic income.
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“I want to give out all my money in my lifetime," Dorsey said on the Yang Speaks podcast in May.
"I want to see the impacts, selfishly, in my lifetime. I want to make sure that we’re helping people.”