Politics, discos, private islands: Billionaires spent big in 2024

By many measures, 2024 was a good year for the ultra wealthy. The world’s 10 richest people — including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg — saw their collective wealth increase by $64 billion following the reelection of former President Donald Trump. 

Over the past year, the wealth of the world’s billionaires leapt by roughly 17% to a staggering $14 trillion. That figure has nearly doubled in the last decade; in 2015, billionaires’ collective wealth stood at roughly $6.3 trillion, per Reuters.

So, what’s a billionaire to do when their wealth balloons beyond all comprehension? Why, spend some of that money, of course! Here are a few ways some of America’s wealthiest lightened their very large wallets. 

Musk’s $277M election, $35M Texas compound

If Elon Musk, the world’s richest person with a net worth of $455 billion, didn’t buy the 2024 election then he certainly splurged on it. Musk was the largest single donor, giving a whopping $277 million to the Trump campaign and other Republican candidates, according to The Washington Post. 

In October, The New York Times reported that Musk shelled out $35 million on a multi-property compound in Austin, Texas, where he envisions his children and two of their three mothers living. That way, Musk could “schedule time among them,” the Times reports. Cozy! Musk has at least 11 children, and one of the mothers has moved with her kids onto the compound, which has a villa spanning 14,400 square feet and another six-bedroom mansion behind it. It’s not clear how successful this venture will be. 

In November, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, raised $6 billion in equity financing, per Reuters. The company plans to use those funds to purchase 100,000 Nvidia computer chips for a new Memphis supercomputer that’ll power Tesla’s self-driving cars, TechRadar reported. What a beautiful display of corporate synergy. 

Taking our sights off planet Earth for a moment, Musk’s space exploration venture SpaceX agreed in December to buy stock back from investors in a $1.25 billion deal, according to CNBC. That sale sent the company’s stock valuation soaring to an astronomical $350 billion valuation. 

And who says billionaires can’t joke about purchasing broadcast networks on a whim that would change the face of American media? After Trump’s reelection, Musk joked about buying MSNBC in a post on X, which he bought in 2022 for $44 billion. “How much is it?” Musk wrote, responding to a post from Donald Trump Jr. about Comcast’s November announcement that it would spin off MSNBC and other cable networks into a separate company. 

Musk made a similar joke about buying Hasbro, the toymaking giant, after the company released a 40th anniversary “The Making of Original Dungeons and Dragons” book that acknowledged the game’s original content included insensitive and derogatory language. 

“Nobody, and I mean nobody, gets to trash … the geniuses who created Dungeons & Dragons,” Musk wrote on X. “May they burn in hell.”

“How much is Hasbro?” he quipped in a later post. 

Bezos bought a $90M Miami bunker

Jeff Bezos, worth an estimated $246 billion, paid $90 million for a six-bedroom home in April in Indian Creek, a 300-acre man-made island near Miami known as “Billionaire Bunker.” (Other residents include Tom Brady, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Carl Icahn and Julio Iglesias.)

Bezos already spent $147 million for two other mansions in Indian Creek, and Bloomberg reports that Bezos plans to live in the $90 million home while he demolishes the other houses he bought, citing a person with knowledge of the deal. 

If those construction projects become too much of a headache, Bezos can kick back on a flight in his $80 million private jet he purchased in August. Bezos’ new Gulfstream G700 luxury business jet can reach top speeds of 710 miles per hour — roughly 92.5% the speed of sound.  

The Amazon and Blue Origin CEO announced in 2023 he would leave Seattle after 30 years and relocate to Miami. It’s worth noting that in 2022, Washington state imposed a 7% capital gains tax on the sales of stocks and bonds worth more than $250,000. That change took effect in 2022; Bezos didn’t sell any Amazon stock in 2022 or 2023. 

As a Miami resident, Bezos sold more than 50 million shares of Amazon stock this year, netting him $13 billion, The Puget Sound Business Journal reported. Before Bezos executed those sales, CNBC estimated that moving to Miami would save him roughly $600 million in capital gains taxes on a sale of 50 million Amazon shares, according to CNBC. 

And while Bezos didn’t expand his collection of seafaring vessels, he and his fiancé Lauren Sánchez spent time entertaining on his $500 million superyacht, which is so huge that it once had to dock in a spot typically reserved for oil tankers. The couple hosted Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Leonardo DiCaprio and his girlfriend Vittoria Ceretti off the coast of Italy, and Kim Kardashian in the Aegean Sea near Greece.

Zuckerberg had a disco, with a side of statue

Like Bezos, Zuckerberg — worth an estimated $219 billion — reaped billions by selling stock in his companies in 2024. He made more than $2.2 billion this year through selling shares of Meta, according to an analysis from Fortune magazine. 

And like Musk, Zuckerberg has spent billions of dollars on Nvidia supercomputing chips this year. In the company’s third-quarter earnings report, released in October, Meta said total expenses for 2024 will be between $94 billion and $99 billion, driven in part by the company’s purchases of Nvidia chips and expanding its supercomputing capabilities. 

But don’t worry, it wasn’t all work for Zuckerberg. He threw his wife Priscilla Chan a massive backyard disco party in October (no, it wasn’t her birthday!), just two months after unveiling a giant statue of her, rendered in a brilliant turquoise. He also expanded his burgeoning watch collection, reportedly buying pieces by Patek Philippe, Jaeger-LeCoultre, De Bethune and F.P. Journe since March. 

If you aren’t familiar with any of those brands, same. Just know that Patek Philippe watches can range from $20,000 to a couple million dollars, and a Google search of “De Bethune watch” shows prices between $90,000 and $160,000. 

It’s good to be Larry

2024 was also a good year for billionaires named Larry. 

Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, paid at least $277.3 million to buy Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa — a five-star hotel and resort — in a wealthy town south of Palm Beach, Fla. That was Ellison’s second real estate deal in the small town of Manalapan; in 2022, he spent $173 million on another compound on the island, representing the largest residential real estate sale in Florida history. Ellison’s net worth is estimated at $194 billion, per Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, Google co-founder Larry Page, worth $169 billion, kept things a bit more subdued, only shelling out $32 million to buy a Caribbean island between Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands, Fortune reported. Page owns at least five private islands across the globe, according to Fortune. 

This year, my biggest splurges included a $98 pair of wool pants and a new Owala water bottle. What’d you spend your fortune on this year, fellow normie?