Kimbal Musk

Kimbal Musk is an entrepreneur, restauranteur, investor, and environmentalist. He founded the companies Zip2, The Kitchen Restaurant Group, Big Green, Square Roots, and Nova Sky Stories. He is the brother of Tesla founder Elon Musk, and the two have pursued several joint business ventures together. Musk's estimated net worth is $700 million, as of March 2022.

From left to right: Tosca, Elon, Maye, and Kimbal Musk.

Kimbal is the son of Maye and Errol Musk and the brother of Elon and Tosca Musk. He was born on September 20, 1972 in Pretoria, South Africa. Musk was born into a business-oriented family; both his parents and his grandparents were entrepreneurs. He attended Queen's University and earned a bachelor of commerce in business. He later attended the International Culinary Center.

When Musk was eighteen, he immigrated to Canada from South Africa. His first entrepreneurial venture was managing a business-in-a-box franchise called College Pro Painters, a house painting business. He earned $15,000 in his first year and $35,000 in the second year, and at one point achieved manager of the year.

In 1995, Kimbal and Elon cofounded Zip2—an online city guide that provided web content for large-scale newspapers. It was acquired by Compaq in 1999 for $307 million. $15 million of that money went to Musk, some of which he used to invest in Elon's financial services company X.com.

Founded in 2004 by Musk and Hugo Matheson, The Kitchen Restaurant Group owns the restaurant families The Kitchen and Next Door American Eatery. The group is based in Boulder, Colorado. Musk and Next Door American Eatery received criticism amid the Covid-19 pandemic in April 2020 regarding the restaurant's Family Fund, an emergency fund intended for and funded by Next Door employees. Employees who were laid off due to the pandemic were ineligible to receive grants from the fund, as the fund is only available to current employees. Many laid-off workers did not receive their accrued sick pay. In February 2022, Next Door American Eatery rebranded to ND streetBAR and changed its menu to one with dishes inspired by food from street food carts.

Schoolchildren with a Big Green Learning Garden.

Formerly called The Kitchen Community, Big Green is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and a philanthropic arm of The Kitchen Restaurant Group. Musk and Matheson founded the organization in 2011. Big Green establishes learning gardens in schools in areas that are more likely to have at-risk students. The learning gardens involve planting produce and flowers. They teach students about gardening and act as an outdoor classroom experience. Big Green has established Learning Gardens in cities including Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Memphis, and Pittsburgh. Its locations serve nearly 350,000 students. The Kitchen Community changed its name to Big Green in January 2018.

Square Roots, an urban farming company based in Brooklyn, was founded in 2016 by Musk and Tobias Peggs. The company uses shipping containers with controlled microclimates and specialized lighting to grow produce. Growing food this way reduces the environmental impact of farming on land, and Square Roots's hydroponic growing systems use 95 percent less water than field farms.

On June 22, 2022, Musk announced Nova Sky Stories, a company "dedicated to bringing art to the skies of every town and city in the world." Nova acquired 9,000 light drones equipped with top-of-the-line hardware and software for performing live light art.

Musk has publicly spoken out about environmental issues such as Bitcoin mining, to which he says he is "violently opposed." His restaurant chain, The Kitchen, follows a near-zero waste policy, which includes composting, biodegradable takeout containers, and wind-powered restaurants. His company, Square Roots, is focused on growing quality produce in the least environmentally disruptive way possible and sells locally to reduce emissions from importing food.