Elon Musk’s security team, known as Voyager, has 20 security personnel who follow him everywhere, even to the bathroom.
According to a report by the New York Times Tesla boss does not move around without his bodyguards.
However, Jack Dorsey, the former Twitter CEO and Musk’s predecessor, often travelled without bodyguards in San Francisco.
In January 2016, the total cost of Musk’s security was more than $163,000, which has increased substantially over the years. The report cited the Tesla filing saying that the company paid $2.4 million in 2023 and another $500,000 through February 2024 for Musk’s security.
During Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in June, Musk spoke about the threats against him. He claimed that two ‘homicidal maniacs’ had threatened to kill him. The report said that Elon Musk had bought a house secretly in 2022 after his previous address became public.
In the same year, Musk bought Twitter, later renamed X. In December 2022, he tried to suspend the X account of a university student who tracked his private jet and more than 24 other accounts. He stated that these were “basically assassination coordinates,” the report said.
Apart from Musk, security has also tightened for Tesla’s former chief financial officer, Zachary Kirkhorn, who had received a death threat demanding $300,000 via email as bitcoin, according to reports. Such instances were reportedly made between 2022 and 2023 from Tesla’s HQ. The law enforcement agencies categorised these as “terroristic threats”.
Elon Musk and his companies, Tesla and SpaceX, have spent millions of dollars to ensure his safety. According to the New York Times report, citing internal Tesla documents, they have paid security company Gavin de Becker & Associates and others. The report said, quoting the documents and security experts, that Elon Musk also started Foundation Security to protect himself from threats.
