Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has donated $5 million to the Khan Academy, which offers free learning for students from kindergarten to the college level.
The donation was noted by Khan Academy founder, Salman Khan, releasing a short video on YouTube thanking Musk on Monday for the “incredible” gesture.
Thank you @elonmusk and @MuskFoundation for an incredible $5m donation to @khanacademy. Here is my thank you video:https://t.co/1LyABVmTyt
— Salman Khan (@salkhanacademy) January 12, 2021
Khan says the donation will allow the organization to “accelerate all sorts of content” for its 120 million users, which take in 200 million hours of learning per year.
While the donation helps, the Khan Academy is still running a deficit in 2021 and still needs donations. The annual budget of the non-profit is that of a large high school, says Khan.
The Khan Academy founder says this type of investment will allow “future Elon Musks” of the world to achieve their educational goals. He also noted when Musk visited the organization’s office in 2013, the Tesla CEO has achieved or nearly accomplished everything he laid out at the time.
Salman Khan started the American non-profit back in 2008, which offers online learning in a variety of subjects for various ages, in the form of video lessons and accompanying exercises.
With Starlink internet expanding to hard to reach areas of the globe, specifically in the U.S. and Canada, online connectivity will surely increase learning opportunities for underserved students and communities. Khan Academy works out to be a perfect remote learning supplement.
Recently, Elon Musk admitted he had donated to messaging app Signal last year, but “will donate more.” The SpaceX CEO recently promoted it as an alternative to Facebook’s WhatsApp and its recently updated privacy policy.
Already donated to Signal a year ago. Will donate more.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 11, 2021
Musk currently is the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $194 billion as of January 11, 2020, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos was surpassed by Musk last week and is trailing the Tesla CEO by $11 billion.
