It’s probably fair to say that Elon Musk is one of the most famous people in the world right now, thanks to a highly-publicised Twitter takeover, a personal mission to colonise the moon and a new role heading up Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency... or DOGE, of course.
But he’s not the only Musk worth a few bob or two, hailing from an affluent South African family headed up by Maye Musk and her ex-husband Errol Musk.
While Elon, 53, built his fortune in tech after co-founding the likes of Paypal and SpaceX, his 50-year-old sister Tosca is a filmmaker, with the New York Post reporting in 2023 that she had managed to amass a net worth of $170 million through her company Passionflix – a streaming service not unlike Netflix, which she co-founded in 2017.
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And then there’s Kimbal, 52, who is reportedly worth almost three times that.
Sure, it’s not quite on par with Elon, whose net worth is estimated to be a cool $402 billion as of 8 February, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
But Ecole Ducasse, a culinary school founded by top chef Alain Ducasse, places his wealth at $500m – significantly more than globally recognised chefs like Jamie Oliver ($300m), Gordon Ramsay ($220m), Nobu Matsuhisa ($200m), Wolfgang Puck ($120m), Guy Fieri ($100m), Rachael Ray ($100m), Emeril Lagasse ($70m), Bobby Flay ($60m) and Ina Garten ($60m).
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In the early days of his career, Kimbal had worked with his brother to set up online city guide Zip2, before later ventures in finance, tech and software.
After enrolling at New York’s French Culinary Institute in the early 2000s, he opened a community bistro called The Kitchen, which has since morphed into The Kitchen Restaurant Group, with venues in Colorado, Chicago.
Kimbal later launched fast food restaurant Next Door American Eatery, eventually growing this into a concept with several locations, and is also the co-founder of urban farming company Square Roots.
And all this he does while also sitting on the boards of Tesla and SpaceX, making his career one that’s pretty multi-faceted – his Instagram bio listing him as a ‘Chef, Entrepreneur, Food Activist’.
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Kimbal also said one of his early supporters was none other than the UK’s Jamie Oliver, someone he’s ‘learnt a lot from’.
“He was a huge inspiration for the work I do,” he told The Times.
“I don’t even know if I’ve told Jamie this, but in 2010 I went to a talk he gave in Long Beach. It was a really powerful talk. He was really hard on us Americans that we were not doing enough [to promote healthy food for children]. And I remember standing up and saying, ‘Hey, you should give people a bit more credit here.’ But I also knew he was right.
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“Three days later, I went down [a ski slope] on an inner tube and I broke my neck.”
Paralysed for several days, Kimbal said he experienced a ‘powerful, spiritual message’ prompted by Oliver’s words.
“His talk had a profound impact on me,” he continued.
“And it led me to stop everything I was doing and just focus on helping kids connect to food. If not for the physical trauma, I’d highly recommend the psychological awakening.”
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As for what it was like growing up with the person who would become the world’s richest man, Kimbal said: “We literally used to get into fistfights… He and I have very different ideas on how to build a business.”
He added: “At least we don’t physically fight these days. That was back when we worked in the same office… It’s a vigorous debate.”
Their approaches are noticeably different, with Kimbal’s wife Christiana saying they tend to stay in an Airstream caravan when they visit Elon’s tiny 1,000sq ft house in Texas.
"He’s different,” she told the outlet.
“Elon doesn’t think about food or meals. There’s a lot of chaos. Kimbal loves to nourish him and makes him three meals a day and provides a calming, loving environment.”
Topics: Celebrity, Elon Musk, Food and Drink, Money, US News
Jess Hardiman