\n It was the first of more than $500 million in grants SpaceX would receive, according to data from PitchBook, which tracks the valuation of private companies.\n <\/p>\n
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\n \u201cThat was about half of their capital that they raised to that point,\u201d Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, a public interest group advocating space flight, said ahead of the SpaceX IPO. \u201cThis was a substantial commitment that NASA provided.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n And while NASA has enjoyed the benefits of SpaceX\u2019s success, with dozens of humans ferried to the space station aboard the company\u2019s rockets, it didn\u2019t benefit like those private investors.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe people who put in the other half of the capital from that era are about to be made multi-billionaires,\u201d Dreier said.\n <\/p>\n
\n And the support from NASA didn\u2019t stop with the grants. Musk has acknowledged the company was almost out of cash at the end of 2008 when it got a critical, and then-unprecedented, $1.6 billion contract from the American space agency.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe fact (is) that we could not have started SpaceX, nor could we have reached this point, without the help of NASA,\u201d Musk said in 2012 when launching the company\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket to the ISS for the first time.\n <\/p>\n
\n By comparison, Tesla has received relatively modest government contracts in the past. But it got a lot of help getting started \u2014 critical help.\n <\/p>\n
\n In January 2010, Tesla had sold less than 2,000 cars in its entire history, virtually all of them electric oddballs based on sports cars from Lotus, a relatively obscure British company. Then Tesla received a $465 million low-interest loan from the Department of Energy, months before its initial public offering. With the loan, the company developed the Tesla Model S sedan, its first major success. Tesla paid back the loan early through proceeds from an additional sale of stock in 2013.\n <\/p>\n
\n A $7,500 tax credit for EV buyers allowed the company and other automakers to sell American-made EVs at a higher price than the market might have otherwise allowed.\n <\/p>\n
\n Tesla buyers received federal tax credits worth an estimated $3.4 billion before the perk ended in 2019. Tesla then cut prices to maintain demand. Given how much it had to cut prices, the tax credit likely allowed Tesla to bring in more than $1 billion on cars sold in America than it could have without the tax credit.\n <\/p>\n
\n The tax credit was restored in 2023 as part of the Biden administration\u2019s Inflation Reduction Act. But Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration ended the credit across the industry on September 30, 2025.\n <\/p>\n
\n But Tesla\u2019s most significant financial support was not from tax credits for EV buyers. It was from a government program to reduce carbon emissions across the automotive industry.\n <\/p>\n
\n Under the regulatory framework, car companies had to meet emissions limits. If they didn\u2019t, they would have to buy \u201cemissions credits\u201d from companies that did comply with the limits. And the one company that always came under the emissions limits and had credits to sell was Tesla, since all of its vehicles are electric.\n <\/p>\n
\n That meant virtually every other car company in the US was lining up to pour money into Tesla\u2019s coffers as a result of the regulations.\n <\/p>\n
\n Those credit sales accounted for nearly 25% of the company\u2019s revenue in 2008 and 10% of its revenue throughout the next five years.\n <\/p>\n
\n Between 2008 and 2019, sales of regulatory credits generated more than $2 billion for the company.\n <\/p>\n
\n Tesla might have died without those funds \u2014 a fact not lost on Elon himself.\n <\/p>\n
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\n In a tweet<\/a> in 2020, Musk admitted that Tesla was nearly forced to file for bankruptcy<\/a> as recently as 2019. Even after it survived the bankruptcy scare, it wasn\u2019t until 2021 that Tesla was able to post a profit<\/a> without the help of credit sales.\n <\/p>\n \n Since 2019, sales of regulatory credits have brought in another $12.3 billion, with all of that money falling pretty much directly to its bottom line. That credit revenue is likely to dry up in the future, though, as Republicans in Congress have essentially eliminated the program.\n <\/p>\n \n But Tesla\u2019s value no longer has much to do with its cars. Instead, the company\u2019s share price is based on Musk\u2019s promise that Tesla will soon offer widespread self-driving \u201crobotaxis\u201d and humanoid robots, a promise he has long sought to deliver but to little avail.\n <\/p>\n \n Wall Street\u2019s faith in Musk is the main reason his wealth has reached previously unimaginable heights \u2014 at least for the moment, as long as his companies\u2019 share prices remain near where they are. But that faith comes because at the start of his businesses, when he needed financial assistance the most, it was the US government \u2014 not Wall Street \u2014 that provided the needed help.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt turned out it was definitely good for the government, America, and society that these companies exist, so I don\u2019t regret that the government gave him the money,\u201d said Gerber, the early Tesla investor who is now a Musk critic. \u201cThe mistake the government made is they should have had an equity stake.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u2013 CNN\u2019s Jackie Wattles contributed to this report\n <\/p>\n