Billionaires: Elon Musk pockets $1 million from 'joke' Burnt Hair perfume

In our fortnightly round-up of the world's super wealthy, Binance founder Zhao Changpeng says the crypto platform may spend $1bn on deals this year and Mukesh Ambani sets up a family office in Singapore

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has a history of launching products based on jokes that his massive fanbase buy as collectibles. AP

Elon Musk is promoting a new perfume, as the world’s richest man continues a track record of turning what ostensibly start out as jokes into sought-after products.

Mr Musk announced the scent — called Burnt Hair and described as “the essence of repugnant desire” — in a tweet on Tuesday, before changing his Twitter biography to “Perfume Salesman”.

A separate product page posted by Boring Company, Mr Musk’s tunnelling company, listed the fragrance at $100 a pop, and he later tweeted that 10,000 bottles had been sold for a total of $1 million.

In a post in September, the billionaire, who has a net worth of $209.9 billion, said that Boring would launch a scent for men that will help them “stand out in a crowd”.

He wrote on Tuesday that getting into the fragrance business was inevitable given his last name, tweeting in jest: “Why did I even fight it for so long!?”

The Tesla chief executive has a history of launching products based on jokes that his massive fan base has sought as collectibles.

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A limited line of 20,000 flame-throwers sold by Boring in 2018 to raise $10m for its tunnel-building tests attracted huge interest.

Mr Musk has also used items to mock investors betting against Tesla, including a pair of satin short shorts (priced at $69.420) to mark a victory over short-sellers.

Mr Musk has said that Boring plans to make a functional hyperloop in the coming years — a tunnel-based, high-speed transportation system — although significant hurdles remain, including securing permits for projects and passing environmental studies.

Zhao 'CZ' Changpeng

Binance Holdings founder and chief executive Zhao “CZ” Changpeng said the world’s biggest digital-asset exchange may spend more than $1bn on acquisitions and investments this year despite what is shaping up to be a prolonged crypto winter.

Binance has committed $325m to 67 projects so far this year, compared with $140m for 73 projects in 2021.

That does not take into account a possible more-than-$200m investment in the Forbes media company and $500m in financing for Mr Musk’s on-again acquisition of Twitter, which could carry on into next year if it gets done at all.

While fellow crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried has been dubbed the new John Pierpont Morgan for buying up assets from high-profile distressed lenders and brokers like Voyager Digital, Mr Zhao has taken a more subdued approach by focusing on areas such as decentralised finance and non-fungible tokens.

Binance, which had also bid for Voyager, has not purchased any distressed crypto assets this year.

“We did look at a lot of lenders in recent months, because that's where all the issues are,” Mr Zhao said in an interview this week.

“Many of them, they just take a user’s money and give it to somebody else. There’s not a lot of intrinsic value. In that case, what’s to acquire? We want to see real products that people use.”

In the meantime, Binance continues to deal with long-running industry issues such as software hacks and tightening regulation. Online pirates recently stole the equivalent of $568m by exploiting the exchange’s Binance Coin.

Mr Zhao took to social media to say the incident is now contained and told users that their funds are safe.

Binance has also been pouring money into the ecosystem for NFTs and fan tokens, and into traditional payment-service providers, Mr Zhao said.

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Binance has remained profitable in 2022, even with prices of most cryptocurrencies down more than 50 per cent this year, Mr Zhao said, without being more specific.

“DeFi works,” he said. “NFTs are a lot more than selling pictures of monkeys. NFT use cases have not largely been well built — NFTs for tickets, for university degrees. I think the technology will stay.”

In the coming months, Binance might also be interested in acquiring minority stakes in traditional e-commerce and gaming companies, he said.

Binance has a $7bn fund that has been investing in deals and it has a 30-plus member team focused on mergers and acquisitions, he added.

“Overall at a high level, during the bear market we’ll see more market consolidation,” Mr Zhao said. “There’s a lot of risks and a lot of pain, but also a lot of opportunity.”

Mukesh Ambani

Asia’s second-wealthiest man, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, is setting up a family office in Singapore, according to people familiar with the move.

The Mumbai-based billionaire has picked a manager to hire staff for the new entity and get it running, the sources said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. The Ambanis have also chosen real estate, one of them said.

A spokesman for Reliance, who also represents Mr Ambani, was not available for comment.

Mr Ambani is the latest in a series of ultra-rich people to pick Singapore for their family offices — organisations set up to manage the affairs of wealthy clans — joining the likes of hedge-fund billionaire Ray Dalio and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

The city-state has become an attractive hub for family offices thanks to its low taxes and relative security. The Monetary Authority of Singapore estimates about 700 were in place by the end of 2021, up from 400 a year earlier.

Mr Ambani’s move to set up the family office ties in with his larger vision of taking his retail-to-refining empire global and acquiring assets outside India.

The billionaire, who is worth an estimated $83.7bn according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, wants the Singapore family office to be running within a year, one of the sources said. His wife, Nita Ambani, is also helping to set it up, sources added.

Gautam Adani

Billionaire Gautam Adani’s conglomerate is in advanced talks with the infrastructure-focused Jaiprakash Group to buy its cement business for about 50bn Indian rupees ($606m), people familiar with the matter said.

The deal includes a cement grinding unit and other smaller assets from Jaiprakash Power Ventures and Jaiprakash Associates, two of the people said, asking not to be identified.

The acquisition will be made by one of the cement units recently acquired by Asia’s richest person, the sources said. While discussions are advanced, they could still be delayed or fall apart, they added.

Should it go through, the acquisition will help consolidate Adani Group’s newfound dominance in the cement sector, after it bought Ambuja Cements and ACC in May from Switzerland’s Holcim to become India’s second-largest cement maker virtually overnight with an installed production capacity of 67.5 million tonnes annually.

Adani Group representatives declined to comment. Jaiprakash Associates representatives were not immediately available for comment.

The cement-grinding facility has a capacity of 2 million tonnes a year. It began operating in October 2014, in Nigrie in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

Adani Group said last month that it is looking to expand its cement-making capacity to 140 million tonnes in five years and plans to inject 200bn rupees into its newly acquired cement business.

The Indian tycoon has been on an acquisition spree this year across sectors as he rapidly seeks to diversify and expand his conglomerate.

Adani Group has been getting into newer areas such as media, cement, health care and metals, going beyond his traditional mainstay businesses of ports and power plants.