Well don't forget PayPal which innovated like crazy and is super profitable. But for modern day Musk I think you're forgetting his businesses are by definition

Well don't forget PayPal which innovated like crazy and is super profitable. But for modern day Musk I think you're forgetting his businesses are by definition very capital intensive. He has to build out the entire means of production as well as the end product. It would be awesome in some ways if he could just pay Foxconn and have them shoulder all that infrastructure build out cost to build him some more Teslas but it doesn't work that way with what he's doing. The flip side is if he pulls this off he can hit a tipping point where he's the AWS of batteries for a whole range of industries and becomes a huge profit machine.