What's it like to be the right-hand man of Elon Musk, the world's richest man? Many people have no way of knowing.Recently, a newly declassified batch of court documents gave a glimpse into Musk’s working relationship with his personal wealth steward Jared Birchall.

In September 2022, Musk and Twitter went to court over the acquisition.Birchall, a former banker who heads Musk's family office, testified. The more than 350 pages of court documents were initially sealed, but were declassified in July 2024 after Aaron Greenspan, owner of legal database provider PlainSite, petitioned the Delaware Chancery Court to release them. (Musk and Twitter finally reached a settlement in October 2022, agreeing to acquire Twitter for $44 billion and subsequently renamed it X).

Take care of everything

Birchall serves as Musk's chief of staff and is also the CEO of Neuralink, Musk's brain-computer interface company. He said in his testimony that he knew Musk while working as a private wealth adviser.

"The first time I met Musk was when I was working at Morgan Stanley many years ago, and he probably doesn't even remember it," Birchall told Twitter's lawyer.

The former banker said that around 2016, he was recommended to serve as the head of Musk’s family office by a friend of Musk’s, an unnamed employee of Merrill Lynch, a well-known investment bank.


Birchall said he has since grown Musk's family office, Excession LLC, to include bookkeepers and property managers. His responsibilities cover everything from Musk's financial transactions and bills to "personal matters" and personal security.Birchall said his job is to "go where needed."

Throughout his testimony, Birchall described his many tasks, including reviewing documents in preparation for Musk's review, vetting potential employees, serving as a liaison to enthusiastic investors and filling in for Musk in meetings with executives.

Meeting once a week

Birchall said he reports only to Musk and holds weekly meetings with Musk to review his finances and various projects. Birchall said that in order to prioritize Musk's safety, the two also frequently communicated through the private messaging platform Signal, and these messages were automatically deleted after a week.

"For the first four years I worked for him, I worked half the time every week at SpaceX and was constantly told or reminded that there were many different adversaries trying to obtain Musk's information."Birchall said.

The former banker said he was involved in Musk's initial purchase of Twitter stock and even advised Musk at one point not to join Twitter's board. Birchall said that when Musk decided to build a new company, he would often ask him to help. Birchall recalled that he once took Musk's private jet from Austin, Texas, to San Francisco, California, in order to attend a Twitter executive meeting with Musk.

"He's always thinking about companies that haven't been built yet that he wants to build, and is one step away from creating a lot of companies that don't exist yet," Birchall said.

According to a previous report by Business Insider magazine,Birchall remains staunchly loyal to Musk. Birchall even helped the billionaire hire a private investigator after his infamous "pedophile" tweets landed Musk in hot water.

As of press time, neither Birchall nor Musk had commented.