Mr. Jurvetson hosted a June 2017 party at his Bay Area home that became a small scandal after Vanity Fair characterized it as a “sex party.” (Mr. Musk, who was there, disputed this, calling the party in a statement to Wired Magazine “boring and corporate, with zero sex or nudity anywhere.”) A guest at another party hosted by Mr. Jurvetson — this one with Moby as D.J. — told The Times of having seen Mr. Musk participate in a “cuddle puddle,” a form of typically nonsexual group snuggling that is popular in the Bay Area.
Mr. Musk, too, has thrown a series of lavish birthday celebrations, including one in a castle in England and one aboard the Orient Express, a luxury train. He has also hosted theme parties that at least once included live jousting on horseback. At a Japanese-themed party he threw in Tarrytown, N.Y., Mr. Musk injured his back while grappling with the sumo wrestling world champion.
Sometimes these celebrations last an entire weekend, as did a recent 40th birthday party for Mr. Jurvetson’s wife at the couple’s estate in Half Moon Bay, Calif. The public got a glimpse of the party when Mr. Musk sent The New York Post a selfie with Mr. Brin in the background, as a counter to The Journal’s report that Mr. Musk’s reported affair with Mr. Brin’s wife had ended the men’s friendship.
(Mr. Brin did not respond to several requests for comment.)
Playing a Part in Hollywood
Born in 1971 in South Africa, Mr. Musk moved to Canada for college before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1995. In college, Mr. Musk and Adeo Ressi, a longtime friend who is now chief executive of VC Lab, which trains aspiring venture capitalists, ran a makeshift nightclub out of their house. Mr. Ressi has described occasionally stepping out of the parties to find Mr. Musk upstairs playing a video game alone. (Mr. Musk made reference to having Asperger’s syndrome when he hosted “Saturday Night Live” in 2021.)
Mr. Musk made his first fortune in 1999 when he sold his company, Zip2, a software start-up that created online city guides, to Compaq for $22 million. The same year, he started X.com, a payments company that would eventually turn into PayPal.
In 2002, the sale of PayPal vaulted Mr. Musk’s worth past $100 million; the same year, he founded SpaceX in the Los Angeles suburbs. There, Hollywood — and its nightlife — found him. They wanted Mr. Musk to play a part, that of the Silicon Valley prodigy trying to save the world.
