The Tesla CEO and the world’s richest man has founded multiple schools. His latest, a private preschool called Ad Astra, is scheduled to open in the fall of 2025, according to its website.
Ad Astra is in Bastrop, Texas, close to Starbase, the city Musk founded near his SpaceX complex. The school is accepting applications for kids between the ages of three and nine. It’s not a Montessori school but draws on similar principles, focusing on child-centered learning, according to the website. The curriculum focuses on STEM subjects — fitting since Ad Astra is Latin for “to the stars.”
According to the school’s site, Ad Astra will subsidize tuition in the opening year and will later cost around as much as local private schools. A permit from the Texas Health and Human Services Department allowing Ad Astra to open in 2025 specified that it can enroll 21 students in its first year. The application materials, first reported by Bloomberg, said the school aims to expand into a STEM-focused university.
None of the application materials to the state include Musk’s name, but his foundation donated $100 million to the preschool, according to tax filings, as BI previously reported.
In 2014, Musk opened a different school in California named Ad Astra for his children and the kids of SpaceX employees. That venture evolved into a largely online school called Astra Nova.
According to its website, Astra Nova serves around 300 students between the ages of 10 and 14. Class offerings on the site range from special relativity to songwriting to ethical hacking.
Musk was worth $410.8 billion at the time of writing, according to Forbes.
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