In March 2026, a rumor recirculated on social media claiming that tech billionaire Elon Musk turned his college house into a nightclub to help pay rent while attending the University of Pennsylvania. Posts spreading the claim said Musk charged $5 for entry and made as much as $2,500 a night from the parties.
One Facebook post sharing the rumor read, "Elon Musk During his college days, converted his house into a nightclub and charged $5 as an entry fee to afford rent."
Over the years, the rumor spread on multiple social media platforms, including Reddit,
In short, the claim that Musk turned his college house into a nightclub and charged a $5 entry fee to pay rent is true. The story appears in Ashlee Vance's 2015 biography of Musk, who later confirmed the account on X. His former roommate also corroborated the story in multiple interviews.
Evidence supporting the story
The story appears in Ashlee Vance's 2015 biography "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future," which describes how Musk and his University of Pennsylvania roommate, Adeo Ressi, rented a large off-campus house and turned it into a makeshift nightclub on weekends. According to the book, they charged $5 admission, drew crowds of up to 500 people and sometimes made enough in a single night to cover a month's rent.
Vance wrote that the house, a cheap former fraternity property with 10 bedrooms, was transformed for parties with blacked-out windows and bright paint. The biography also says Musk and Ressi later moved into a second, even larger house with 14 rooms.
The relevant passage appears on pages 42-43 of the book, which is available through the Internet Archive.
Musk and Ressi backed up account
Musk has corroborated the story at least twice on social media. In a 2022 post on X, he wrote, "Yeah, we paid for rent by turning the house into a nightclub & charging $5."
He also posted about it in 2019, writing, "To pay rent, we turned our house into a nightclub & charged a $5 entry fee. Looked cool at night, but insane by day … blacklights, luminescent spray paint & metal junk sculptures."
When asked if he had any photographs from the parties, Musk replied, "I hope someone has pics! My Mom came to visit one weekend & was quite surprised by it all, but helped work coat check & guarded the cash with a kitchen knife."
Ressi also corroborated the story in multiple media appearances over the years. In one interview, Ressi recalled that Musk sometimes played video games by himself upstairs while hundreds of people filled the house.
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