Small businesses helped build Musk's empire. Their unpaid bills add up to millions

CNN

5 days ago

When Jennifer Meissner's small pipe welding business landed a multimillion-dollar contract to help build a sprawling new Texas headquarters for Tesla, she was convinced it was her company's big break.
Instead, she says the deal led her into personal and professional bankruptcy – unable to pay dozens of her workers at Christmastime. Meissner said that was her last resort after Tesla, which is owned by the world's richest man, stopped paying her company for work they'd already done.
'They just don't understand how many lives they completely trashed,' Meissner said. 'Working with a company as big as (Tesla) is, you trust the fact they are going to pay their bills.'
As Musk has relied on small businesses to help him grow his multibillion-dollar empire, many contractors claim they were not paid – and at least two say they were forced into bankruptcy as a result, according to a CNN review of civil lawsuits and construction liens against companies including Tesla, SpaceX and X.
Even an attorney representing the carmaker in Meissner's bankruptcy case acknowledged that Tesla has a habit of not promptly paying its bills.
'I don't disagree that it does take Tesla some time to pay,' the attorney said in court last year, adding 'that goes for legal bills, too … I know it full well.'
In Texas, where Musk has been rapidly expanding operations, contractors have filed liens for more than $110 million against Tesla in the last five years, with more than $24 million still allegedly owed to dozens of businesses, CNN's analysis shows.
Tesla, SpaceX and X did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Tesla has at times argued in court that it didn't pay contractors because of shoddy work or missed deadlines, but most disputes never made it that far.
Those who claim they are owed money, many of them mom-and-pop businesses, say Musk's corporations often stall for months before paying invoices, if they pay at all. This can lead to a devastating ripple effect as interruptions to cash flow make it difficult for vendors to pay employees and keep operations running.
Other big companies that launched major construction projects in the state have been subject to far fewer liens. Apple, for example, has roughly $1.2 million in unpaid liens in the counties where it hired contractors to build its headquarters — less than 10% of the amount owed by Tesla.
Tesla's corporate strategy mirrors the ruthless cost-cutting approach Musk has become known for. At Twitter, now known as X, he slashed jobs and budgets after taking over and allegedly stopped paying rent. And as the one-time head of the Department of Government Efficiency, he ordered entire agencies shuttered with little regard to the effect on taxpayers or services, critics said.
For the first seven years Meissner's company was in business, she prided herself on not once being late to pay her workers, she told CNN. After securing the business deal with Tesla in 2022, she said her company's annual revenue grew exponentially, and she hired even more employees. With business booming, she was also hopeful that she would finally be able to start setting aside money for her special needs daughter, whom she adopted at the age of seven.
But after dedicating the entire work crew at Professional Process Piping to the project with Tesla for more than a year and investing her own money in expensive equipment, Meissner said Tesla abruptly stopped paying the company's invoices and more than $1 million in work went unpaid at the time.
Her world was turned upside down in a matter of months, she said. She took out high-interest loans, and for the first time was unable to pay the workers who remained loyal to her despite the financial difficulties.
She said she couldn't afford to sue Tesla to demand payment given the financial hole she was in, which affected her own finances as well because she had personally guaranteed a number of the business loans for rental trucks and other subcontractors.
'I know how it felt, living paycheck to paycheck and not being able to pay bills. I know. And I swore that having the company, I was never going to have my men not paid,' she said. 'And when that happened, that hit worse than anything else.'
Tesla ultimately came to an agreement with Meissner in bankruptcy court, with its lawyer claiming in the settlement that the contractor had 'overbilled the project and provided substandard labor and services.' Tesla agreed to pay Professional Process Piping's subcontractors $650,000, but Meissner says she is still out hundreds of thousands of dollars and isn't sure if she'll ever recover financially.
To create Tesla's 10-million-square-foot production hub outside of Austin, Texas – known as the Gigafactory – contractors were hired for demolition, plumbing, painting and even to install robots that help build the carmaker's vehicles, according to lien filings. Workers were also hired by SpaceX to run wiring and put in drywall, among a large number of other construction tasks, as the company expanded its Starlink facility in rural central Texas—dubbed 'Project Echo.' And when Musk completed a high-profile takeover of the social media company formerly known as Twitter, which he rebranded X, contractors provided services ranging from private jet flights to janitorial work.
CNN reached out to more than 100 companies that filed liens and lawsuits against Musk-owned companies, but even those willing to speak with reporters were hesitant to go on the record – citing Musk's power, frequent use of non-disclosure agreements and history of retaliating against critics with lawsuits and public attacks.
On their face, liens don't necessarily mean that a company has done anything wrong. There could be other factors at play in some cases – such as substandard work or a contractor failing to pay the subcontractors they hired. Liens can also be filed as a way to encourage businesses to pay more quickly.
But experts interviewed by CNN said liens are a last resort for businesses still needing to be paid. And a large number of liens could indicate a company is 'notoriously bad at paying its contractors on time,' said Scott Wolfe Jr., a former attorney and founder of a company that analyzes construction liens.
Some lienholders told CNN they still hoped to be paid for their work, while others said they had written off the losses and doubted they'd ever see the money they claim to be owed. They described how excitement about major contracts with the company eventually turned into financial crises and sleepless nights. One contractor even told CNN that he had been so excited to land a project with Tesla that he bought himself a brand-new Model X, which he says now only serves to remind him of the nightmare business deal.
A number of contractors interviewed by CNN said they weren't surprised by this business practice, noting how it aligned with Musk's reputation for penny pinching and slashing budgets at all costs – caring more about his personal missions than the people who get hurt along the way.
'His goal is to run through everything now – he doesn't care what or who that impacts – to save the future of the world,' said one entrepreneur about his impression of Musk. He spoke with CNN anonymously and said he remains a fan of Musk but that Tesla has a reputation in Austin of leaving contractors desperate to get paid – noting that his company had to take out extra lines of credit while awaiting payment from Tesla. 'Tesla was probably one of the only companies we did business with where it just felt like they absolutely did not care about putting a company out of business.'
Several contractors said that in retrospect they would have hired attorneys to review the complicated contracts they signed, which they said included provisions that made it easier for Tesla to refuse to pay them.
Some companies have taken their complaints a step further and filed lawsuits instead of or in addition to liens.
Sun Coast Resources, a Houston-based fuel supplier, alleged in a lawsuit from April that Tesla had refused to pay for nearly $2.7 million worth of fuel that it delivered for construction machinery at Tesla's Gigafactory.
'While Tesla has never denied receiving the fuel, Tesla has offered a myriad of procedural reasons it has not paid,' Sun Coast wrote in its lawsuit. 'Moreover, Tesla has had constant personnel turnover and passed Sun Coast off from person to person who only conjures up some new reason as to why Tesla has not paid.'
This month, Sun Coast Resources asked the court that the case be closed, and an attorney for the company told CNN the case had been resolved.
And in 2022, a small Austin-based company, Full Circle Technologies, said in court that it was forced to file bankruptcy when Tesla refused to pay for work it did supplying and installing security cameras and other equipment at the electric automaker's Gigafactory.
In bankruptcy filings, Full Circle Technologies said Tesla owed it nearly $600,000 and that it was 'forced to take on short term high interest loans to bridge the gap between performing the work for Tesla and the payment for its services.' When a creditor began to levy the company's bank accounts, the company said it had no option but to file for bankruptcy. Tesla then made its own claim in the bankruptcy hearings, stating Full Circle actually owed the carmaker money for allegedly breaching its contract. The two companies ultimately settled, but Full Circle CEO Abheeshek Sharma told CNN that Tesla was released from its obligation without paying a cent.
And when Full Circle wasn't paid, the company said it couldn't pay its subcontractors either. One of the subcontractors, Electra Link, filed its own lawsuit against Tesla in a last-ditch effort to get paid the roughly $128,000 it said it was owed for the cabling it installed at the Gigafactory. It said Tesla had 'ignored' its three written notices that it had not been paid and that Tesla 'refused' to make any payments – prompting Electra Link to file liens against Tesla. Tesla turned around and countersued the company, claiming its liens were fraudulent because the contractor had only notified Tesla of the debt, and not the LLC used by Tesla for the project. The lawsuit was ultimately settled.
After Musk's high-profile purchase of Twitter in 2022, at least seven different businesses filed lawsuits for non-payment – all of which have since been resolved.
'Twitter responded with a campaign of extreme belt-tightening that amounted to requiring nearly everyone to whom it owes money to sue,' attorney Ethan Jacobs wrote about the company's alleged refusal to pay contractors including marketing and consulting firms.
Another lawsuit cited emails saying that new management wanted to 'hold firm' about not paying the invoice for private jet transportation that had already been provided. Twitter claimed it told the jet operator that the services had not been approved by an authorized employee and therefore it was not responsible for the expense.
Jacobs, who represented many of these companies in their litigation against the social media firm and said all of his cases settled, said he found it surprising that a businessman as powerful and high-profile as Musk would be brazen enough to have 'a practice of not paying people until they sue.'
'They were essentially saying that they just decided not to pay until they had to,' he said of X under Musk's leadership. 'It's not the way I have generally seen people doing business.'
After Meissner of Professional Process Piping filed for bankruptcy, she said she liquidated all available retirement and savings accounts, sold land just to be able to afford an attorney and stopped sending her daughter to the ballroom dance lessons Meissner said had served as a form of therapy for her.
Meissner said she now works two jobs and will be working to pay off her debts for a long time. She also still worries that she could lose her house or car.
'It's been horrible,' she said. 'If I didn't have my family, I don't think I would have made it.'
While every billion-dollar business is going to encounter some level of dissatisfied contractors or subcontractors, Meissner said the large number of liens that have been filed against Tesla indicate to her that this is simply the way the billionaire operates his companies.
'When there are that many (liens), that looks like standard business to me, and that's shady,' she said, adding that she wants Musk to know just how many lives have been impacted by these practices. 'It's not just my company, it's all the companies that support you. You own that business – your name is on it.'