Did Elon Musk Pay the Medical Bills of a Child With a Rare Neurological Disorder? Seems Fake

According to The New York Times, many of Elon Musk's charitable contributions have been largely self-serving. For example, when a SpaceX rocket exploded on the morning of March 30, 2021, in Cameron County, an impoverished area of Texas, Musk announced he was donating money to that region. Two hours after debris rained down upon the southern tip of Texas, Musk posted to X that he was donating $20 million to Cameron County schools and $10 million to the city of Brownsville.

All of Elon's charity work is done through The Musk Foundation, which has billions of dollars at its disposal. Unfortunately, it is primarily used for philanthropic endeavors that make him "eligible for enormous tax breaks" while helping his businesses. With this in mind, we turn our attention to a story circulating online about Elon paying the medical bills of a little girl named Lily Thompson. Is it true, or has social media fallen prey to actual fake news? Here's what we know.

An image of Elon Musk sitting next to a little girl in a hospital bed was shared to the Just the Facts Facebook page on March 25, 2025. There are multiple tubes going into the little girl who has been identified as 7-year-old Lily Thompson. Per the caption, she is battling a "rare neurological disorder that left her unable to walk, speak, or even breathe without assistance." It goes on to say that the cost of treating this disorder is astronomical.

According to the post, Lily and her family felt a glimmer of hope after Elon stepped in and "personally pledged to cover every penny of her care, including a pioneering surgery that could restore her chance at a normal childhood." The aforementioned pioneering surgery refers to implanting a Neuralink chip that would repair damaged neural connections. Elon allegedly said, "No child should suffer when we have the tools to help."

The $2 million in medical bills would apparently be fully covered by The Musk Foundation. The point of this post seems to be to scold people for speaking ill of the "great Elon Musk" or trashing Teslas in the wild. Here's the thing: This is clearly an AI-generated image. Also, a quick Google of Lily and Elon yields zero results in terms of media coverage. A story like this would be all over the news.

In January 2025, Elon announced that a third person was the recipient of a Neuralink implant, per the Associated Press. Although Elon didn't identify the three individuals, he described two of them. The first patient was paralyzed after a spinal cord injury but was able to play video games and chess after the surgery. The second patient also had a spinal cord injury and, like the first patient, was playing video games after receiving the implant.

Despite the fact that no information was provided about the third patient, Snopes took a look at the Neuralink website and discovered that all potential recipients have to be at least 18 years old. Even if Lily Thompson were a real person, she wouldn't be old enough to get the implant.