how much money did us give tesla
In return, Westinghouse paid Tesla a $216,000 lump sum for the right to use his AC patents in perpetuity (that's worth roughly $5.4 million today). Throwing Away A Billion Dollar Fortune. In retrospect, Tesla may have been a brilliant inventor but he was a terrible capitalist. In 1907, when he tore up the contract, bankers estimated the value of his patents to be $12 million. Shockingly, $12 million in 1907 is equal to more than $300 million in today's inflation adjusted dollars.