Westinghouse was fond of Tesla's generators and agreed to pay large sums of money for the rights to use them in their power generating plants. At one point, the Westinghouse company nearly went bankrupt, and so Tesla literally tore up his contract with them to prevent that disaster. It would have been worth tens of millions.
J.P. Morgan was the biggie. He funded nearly all of Tesla's work up until the plan to transmit usable power wirelessly to any point on the globe. Morgan couldn't see a way to stick a meter on it and charge people for the power, and so he cut off all funding and black-balled Tesla from ever receiving funding from anyone even associated with the name J.P. Morgan. That stopped all of Tesla's big work.
He as able to continue on with minor research loosely funded by private individuals, but that funding dried up too.
He eventually had to sell off nearly everything he had for scrap, and unfortunately died with huge debts that never got paid.
I heard he worked part time at a famous Steak House that is still in business in Trumann, Arkansas, USA and used part of his tip money to finance his experiments.
some millionaire went to fund him, of course tesla was eccentric. of course, his theories while unorthodox but groundbreaking. that's y he got funded. of course everybody wants to know if his theories works or not.
selling scrap
