So how does Tony Stark make his money?

[Graham Kennedy]

Iron Man made a point that Tony Stark wound up leading "a weapons company that doesn't make weapons". When Oobey-dooby Badguy asked what they would do instead, Tony said develop arc reactor tech.

But later movies established that Tony refused to share his tech with anybody else. (Which, wow. A guy develops weapons that are generations ahead of anybody, and simply says he won't accept any regulation or oversight... and that's that?)

Anyway. From that, I take it that he's not selling Arc reactors to anybody either. In fact, none of his Iron Man tech seems to be in general use - we don't see vehicles or weapons using his thruster thingie tech, or anything like that.

Yet Tony consistently remains a multi-billionaire. How? What DOES Stark industries sell, exactly?

[Bryan Moore]

Iron Man made a point that Tony Stark wound up leading "a weapons company that doesn't make weapons". When Oobey-dooby Badguy asked what they would do instead, Tony said develop arc reactor tech.

But later movies established that Tony refused to share his tech with anybody else. (Which, wow. A guy develops weapons that are generations ahead of anybody, and simply says he won't accept any regulation or oversight... and that's that?)

Anyway. From that, I take it that he's not selling Arc reactors to anybody either. In fact, none of his Iron Man tech seems to be in general use - we don't see vehicles or weapons using his thruster thingie tech, or anything like that.

Yet Tony consistently remains a multi-billionaire. How? What DOES Stark industries sell, exactly?

Marvel scripts... [/thread]

[Lt. Staplic]

We have a couple of clues about this from other Marvel Movies.

In the Avengers there are two things:

First, at the beginning of the film they're celebrating the turning on of Stark Tower, specifically the Arc Reactor in its basement, which will make the building completely self-sufficient/pump energy back into the Grid.

Second,while they're discussing Loki, specifically the line he delivers to Fury while talking about their research of the Tesseract that he's doing it to create 'a big bright light for all of humanity'. Banner mentions that he thinks that was meant for Tony, and after a questioning look from Cap, Tony replies:

I'm pretty much the only name in clean energy right now. If that's what they were trying to do with it, why not bring me in on it

This indicates that Stark has in fact moved into the Energy business. While he's not selling Arc Reactors it appears he's currently in the process of developing the technology for commercial application. It's possible that he's doing so on a US government contract.

Additionally, from IM3 (as much garbage as it was) there are a few exposition lines at the beginning that indicate that Stark's Company (under Potts) has utilized their built up capitol from weapons dealings to begin branching into other fields, and from what I gathered primarily non-weaponized technology advancement.

Finally, in Spiderman Homecomming we learn that Stark partnered up with the newly created Department of Damage Control. I actually can't remember now if it was him specifically or his company, either way that's a revenue stream for Stark.

This is all loose stuff thrown around as background detail. Between these lines, the personal wealth he'd already established, etc. I don't have that hard of a time seeing him maintain his lavish lifestyle.

[Mikey]

Cocaine and human trafficking.

[Graham Kennedy]

I did wonder if he was cashing in on the arc reactor tech by selling electricity rather than reactors. But it does seem rather... low brow.

If he's supplying a large portion of the worlds (or the US's) electricity, one wonders how all the energy industry workers who are suddenly out of a job feel about it.

[Mikey]

I don’t think he’s supplying anything material. Seems more like patent purchase and development, licensing sales, and the like.

[Teaos]

I assumed bitcoin.

[Bryan Moore]

I think he sells Teslas.

[Coalition]

Arc reactor power supplies seem good, depending on how much time they need to change output (i.e. walking around then suddenly using the repulsors to fly or fight).

That could be another reason h was talking with Elon Musk in IM2, perhaps Tonyy's ARC reactor power plant couldn't provide the rapid-response needed, and Elon's battery tech would provide the fine-tuning. (See Hornsdale Power Reserve)

So imagine Elon's Gigafactory using Stark's Arc reactor for base load, and batteries built on site to help smooth out the peaks and drops in power provided vs needed.

Plus the repulsor assemblies were used in Civil War to keep the new SHIELD carriers flying, so chances are Tony earned a nice chunk of money off that.

We also saw that the repulsors from the carriers weren't doing that much damage ot the city below, so they are likely safe to use in inhabited areas. This means he could develop skycranes that lift heavy objects to the tops of skyscrapers to aid in construction. This would be used alongside regular cranes, and in case of incoming storm, the skycrane could carry the expensive regular crane safely to the ground nearby, instead of risking it falling.

His Iron Man suit in Infinity War was composed of either microtechnology or nanotechnology, seeing how it worked. I wonder how that could be used? Even just using it to make form-fitting suits (let the nanotech crawl over the object, record the data, and use that to make a new outfit) would be useful. Add in a computerized factory to make custom outfits instead of a few sizes having to fit most.

[McAvoy]

In the comics he does alot of stuff. Computers, gizmos, dohickies. Satellite tech.

Old comics basically came down to him making stuff smaller. I remember a comic where he was running on the beach listening to music. It was a Micro micro cassette player that could fit in his ear. The cassettes were the size of a pill.

[Graham Kennedy]

But the thing is that in the MCU we don't see a world where all this tech stuff is being sold. Yes, Tony could be manufacturing cranes held up by repulsor tech or super advanced computers or whatever. But we don't see that. As far as the films are concerned, Tony and Shield seem to be the only ones in the world with that tech. Shield has helicarriers and quinjets and all that, but the regular US military still uses all the normal tech that we use in the real world.

Googling around there's even a specific trope for this - Reed Richards Is Useless. "The observation that in some genres, characters can have fantastic technology far beyond our own, yet this technology only gets used to solve equally fantastic problems."

Not saying it spoils the movies or anything, by the way. It's not a complaint, just something that occurred to me.