Elon Musk has a web price of round $199 billion, in response to estimates by Bloomberg.
However the tech mogul’s wealth comes from a lot of sources and it is not steady — it fell by $30 billion, from $239 billion, in a matter of months, costing him the title of world’s richest man. Different tech billionaires are shut on his heels, too: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ web price is simply $15 billion beneath Musk’s.
How has Musk’s web price modified over time?
Musk, who was born in South Africa, moved to Canada, and dropped out of a Ph.D at Stanford, grew to become a millionaire earlier than he hit 30. Musk began Zip2, an internet site that supplied metropolis journey guides to newspapers, along with his brother Kimbal Musk, and offered it to Compaq for greater than $300 million in 1999. Musk, then aged 27, is believed to have gotten $22 million from the deal.
He went on to cofound on-line financial institution X.com in 1999. It quickly merged with Peter Thiel’s Confinity to change into PayPal, and the corporate was purchased for $1.5 billion by eBay in 2002. Regardless of having been ousted as CEO, Musk walked away with round $165 million.
Musk cofounded space-exploration firm SpaceX in 2002. In 2004, he grew to become an investor in and chairman of EV firm Tesla. In the course of the monetary disaster in 2008, he saved Tesla from chapter with a $40 million funding and a $40 million mortgage. That very same yr, he was named Tesla’s CEO.
Musk mentioned 2008 was “the worst yr of my life.” Alongside issues in his private life, Tesla stored dropping cash and SpaceX was having bother launching the primary model of its Falcon rocket. By 2009, Musk was dwelling off private loans.
However Tesla went public in 2010, and Musk’s estimated web price steadily climbed. In 2012 he debuted on Forbes’ Billionaires Listing with an estimated wealth of $2 billion.
In 2016, Musk arrange tunnel-digging enterprise the Boring Firm. The subsequent yr, he based neurotechnology startup Neuralink.
Musk’s web price started a fast ascent at first of the pandemic as Tesla shares soared. Musk began 2020 with an estimated web price of slightly below $30 billion and was price round $170 billion only a yr later – a greater than five-fold enhance in only a yr. His estimated fortune peaked at round $340 billion in November 2021.
But it surely’s tumbled since then: Tesla inventory was down 56% by the tip of January 2024, slashing the corporate’s worth from over $1.2 trillion to beneath $600 billion.
Musk additionally purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, serving as its CEO till he stood down in early June.
The place does Musk’s fortune come from?
Musk’s wealth is basically depending on Tesla shares. Although he takes no wage from Tesla, he is awarded inventory choices when the corporate hits difficult efficiency metrics.
“Elon will obtain no assured compensation of any form — no wage, no money bonuses, and no fairness that vests just by the passage of time,” Tesla mentioned in 2018 when the corporate introduced a 10-year efficiency award for Musk. “As an alternative, Elon’s solely compensation can be a 100% at-risk efficiency award, which ensures that he can be compensated provided that Tesla and all of its shareholders do terribly nicely.”
In accordance with Bloomberg, near half of Musk’s web price comes from Tesla shares, whereas simply over 20% comes from SpaceX inventory. The remainder of his wealth comes from shares in Twitter and The Boring Firm, in addition to different miscellaneous liabilities.
How does Musk stack as much as different billionaires?
Musk regularly trades locations with different billionaires for the title of world’s richest particular person.
LVMH founder Bernard Arnault simply took the title from Musk, with a web price of roughly $218 billion, in response to Bloomberg. Rounding off the highest 5 are Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, at $192 billion; Fb founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, at $166 billion; and Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, at $145 billion.
