Position: CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and xAI.
Ranking: No. 1 on the Forbes 400 list of 2024
Net worth: $334 billion (as of November 22, 2024)
Other data:
AGE: 53 | SOURCE OF WEALTH : TESLA, SPACEX | SCORE : 8/10 | RESIDENCE: AUSTIN, TEXAS | CITIZENSHIP : AMERICAN | MARITAL STATUS: DIVORCED | CHILDREN : 11 | EDUCATION : BACHELOR OF ARTS/SCIENCE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
The richest person on Earth is now arguably also the most powerful . Musk, a former South African Democrat who came to the United States via Canada as a college student , became a huge supporter of Donald Trump in the run-up to the November 5 election, speaking at rallies and donating $119 million to get him back into the White House. It may have been the best money spent of his life.
In his presidential victory speech, Trump declared Musk a genius, then welcomed him into his inner circle at Mar-a-Lago and even included him in a Trump family photo. A week after the election, Trump named Musk co-chair of a new advisory group, the Department of Government Efficiency (known as “DOGE ”), charged with cutting waste and overregulation in the federal government.
There are significant potential conflicts of interest at play, given Musk’s companies’ ties to the federal government. SpaceX , led by Musk, has signed nearly $20 billion in contracts with NASA and the Department of Defense since 2008. Tesla, led by Musk, has faced investigations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over the safety of its Autopilot and “full self-driving” features, following reports of multiple crashes, including at least 30 resulting in deaths since 2018.
X (formerly Twitter), which Musk controls, is subject to regulation by the Federal Communications Commission; Trump recently appointed as FCC chair a current FCC director who has been outspoken in support of Musk’s companies . Meanwhile, investors appear to be cheering these ties: Tesla’s stock rose in the weeks following the election, helping propel Musk’s fortune up $70 billion to an all-time high of $334 billion on Friday, November 22. On November 8, Musk crossed the $300 billion mark for the first time since April 2022 . He had previously become the first person worth at least $300 billion in November 2021.
History of wealth
Total assets
Companies
Tesla: $195 billion
Regulated by: Department of Transportation, Securities and Exchange Commission, Environmental Protection Agency
Musk owns about 12% of Tesla , excluding options, but has pledged more than half of his shares as collateral for personal loans of up to $3.5 billion . In early 2024, a Delaware judge voided Musk’s 2018 agreement to receive options equal to an additional 9% of Tesla. Forbes has discounted the options by 50% pending Musk’s appeal.
In total since 2020, Tesla has generated $8.7 billion in revenue by selling state and federal EV credits to other automakers, accounting for 12% of its gross profit . The SEC charged Musk with securities fraud in 2018 for a “series of false and misleading tweets” about the possibility of taking Tesla private . The SEC reached a settlement with Musk and Tesla that calls for a $40 million fine, Musk’s removal as Tesla chairman, and pre-approval of Musk’s tweets by the company’s lawyers.
Musk continues to mock the SEC with off-color jokes , most recently in a Nov. 23 X post that read, “SEC. The middle word is definitely “Elon’s,” but I can never remember what the other two words mean.”
SpaceX: $89 billion
Regulated by: Federal Aviation Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Communications Commission
Forbes estimates that Musk owns 42% of the reusable rocket company, which is worth nearly $210 billion based on a takeover bid launched during the second half of 2024. SpaceX is reportedly preparing to make another takeover bid in December 2024 that would value the company at more than $250 billion and Musk’s stake at more than $105 billion. Trump’s nominee for FCC chair has criticized the commission’s decision to deny SpaceX’s satellite internet business, Starlink , nearly $900 million in rural broadband subsidies in 2022 but has indicated that the decision is unlikely to be reviewed.
X.AI : $27 billion
Regulated by: Current federal laws
Musk owns about 54% of the artificial intelligence startup xAI, which he founded in 2023. He launched his chatbot Grok , available to X premium subscribers, in November 2023. xAI reportedly raised $5 billion from private investors at a valuation of $50 billion in November 2024 . That followed a $6 billion fundraising round in May 2024, which had valued xAI at $24 billion. Now, xAI’s revenue has reportedly hit $100 million on an updated annual basis.
X (formerly Twitter): $6.7 billion
Regulated by: Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission
Musk renamed Twitter X in late July 2023, less than a year after acquiring the social media company for $44 billion , including $13 billion of debt that was put on Twitter’s balance sheet. The company is now worth just $9 billion (net of debt), Forbes estimates. To value Musk’s stake, Forbes used the valuation of his stake published by investor Fidelity (which fell 71% between October 2022 and June 2024).
Forbes estimates that Musk owns 74% of the company , calculated based on capital commitments from other investors disclosed in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It has been a money-losing investment for the billionaire so far, but it has given him something perhaps even more valuable: control of a powerful global spokesperson where he has 206 million followers.
Cash and other investments: $6 billion
Musk sold $23 billion worth of Tesla stock during 2022, likely to fund his portion of the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. He has not sold any of the electric vehicle maker’s stock since. Forbes’ estimate of Musk’s cash and liquid investments is net of $3.5 billion of his estimated debt , which is secured by his Tesla stock.
Boring Company: $5.7 billion
Forbes estimates that Musk owns 69% of the 2016-founded infrastructure startup that builds underground tunnels. Musk reportedly got the idea for the company while stuck in traffic in Los Angeles. In Las Vegas, the company built a loop for the city’s convention center. In 2021, it sealed a contract to build a longer loop in Las Vegas with 51 stations to connect the airport, the Strip, and more. In May 2023, the project was expanded to include an additional 25 miles and 18 stations, but only the initial loop at the convention center is operational so far. The company has an estimated valuation of $8.3 billion based on private transactions of its shares on the secondary market.
Neuralink: $5 billion
Regulated by: The United States Food and Drug Administration
Musk owns an estimated 69% stake in startup Neuralink , which has an estimated valuation of $7.2 billion based on private secondary market transactions of its shares. The company, which is developing implantable brain-computer interfaces, says it is now focused on serving people with quadriplegia, with the goal of enabling them to control their computers and mobile devices with their thoughts. The FDA approved a human trial for its first device in 2023 . In August 2024, Neuralink announced that its second trial participant had received the implant, which enhanced their previous ability to play video games using a mouth-operated joystick.
«There are something like 428 federal agencies… I call it strangulation by overregulation… I think a bonfire of pointless regulation would be epic.»
— Elon Musk at a Donald Trump rally in Folsom, Pennsylvania, in October 2024.
Philanthropy
Note: 1/5
Forbes estimates that Musk, who signed the Giving Pledge in 2012, has donated $406 million over his lifetime to charitable causes from his foundation and other charitable vehicles. That’s less than 1% of his net worth as of Nov. 22, 2024. Not included: $7.9 billion in Tesla stock that Musk transferred to the Musk Foundation in 2021 and 2022. To account for philanthropic donations, Forbes counts funds paid out by a billionaire’s private charitable foundation rather than the amount invested in the foundation.
Below are some of Musk’s most notable donations to date:
- $100 million : To help fund a new STEM-focused elementary and middle school and, ultimately, a college in Austin, Texas, in 2022.
- $55 million : to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in September 2021 for cancer research
- 50 million: to fund the XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition (although it pledged a total of 100 million in February 2021)
- $30 million: to public schools and nonprofits in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley , where SpaceX builds rockets (announced March 2021).
- 10 million: to the University of Texas in December 2021 for “demographic research” (Musk tweeted in July 2021 that “population collapse is potentially the greatest risk to the future of civilization”)
- An additional $10 million to YC Org, the funding vehicle for OpenAI , a nonprofit co-founded by Musk and Y Combinator founder Sam Altman to “advance digital intelligence in ways most likely to benefit humanity as a whole” which Musk donated in 2016. The billionaire stepped down from the nonprofit’s board of directors two years later to avoid conflicts of interest as Tesla focused more on AI.
History
1980s
As a child growing up in South Africa, Musk taught himself to program . At age 12, he sold his first software program (a space game called Blastar) for about $500.
1988
He immigrated to Canada just before his 18th birthday and first worked at various jobs, including cleaning the boiler room at a sawmill. He enrolled at Queen’s University in Ontario and then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics.
1999
Four years after Musk launched the software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal, the firm was sold to Compaq in 1999, reportedly for more than $300 million.
2000
Musk merged an online bank he co-founded, X.com , with a competitor co-founded by Peter Thiel to form PayPal, which was acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.4 billion. Musk married Justine Wilson , a writer and student he had met at Queen’s University, in January 2000; she signed a postnuptial agreement a few months after their wedding. Their first child, a son named Nevada, died of sudden infant death syndrome at 10 weeks old.
2002
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 in El Segundo, California, not far from the Los Angeles airport.
2004
Joined Tesla as an investor and chairman , a year after Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded the company; he was later granted the title of co-founder of Tesla.
In 2008,
Musk filed for divorce from Justine, with whom he has five children (twins and triplets). He became CEO of Tesla in October 2008, in the midst of the financial crisis, and immediately laid off dozens of employees. That same year, SpaceX launched the first privately developed rocket into orbit (he has since adopted the title of “Technoking” at Tesla).
2010
Tesla went public on the Nasdaq in June, and the stock closed at a split-adjusted $1.59 on its first day of trading; the company had revenue of just under $117 million that year.
2012–2014
Musk debuted on Forbes’ list of the world’s billionaires with a net worth of $2 billion in March 2012. SpaceX, then valued at $1.8 billion, sent the first private spacecraft to the International Space Station in May. That same year, Musk divorced his second wife, actress Talulah Riley. The couple remarried 18 months later in July 2013. It was not meant to be. Musk filed for divorce a second time on December 31, 2014. The couple had no children together.
2016
Tesla acquired SolarCity , a struggling solar panel installation company backed by Musk and founded by his cousins, in August, triggering investor lawsuits that dragged on until April 2022, when a judge ruled in Musk’s favor.
2018
In August, Musk tweeted about taking Tesla private , sending the stock soaring and triggering a settlement with the SEC that now requires lawyers to pre-screen his tweets. Musk was widely criticized for smoking marijuana on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in September and for calling a British diver who helped rescue children from a flooded cave in Thailand a “pedophile.” Musk eventually won a defamation lawsuit brought by the diver, who had drawn Musk’s ire after labeling a rescue submarine sent to Thailand by SpaceX and the Boring Company a “PR stunt.”
2021
In May, Musk told viewers that he has Asperger’s syndrome while hosting Saturday Night Live. In September, SpaceX launched the first all-civilian crew into orbit, and Musk surpassed Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest person (after briefly surpassing him in early January), the third person worth $200 billion or more. Tesla’s stock peaked in early November, after Hertz announced a large Tesla order, briefly making Musk the first person worth more than $300 billion . Days later, Musk began selling $16 billion worth of Tesla stock in two months after polling his Twitter followers, likely resulting in the largest annual tax bill in history for an individual (and reportedly prompting an SEC investigation into insider trading by him and Kimbal).
Also in November, Musk secretly fathered twins with an executive at his brain implant startup, Neuralink . In 2021, Musk split from his girlfriend, alt-pop star Grimes , with whom he has three children: son X Æ A-12 , born in 2020, daughter Exa Dark Sideræl , born in 2021, and son Tau Techno Mechanicus , born via surrogate in June 2022. Musk, who reportedly told his first wife [Justine], “I’m the alpha in this relationship,” while they were dancing at their wedding, has a total of 11 children with three women (including the previously mentioned toddler who died as an infant).
In April, Musk launched a $44 billion hostile takeover bid for Twitter, after underreporting a 9% stake and initially accepting a board seat. Twitter’s board agreed to sell the company to Musk on April 25. He dithered over the deal for months. Twitter sued him to complete the deal, and Musk ended up buying the company in late October. He owns about 74% of Twitter; other investors include Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, and cryptocurrency firm Binance .
2023
Tesla’s plummeting stock value saw Musk fall from being the world’s richest person to the world’s second-richest person on Forbes’ list of the world’s billionaires for 2023 in April. But he regained the title of number one richest person in the world in June 2023 thanks to a sustained rally in Tesla’s share price. At Twitter, Musk laid off nearly 75% of the social media company’s employees after purchasing it in October 2022. In July, a month after replacing himself as Twitter’s CEO and moving into the role of chairman, Musk renamed the company X.
2024
Musk lost the title of the world’s richest person to French luxury goods magnate Bernard Arnault in January, after a Delaware judge struck down Musk’s 2018 deal to receive stock options equivalent to a 9% stake in Tesla. In May, Musk became the world’s richest again, surpassing Arnault when private investors valued Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI , at $24 billion. As the value of Musk’s assets rose in the fall, the gap between him and Larry Ellison , the world’s second-richest person as of late November, widened to around $100 billion. But his biggest move of the year was declaring himself an ardent supporter of Donald Trump for president. That led Trump to name Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican primary challenger, as co-chairs of a new advisory committee, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Because Musk will not be employed by the federal government, he will not have to sell any of his assets, as most government employees at companies are required to do. In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal in late November, Musk and Ramaswamy said they would “pursue three main types of reform: regulatory rollbacks, administrative reductions and cost savings” and would focus on employing “executive actions based on existing law rather than passing new laws.” Musk’s initial boast of cutting $2 trillion in spending has faded. Millions of people will be watching to see what DOGE accomplishes.
