What is the net worth of Elon Musk?
Elon Musk achieved billionaire status by joining the elite club in 2012, just nine years later, topping the list. His wealth is mainly based on his stakes in the electric vehicle company Tesla, of which he is the CEO.
Musk has dabbled in several projects throughout his career, from online payment systems to artificial intelligence and transportation above and below ground and in space. His ideas can increase or decrease the value of him and other companies and cryptocurrencies.
From South Africa to California
Elon Reeve Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, where he grew up and briefly attended university. Born into a wealthy family, he was gifted with technology and entrepreneurship early. He wrote and sold code for video games at the age of 12. But his dream was on the other side of the world, in America.
Because his mother was born in Canada, he could obtain a Canadian passport at the age of 17 and settle there. Knowing that it would be easier to get into the U.S. from Canada, he did this. He became a U.S. citizen in 2002.
After studying for two years at Queens College in Ontario, he moved to the United States and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, first in economics and then in physics. In 1995, he travelled to the West Coast to earn his PhD in energy physics from Stanford University but dropped out two days later.
It was the heyday of the internet boom, and Musk saw more opportunities on the internet than in physics. That same year, he founded his first company.
Elon Musk’s entrepreneurial rise to extreme wealth
Musk founded internet software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal, which was sold to Compaq four years later for $307 million. He co-founded the online bank X.com, which became PayPal after merging with Confinity in 2000. In 2002, eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion; the same year, Musk became a U.S. citizen and founded his subsequent work.
SpaceX is born
Elon Musk has long argued that humans must become a multi-planetary species for humans to survive. This led him to found his third company, SpaceX, in 2002. Musk wants to build commercial spacecraft that are reusable and therefore less expensive.
Six years later, the company signed a contract with NASA to manage cargo transportation to the International Space Station (ISS). The goal has always been to get people into space, and in 2020, the company launched its first crewed flight. This allows NASA to fly astronauts from U.S. soil to the International Space Station without relying on Russia. The company is now working on its next project, a spacecraft it hopes will use to colonize Mars. Even though SpaceX was just getting started, Musk didn’t sit still. In 2004, Musk invested in Tesla Motors, becoming its largest shareholder and chairman of the board, to the title of co-founder.
The company’s founders set out to produce affordable electric vehicles for the mass market. The company also makes lithium-ion batteries for its cars and homes to charge energy and energy.
Tesla Motors
Although many in the auto industry doubted it, in 2008, Tesla released its first Model, the Roadster sports car. Four years later, Tesla launched the Model S sedan.
After some delays, the production of the Model 3, the most affordable of the four models currently sold by Tesla, has fully begun. By June 2021, the company had sold over a million Model 3 units.
In 2017, Tesla overtook General Motors to become the most valuable U.S. automaker. The company’s vehicles revolutionized electric vehicles, making them attractive to the masses. The growth of this market and the price of Tesla stock are the driving forces behind its infinite wealth.
So how much is Elon Musk worth?
Elon Musk first made the Forbes billionaire list in 2012, when his net worth was estimated at $2 billion. Musk’s net worth was $27 billion at the start of 2020, but it has skyrocketed since then.
According to Bloomberg, in July of that year, he surpassed Warren Buffett with a net worth of about $70.5 billion. Just over a year later, Musk beat Jeff Bezos as the wealthiest person when he was worth over $200 billion. And just a few months later, in November 2021, he became the first person to have a net worth of over $300 billion. It briefly fell below that threshold, only to bounce back above $300 billion at the end of the month.
His wealth has increased as his stock options in previous and current companies continue to rise, but most of his wealth comes from Tesla, about three-quarters. Musk does not receive a salary from the company but rather accepts stock options instead of cash. The impressive growth in his net worth came from the rise in Tesla shares as one of its space rockets, most recently with Hertz announcing they would buy 100,000 Tesla electric vehicles for their fleet.