CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and xAI
No. 1
Rank on 2024 Forbes 400 List
$334 B
Net Worth as of November 22, 2024
AGE: 53 | SOURCE OF WEALTH: TESLA, SPACEX | SELF-MADE SCORE: 8/10 | RESIDENCE: AUSTIN, TEXAS | CITIZENSHIP: UNITED STATES | MARITAL STATUS: DIVORCED | CHILDREN: 11 | EDUCATION: BACHELOR OF ARTS/SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
The richest person on Earth is now arguably the most powerful, too. A former Democrat–and a South African who came to the U.S. via Canada as a college student–Musk became a big backer of Donald Trump in the runup to the November 5 election, speaking at rallies and donating $119 million to return him to the White House. It may have been the best money he ever spent. 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 a co-chair of a new advisory group, the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”), tasked with reducing waste and excess regulations in the federal government.
There are potentially significant conflicts of interest at play, given Musk’s companies’ ties to the federal government. Musk-led SpaceX has inked nearly $20 billion in contracts with NASA and the Department of Defense since 2008. Musk-led Tesla 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 that resulted in fatalities since 2018. And Musk-controlled X (formerly called Twitter) is subject to regulation by the Federal Communications Commission; Trump recently nominated as FCC chairman a current FCC director who has been outspoken about his support for Musk’s companies. Meanwhile, investors appear to applaud these ties: shares of Tesla surged in the weeks after the election, helping to push Musk’s fortune up $70 billion to a record 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 ever worth at least $300 billion in November 2021.
Wealth History
Asset Breakdown
As of November 22, 2024
Musk owns about 12% of Tesla excluding options, but has pledged more than half his shares as collateral for personal loans of up to $3.5 billion. In early 2024, a Delaware judge voided Musk’s 2018 deal to receive options equaling an additional 9% of Tesla. Forbes has discounted the options by 50% pending Musk’s appeal. Tesla has generated $8.7 billion of revenue selling state and federal EV credits to other auto manufacturers since 2020, 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 possibly taking Tesla private. The SEC reached a settlement with Musk and Tesla requiring payment of a $40 million penalty, Musk’s removal as Tesla’s chairman and pre-appoval of Musk’s tweets by company lawyers. Musk continues to taunt the SEC with off-color jokes, most recently in an X post on November 23 that read: “SEC. The middle word is definitely “Elon’s”, but I can never remember what the other two words stand for.”
Forbes estimates that Musk owns 42% of the reusable rocket company, which is worth nearly $210 billion based on a tender offer launched during the second half of 2024. SpaceX is reportedly preparing to do another tender offer 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 to chair the FCC has criticized the commission’s decision to deny SpaceX’s satellite internet business, Starlink, nearly $900 million of rural broadband subsidies in 2022 but has indicated that the decision is unlikely to be revisited.
Musk owns an estimated 54% of artificial intelligence startup xAI, which he founded in 2023. It released its Grok chatbot–available to premium subscribers of X–in November 2023. xAI reportedly raised $5 billion from private investors at a $50 billion valuation in November 2024. That followed a $6 billion fundraising round in May 2024, which had valued xAI at $24 billion. xAI’s revenues have reportedly reached $100 million on an annualized basis.
Musk gave Twitter the new name X in late July 2023– less than a year after acquiring the social media company for $44 billion, including $13 billion of debt that got put on Twitter’s balance sheet. Now the company is worth just $9 billion (net of debt), Forbes estimates. To value Musk’s stake, Forbes used investor Fidelity’s publicly reported valuation of its stake (which fell 71% between October 2022 and June 2024). Forbes estimates that Musk owns 74% of the company, calculated based on equity commitments from other investors disclosed in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. So far it’s been a money-losing investment for this tycoon, but it has given him something perhaps even more valuable: control of a powerful global mouthpiece where he has 206 million followers.
Musk sold $23 billion of Tesla shares during 2022–likely to finance his piece of the $44 billion Twitter acquisition. He hasn’t sold any of the EV maker’s shares 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 shares.
Forbes estimates that Musk owns 69% of the infrastructure startup founded in 2016, which constructs underground tunnels. Musk reportedly got the idea for the company while sitting in traffic in Los Angeles. In Las Vegas the company built a 1.7-mile loop for the city’s convention center. In 2021 it sealed a contract to build a longer 29-mile 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 so far only the initial loop at the convention center is operational. The company has an estimated valuation of $8.3 billion based on private secondary market trades of its stock.
Musk owns an estimated 69% stake in startup Neuralink, which has an estimated valuation of $7.2 billion based on private secondary market trades of its stock. The company, which is developing implantable brain-computer interfaces, says it’s 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 his previous ability to play video games using a mouth-operated joystick.
Philanthropy
1/5
Philanthropy Score
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 is less than 1% of his net worth as of November 22, 2024. Not included: $7.9 billion worth of Tesla shares that Musk transferred to the Musk Foundation in 2021 and 2022. To tally philanthropic giving, Forbes counts funds paid out by a billionaire’s private charitable foundation rather than the amount put into the foundation.
HERE ARE SOME OF MUSK’S LARGEST DONATIONS TO DATE:
History
1980s
As a kid in South Africa, Musk taught himself to code. By age 12 he sold his first software—a space game called Blastar—for about $500.
1988
He immigrated to Canada just before his 18th birthday and first worked a variety of odd jobs, including cleaning the boiler room of a lumber mill. He enrolled at Queen’s University in Ontario, then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he got a bachelor’s degree in economics.
1999
Four years after Musk launched 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 cofounded, X.com, with a competitor cofounded by Peter Thiel to form PayPal, which was acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.4 billion. Musk got married in January 2000 to Justine Wilson, a writer and student he’d met at Queen’s University; 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
He joined Tesla as an investor and chairman, a year after the company’s founding by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning; he was later granted the title of Tesla cofounder.
2008
Musk filed for divorce from Justine, with whom he shares five sons–twins and triplets. He became CEO of Tesla in October 2008, amid the financial crisis, and immediately laid off dozens of employees. That same year SpaceX launched the first privately developed rocket into orbit (he’s since adopted the title of “Technoking” at Tesla).
2010
Tesla went public on the Nasdaq in June, with the stock closing at a split-adjusted $1.59 on the first trading day; the company had just under $117 million in revenues 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 wasn’t meant to be. Musk filed for divorce a second time on Dec. 31, 2014. The couple did not have any children together.
2016
Tesla acquired SolarCity, a struggling solar panel installer backed by Musk and founded by his cousins, in August, sparking investor lawsuits that dragged into April 2022, when a judge ruled in Musk’s favor.
2018
In August, Musk tweeted about taking Tesla private, sending shares soaring and prompting an SEC settlement 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 “pedo guy.” Musk ultimately won a defamation lawsuit filed by the diver, who had drawn Musk’s ire after labeling a rescue submarine sent to Thailand by SpaceX and Boring Company a “PR stunt.”
2021
In May, Musk told television viewers he has Asperger’s syndrome while guest hosting Saturday Night Live. In September, SpaceX launched the first all-civilian crew into orbit, as Musk overtook Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest person (after briefly passing him in early January) – the third person ever 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 of Tesla shares over two months after polling his Twitter followers, likely resulting in the largest-ever one-year tax bill for an individual (and reportedly prompting an SEC insider trading probe of him and Kimbal).
Also in November, Musk secretly fathered twins with an executive of his brain implant startup, Neuralink. In 2021 Musk split with 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 a surrogate in June 2022. Musk, who reportedly told his first wife, “I am the alpha in this relationship,” as they danced at their wedding, has a total of 11 children with three women (including one child who died as an infant).
2022
In April, Musk launched a $44 billion hostile takeover bid for Twitter, after delinquently reporting a 9% ownership stake and initially accepting a board seat. Twitter’s board agreed to sell the company to Musk on April 25. He waffled on the deal for months. Twitter sued him to complete the deal and Musk ended up buying the company in late October. He owns an estimated 74% of Twitter; other investors include Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Twitter’s cofounder and former CEO Jack Dorsey and crypto company Binance.
2023
The decline in the value of Tesla stock resulted in Musk falling from the world’s richest to the world’s second richest person on Forbes’ 2023 list of the World’s Billionaires in April. But he regained the title of World’s No. 1 Richest in June 2023 on the back of a sustained rebound in the price of Tesla stock. 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 chairman’s role, Musk changed the company’s name to X.
2024
Musk lost the title of world’s richest person to French luxury goods tycoon Bernard Arnault in January, after a Delaware judge voided Musk’s 2018 deal to receive stock options equaling a 9% stake in Tesla. In May, Musk became the world’s richest again, overtaking Arnault when private investors valued Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, at $24 billion. As the value of Musk’s assets climbed in the fall, the gap between him and Larry Ellison, the world’s No. 2 richest person as of late November, widened to around $100 billion. But his biggest move of the year was coming out as an ardent supporter of Donald Trump for president. That led to Trump naming Musk and onetime Republican primary competitor Vivek Ramaswamy as co-heads of a new advisory committee, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Because Musk won’t be an employee of the federal government, he will not have to sell any of his assets, as most government employees in business are required to do. In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in late November, Musk and Ramaswamy said they would “pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings” and would focus on employing “executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws.” Musk’s early boast of cutting $2 trillion in spending has vanished. Millions will be watching to see what DOGE accomplishes.
On The Cover: Elon Musk
( left: April 2014; right: September 2015 )
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