Elon Musk Net Worth

You will likely see the name of Elon Musk leading the pack of any list featuring the world’s richest people. But who is Elon Musk, anyway? What is Elon Musk’s net worth and how did he become so rich? Let’s take a look at one of the top 10 billionaires of today.

Barely a decade ago, not a lot of people knew who Elon Musk was. But this quickly changed when his company, SpaceX, became the first privately owned company in the world to successfully launch a rocket, causing his popularity to skyrocket as well. That event paved the way for him eventually becoming the world’s richest person. Elon Musk is actually more popular now as the co-founder and CEO of Tesla. Tesla is the most expensive car manufacturer in the world today.

Biography and Early Life

Born in South Africa on June 28 1971, as Elon Reeve Musk, this billionaire was not from a very wealthy family, as some people used to speculate. His father is an engineer and his mother is a nutritionist. He is unmarried and has 7 children.

When he was 17 years old, Musk left for Canada to escape getting into service in the South African army. It wasn’t a trip that he prepared very well for and when he got to Canada, the uncle he was thinking of staying with was actually not there.

After several phone calls and bus rides, he finally got to a relative’s house where he stayed for a couple of years, working odd jobs to get by. The rest of his family finally would make the trip from South Africa. And they did reunite with him.

Education

Musk studied at Kingston’s Queen’s University in Ontario for two years, then got a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania. He started with a degree in economics at the Wharton School. And then he moved on to a bachelor’s degree in physics, finally graduating with two degrees.

In 1995, Musk moved to California and attended Stanford University but only for two days. He dropped out after realizing that business and technology held more potential for him rather than physics.

Business Ventures

Musk co-founded a web software company called Zip2 along with his brother Kimbal. A couple of years later, Compaq bought the company, earning the brothers $307 million. Shortly thereafter, Musk became a co-founder of financial services company X.com which would eventually become PayPal. This company was sold to eBay in 2002 for a cool $1.5 billion.

That same year, Musk founded SpaceX, which considers NASA to be one of its major clients. Two years later, he began the now very famous Tesla, Inc. Among his other successful ventures are SolarCity which became Tesla Energy, a non-profit company for research called OpenAI, a neurotechnology company called Neuralink, and a tunnel construction company called The Boring Company.

Elon Musk is currently on the board of directors for Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity Corporation, and Endeavor Group Holdings, Inc. He is also invested in Dogecoin and Bitcoin.

Elon Musk’s Net Worth as Compared to Other Billionaires

Today, Musk is probably the most famous person on the Bloomberg billionaires index. But there are also other famous names on the list. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon is close behind Musk with a net worth of $132.8 billion.

Musk is also now much wealthier than Bill Gates of Microsoft. Gates was famously known as the world’s richest person at the turn of the millennium. He held the title for more than two decades. Gates’ net worth is now valued at $125 billion. Although it reached a peak of $133.8 billion in the first quarter of this year.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, now known as Meta, now has a net worth of only $71.5 billion after suffering a loss of $54 billion early this year, and is no longer in the top 10.

Recent Developments

Early this year, Musk decided to buy Twitter for $44 billion. At that time, he already owned 8% of the company. It was reported that Musk sold around 10 million Tesla shares worth approximately $8.5 billion, in order to add to his funds for purchasing the social media platform.

Recently though, Musk pulled out of the Twitter deal, which wasn’t long after he claimed that Twitter was in breach of their contract. The social media company did not give him the information that he had originally requested so that he could look into the bot issue. Musk threatened to pull out of the deal before he eventually did.

The Twitter Deal Pullout

His buyout letter reads: “This information is fundamental to Twitter’s business and financial performance and is necessary to consummate. Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information. Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk’s requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr. Musk incomplete or unusable information.

Musk claimed to have made “provided numerous additional follow-up requests” but alleged that all of them had gone unfounded and explained that Twitter “did not comply” with its obligations, therefore giving him the right to terminate the deal.

The letter concluded: “Accordingly, for all of these reasons, Mr. Musk hereby exercises X Holdings I, Inc.’s right to terminate the Merger Agreement and abandon the transaction contemplated thereby, and this letter constitutes formal notice of X Holding I, Inc.’s termination of the Merger Agreement.”

Following Musk’s decision to pull out, Twitter’s current CEO, Bret Taylor, has warned Elon that the company would pursue legal action in order to “force” the deal to take place.

Also in recent news, Musk has gotten a favorable decision in the trial Tesla and SpaceX had been involved in, particularly in the acquisition of SolarCity.

Elon Musk’s Net Worth Today

At the end of September of 2021, Elon Musk’s net worth reached the $200 billion mark following a surge in Tesla stock. Tesla share price and Musk’s value continued to increase, even surpassing $300 billion by November.

However, things took a downturn when he announced his intent to buy Twitter. Musk net worth has continued to go down by $49 billion, since he officially made the offer to purchase the social media company in April of this year.

Today, Elon Musk’s net worth is valued at a whopping $225 billion, which is still the highest in the world despite the recent massive losses.

Photo Credit: Kathy Hutchins