How Rich Is Elon Musk?

In addition to being a billionaire, Elon Musk is one of the most influential people in the world and outer space. He is responsible for a vast network of satellites in orbit around Earth that people use to access high-speed internet. As of 2023, there were about 4,500 of these Starlink satellites in space and Musk plans to eventually increase that number to 42,000, according to Space.com. In addition to telecommunications, Musk has even grander plans in space, like sending people to the moon and Mars. "We need to have a ... big permanently occupied base on the moon. And then build a city on Mars to become a spacefaring civilization, a multi-planet species," Musk once said during a SpaceX news conference.

Back on Earth, this ambitious attitude has helped Musk consistently rank among the wealthiest people on the planet. This is largely due to his involvement in a wide range of businesses and industries from education to automotive, social media to rocket ships. On his way to global domination, Musk made his first million in 1999 and has been growing his bank account ever since. Yet, according to the entrepreneur, money is often the furthest thing from his mind, as he holds freedom of speech above most things. "I'll say what I want to say and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it," Musk told CNBC. He certainly has money to spare – here's how rich Elon Musk really is.

Elon Musk's father Errol owned a plane in the 1980s and sold it for 80,000 British pounds to Italian buyers. Right after the sale, the buyers proposed that Errol buy a stake in an emerald mine in Zambia for 40,000 pounds. "I became a half-owner of the mine, and we got emeralds for the next six years," he told Business Insider (via News24). "We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe," Errol reportedly once said. Yet, according to a tweet by Elon, his dad didn't own an emerald mine and Elon even needed to take out $100,000 in loans to pay for his education.

Whether or not he had family wealth, Musk said he lived a frugal lifestyle in his early days. "My threshold for existing is pretty low. I figured I could be in some dingy apartment with my computer and be okay and not starve," Musk explained on an episode of StarTalk Radio. He even tried to live on one dollar a day when he first moved to the United States by shopping in bulk, with hot dogs and oranges as some of his favorite things to get. He also ate a lot of pasta with green peppers and premade sauce, Musk told Tyson. According to Musk, this experiment taught him that he could probably earn more than he needed to pay for groceries and wouldn't need to worry about money.

While the patriarch Errol Musk was an engineer and politician, two of his kids, Elon and Kimbal, became entrepreneurs. In 1995, the brothers launched a company called the Global Link Information Network. According to a tweet by Musk, the company was funded with $2,000 of his own money, $5,000 from Kimbal, and some later funds from Errol. "My Dad provided 10% of a ~$200k angel funding round much later, but by then risk was reduced & round would've happened anyway," Elon wrote. The company, later renamed Zip2, provided an online directory of and map to businesses. The list of clients grew and the brothers started to earn huge deals with brands like The New York Times. Clearly a successful business, computer company Compaq purchased Zip2 in 1999 for $307 million. Musk earned $22 million from the deal.

While Musk could have likely retired before age 30 from the blockbuster sale, he continued his entrepreneurial ways and launched X.com in 1999. The site served as an online bank, later merging with Confinity Inc. to eventually become PayPal. Musk was initially announced as the CEO of PayPal until the executive board fired him and replaced him with Peter Thiel, another future billionaire. In 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion — and thanks to Musk's stake in PayPal, he earned $180 million from the sale.

Most of Elon Musk's net worth comes from stakes in companies he either helped found or invested in. It's only when selling off stock that Musk acquires real cash. Still, Musk is offered compensation for his roles in these companies, sometimes by law. For example, California state minimum wage laws dictated that as CEO of Tesla, Musk was entitled to at least $23,760 in 2019. Reportedly, this was the last year that Musk took this cash salary. Instead, he often gets more and more shares of stock in the company. As of 2023, Tesla was by far the most valuable car company in the world with a market capitalization of about $584 billion.

Considering the worth of these stock options, it makes sense that Musk is one of the best-paid executives in the United States. In 2016, he was among the top five highest-earning executives, taking home an estimated $99,744,920 for the year including his stock. Still, most of this is hypothetical worth with stocks and Musk seems to be adamant that executives shouldn't have big salaries. While he was in the process of buying Twitter, he said he would have no issue in chopping the earnings of the company's existing executive board. "Board salary will be $0 if my bid succeeds, so that's ~$3M/year saved right there," Musk tweeted.

One way Elon Musk has continued to make money is by creating companies, then selling them. This trend started in 1984 when he was only 12 years old and created a video game called Blastar. He then sold the code of the game he created to PC and Office Technology magazine for $500. Fifteen years later, Musk sold his company Zip2 to Compaq and took home $22 million. Then in 2002, he earned $180 million when eBay acquired PayPal. More than companies, Musk also makes money through buying and selling physical goods. He has a collection of Los Angeles properties in his real estate portfolio worth an estimated $100 million. Ideally, Musk would rather unload all of these places and take the cash. "I am selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house," Musk tweeted in 2020.

Musk's wealth truly lies in stock options, when he can buy more stock in his companies for under the market value. The better his companies perform, the more stock he acquires. Furthermore, he can borrow money to avoid selling this stock to avoid taxes on potential gains of these stocks — a method often used by the ultra-rich. While Musk paid no income tax in 2018, he was hit with a huge tax bill a few years later in 2021. "For those wondering, I will pay over $11 billion in taxes this year," he revealed in a tweet.

At the start of the new millennium, there seemed to be no stopping the traditional automotive makers like Ford and Toyota. That was until a new company led by Elon Musk — named Tesla — started to question if gas was the only resource that could make cars go. The company was founded in 2003 by two engineers, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, with Musk as an early investor. Musk gave seed capital to help launch the company. 

Amazingly, Musk was just an honored guest at a 2006 Tesla event where CEO Martin Eberhard announced the company's first vehicle, the Tesla Roadster. Two years later, Musk took over as CEO and product architect of Tesla and led the company to a $1 trillion-dollar valuation by 2021. Musk profited the most from this continued success, owning about 17% of the company's stock. As of 2021, this stock valuation was $175 billion, making Tesla stock the biggest contributor to Musk's net worth. His ownership of Tesla only continues to grow as he often takes stock awards every quarter instead of taking bonuses or additional salary. Amazingly, the cash he earns from the company is a measly base salary, which was about $45,000 in 2017. 

Clearly, his strategy to accrue an astounding net worth worked. Of the five people listed as official co-founders of Tesla, only one other, the former Chief Technology Officer JB Straubel, is worth at least a billion dollars.

Even before his involvement in Tesla, Elon Musk had grand ideas about the future of space. He founded the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation in 2002, which is often referred to as SpaceX. While his ambitions were out of this world, the company almost ended a few years after it started. In the early days of SpaceX, Musk admitted "we were running on fumes." He was constantly looking for public contracts and funds to keep the company alive. 

In 2008, just when it appeared SpaceX might be done, NASA came to the company's rescue. SpaceX signed a $1.6 billion contract to provide 12 flights to send cargo and supplies to the International Space Station. This lifeline didn't go to waste and SpaceX continued to expand its operations. While the most famous name in outer space is NASA, the agency is government-run, while SpaceX is a privately owned company. This means the company earns Musk a lot of money. In 2021, SpaceX was valued at $100 billion and by 2023 the valuation grew to $150 billion. As the founder, Musk owns about a 48% stake in the company.

In addition to Starlink, the program responsible for putting satellites in orbit, Musk and his company are also developing a plan to put humans on Mars. The rocket to get the astronauts to the red planet is called Starship and as Musk tweeted, his goal is to have a successful mission by 2029.

Only someone with an insane net worth like Elon Musk could even think about buying a huge company, let alone one of the most used social media services in the world. In early 2022, Musk began investing in Twitter until he became the largest stakeholder in the company, worth an estimated $2.89 billion by April. All this investing also earned him an invitation to be on the company's board of directors. He declined and instead offered to buy the company outright.

He filed the purchase request with the Securities and Exchange Commission and said in a statement, "I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy." Musk added that in his short time as a Twitter investor, he was not confident in the management of the company. "Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company," he said, adding, "Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it." 

Selling $8.5 billion of his stock in Tesla to help secure the deal, Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion and was officially the owner by October of 2022. While the buyout of Twitter also included debt in the company, estimated at $13 billion, Musk had big plans to pay off the debt while increasing revenue to make the social media site and himself more profitable.

In 2015, there were familiar names on Forbes' list of the richest billionaires in the world. Sitting at the top spot was Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, with an estimated worth of over $79 billion dollars. Third on the list was Gates' close friend and financial superstar Warren Buffett. Other names in the top 10 were super wealthy families like the Koch brothers Charles and David, plus members of the Walton family who inherited the Walmart fortune. Elon Musk sat at the 100th position with a net worth of $12 billion dollars thanks to his stock in Tesla Motors, which at that point had been a publicly traded company for five years.

By the start of 2021, though, Musk's net worth ballooned to $190 billion and he officially became the richest man in the world. Musk's response to having more money than anyone else alive was a simple tweet that said, "How strange." He added right after in another tweet, "Well, back to work ..." He wasn't kidding, as Musk continued to work and grow his empire of rockets, electric vehicles, satellites, and many other projects. Depending on his company's stock price evaluations on a given day, Musk alternated in 2023 between the richest and second richest person in the world behind French CEO Bernard Arnault and his family. For example, in late July of 2023, Musk's fortune was worth an estimated $240 billion.

While being worth $240 billion on paper isn't exactly the same as having $240 billion in a personal bank account, being the wealthiest person in the world means Elon Musk can buy just about anything. He proved this was the case when he paid $44 billion to buy Twitter in 2022. When it comes to spending millions instead of billions, Musk has invested in stylish ways to get from one place to another. In 2018, he purchased a Gulfstream Aerospace G650ER private business jet, which start at $66.5 million. It only took a couple of years for Musk to upgrade and buy the Gulfstream G700. The new plane cost an estimated $78 million and was the fourth jet in his personal collection.

As far as vacations, Musk is often working more than playing but occasionally enjoys a luxurious break. For example, he joined his friends on a superyacht called Zeus to spend time in Greece's Mykonos island. While Musk doesn't actually own a yacht, he and his friends rented the extravagant boat, which costs $7,000 per day to use.

Often, instead of spending his money on items like clothes and yachts, Musk is founding more companies. For example, he launched a new company in 2023 focused on artificial intelligence called xAI. The cryptic mission statement on the company website says, "The goal of xAI is to understand the true nature of the universe."

On his way to becoming the richest person in the world, Elon Musk bought his first luxury accommodation in 2002 in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. Then, in 2012 he paid $17 million for another home in Bel-Air. Musk had already been living in the home for two years as a renter before purchasing the estate outright. In 2013, Musk bought another home on the exact same street. This second estate was relatively modest compared to the previous place, with the entrepreneur buying the home for $6.75 million. 

Musk continued to grow his collection of homes with a $20 million place and a $4.3 million home, both in Los Angeles, in 2015. He then bought a $24.25 million Los Angeles property the following year and a Hillsborough home in 2017 for $23.4 million. Clearly just getting warmed up, Elon then purchased another home in Los Angeles for $6.4 million in 2019.

While it might seem like Elon has a taste for living in million-dollar homes, he admitted that he actually wants to downsize. So, he sold many of his properties and decided to often reside in a small house located on the SpaceX campus in Boca Chica, Texas.

While many billionaires and other mega-wealthy individuals often own expensive cars, Elon Musk has them all beat as the CEO of Tesla, the most valuable car company in the world. Not only does Musk have any of the cars his company makes at his disposal, but he also has the privilege of driving models not even released to the public. For example, in 2019, Musk went to dinner at celeb hot spot restaurant Nobu in Malibu in a futuristic vehicle. It was the first public appearance of Tesla's Cybertruck, and even Edward Norton left Nobu with Musk to take a look at the car.

Beyond Tesla, Musk bought his first fancy car after his big payday from selling Zip2. Of the $22 million Musk made from the deal, he used $1 million of his earnings to buy the McLaren F1 road vehicle. Admittedly, the purchase was a total splurge. "It's not consistent with the rest of my behavior," Musk told CNN as the car was delivered to his front door. He was also not clearly ready to handle the vehicle's power and spectacularly wrecked the car. While trying to show off the McLaren F1's capabilities to his passenger and fellow entrepreneur Peter Thiel, Musk lost control and launched the car into the air after running into an embankment. While the vehicle was ruined in the March 2000 wreck, amazingly, neither man was hurt and both went on to become billionaires.

In between his big paydays from selling Zip2 and then PayPal, Elon Musk started the Musk Foundation. This was in 2001, well before Musk was a billionaire. The entrepreneur founded the organization to provide grants to scientists researching specific topics like renewable energy, human space exploration, pediatrics, and the "development of safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity," according to the company website. 

Even if the official website is simply text on a white background, Musk is serious when it comes to providing grants. In 2021, he reportedly donated $5.74 billion to certain projects for the foundation. The following year, Musk donated a staggering $1.9 billion worth of his Tesla stock to charities. "I'm always looking (for) ways to donate money that are actually good," Musk tweeted in 2023. Still, he acknowledged "it is very hard to donate money if you (care) about it doing actual good, not merely the appearance of it."

In terms of dollar amount, no donation is bigger than when Musk said he would join in The Giving Pledge. This idea, started by billionaires Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and his ex-wife Melinda in 2010, urged fellow billionaires to publicly commit to give away a minimum of half of their net worth either while alive or through a will.

Starting in 2017, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, was the richest person in the world. He took the title from Bill Gates and stayed on top as the wealthiest person for nearly four years. During that time, Elon Musk began growing his personal net worth until he surpassed Bezos in 2021 to become the richest man alive. 

This began somewhat of a competition between the two men, especially as both were in the business of outer space, with SpaceX from Musk and Blue Origin from Bezos. In fact, Blue Origin sued SpaceX, calling into question the safety of the rockets from Musk's company. At a 2021 conference, Musk called out Bezos for what he believed was an attempt to shut down Blue Origin's competition. "I think he should put more of his energy into getting to orbit, [rather] than lawsuits. You cannot sue your way to the moon, no matter how good your lawyers are," Musk said about Bezos and his team.

Though Musk surpassed Bezos as the richest man, the Tesla CEO was himself passed by Bernard Arnault, the French CEO of the LVMH luxury goods conglomerate, who became the wealthiest person in the world in 2023. That same year, Arnaut invited Musk to a family luncheon with Maye Musk, and two of Arnault's sons, Antoine and Alexandre. In a photo taken by Antoine, Musk and Arnault stand side-by-side in suits with the Eiffel Tower in the background and the caption, "THE picture."

In 2002, Elon Musk moved into a home in Los Angeles with his wife Justine. The two first met as students at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. In 2000, they tied the knot and stayed together until their divorce in 2008. The pair had five children together before Elon filed for divorce. As Justine explained, Musk told her six weeks after separating that he was engaged to actor Talulah Riley from the movie "Pride and Prejudice." 

Musk and Riley married in 2010 but only lasted for two years before separating. A year and a half later, the pair decided to restart the relationship and married once again. This time, the relationship only lasted a few more months than the first attempt. On New Year's Eve in 2014, Musk and Riley decided to get divorced for a second time. 

Musk then ended up with another entertainer, this time with musician Claire Boucher, aka Grimes. Though the couple never married, Musk and Grimes had a son together in 2020 named X Æ A-12 Musk. Then, in December 2021, the couple had a daughter together through a surrogate, named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk. Just after the news broke of their second child, Grimes confirmed she and Musk were officially separated. Musk stays close to his kids, often visiting Disney World together. He even founded a school for them called Ad Astra.

Elon Musk is obviously well-known for his many business successes. Part of the reason he is so wealthy is due to the continued success of his biggest and most popular companies like Tesla and SpaceX. Yet, these businesses are only part of the entire Musk universe. For example, he started The Boring Company in 2016 as a subsidiary of SpaceX. The company set the audacious goal of revolutionizing transportation by reducing traffic with underground tunnels. 

The Boring Company introduced its first functional project, called the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop, where Teslas transport passengers in tunnels under Sin City, with no stops along the way. According to Musk, he started the company as a joke to build tunnels under Los Angeles to solve the city's legendary traffic issues. It then turned into what he called a hobby company, making everything from merchandise to flamethrowers inspired by the movie "Spaceballs," Musk explained on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

In addition to boring things, Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 to support research on artificial intelligence. While he resigned from the company's executive board in 2018 due to conflicts of interest with Tesla's artificial intelligence teams, the company went on to launch the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT. Another special project in Musk's repertoire is Neuralink, a company he helped create in 2016 with the goal of implanting neuro machines into humans.