Elon Musk made $175.8 million when PayPal was sold to eBay in October 2002.[1] He was first listed on the
Forbes Billionaires List in 2012, with a net worth of $2 billion.[2] He is the founder, chairman, CEO, and CTO of
SpaceX; angel investor, CEO, product architect, and former chairman of
Tesla, Inc.; owner, executive chairman, and CTO of
X Corp.; founder of
the Boring Company and
xAI; co-founder of
Neuralink and
OpenAI; and president of the
Musk Foundation. He is one of the wealthiest people in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$191 billion as of April 2024[update], according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and $182.6 billion according to Forbes, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.[3][4][5]
Details
At the start of 2020, Elon Musk had a net worth of $27 billion.[6] By the end of the year his net worth had increased by $150 billion, mostly driven by his ownership of around 20% of Tesla stock.[7] During this period, Musk's net worth was often volatile. For example, it dropped $16.3 billion on September 8, the largest single-day plunge in Bloomberg Billionaires Index's history at the time.[8] In November of that year, Musk passed Facebook co-founder
Mark Zuckerberg to become the third-richest person in the world; a week later he passed
Microsoft co-founder
Bill Gates to become the second-richest.[9]
In January 2021, Musk, with a net worth of $185 billion, surpassed
Amazon founder
Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world.[10] Bezos reclaimed the top spot the following month.[11] On September 27, 2021, after Tesla stock surged, Forbes announced that Musk had a net worth of over $200 billion,[12] and was the richest person in the world. In November 2021, Musk became the first person to have a net worth of more than $300 billion.[13]
On December 30, 2022, it was reported that Musk had lost $200 billion from his net worth due to declining stock values in Tesla, becoming the first person in history to lose such a large sum of money.[14][15] In January 2023, Musk was recognized by
Guinness World Records for experiencing the "largest loss of personal fortune in history" with regards to his financial losses since November 2021, which Guinness quoted a Forbes estimate of $182 billion.[16]
Around 75% of Musk's wealth was derived from Tesla stock in November 2020,[9] a proportion that fell to about 37% as of December 2022,[a] after selling nearly $40 billion in company shares since late 2021.[18] Musk does not receive a salary from Tesla; he agreed with the board in 2018 to a compensation plan that ties his personal earnings to Tesla's valuation and revenue.[7] The deal stipulated that Musk only received the compensation if Tesla reached certain market values.[19] It was the largest such deal ever done between a CEO and a company board.[20] In the first award, given in May 2020, he was eligible to purchase 1.69 million Tesla shares (about 1% of the company) at below-market prices, which was worth about $800 million.[20][19]
The above stock compensation deal was invalidated by the Delaware court due to Musk controlling Tesla and having massive influence on the directors, making the compensation decision a "conflicted-controller transaction" which is subject to court review in Delaware law to be judged for fairness. Tesla is trying to reinstate the payment package via new shareholders votes.
Musk paid $455 million in taxes on $1.52 billion of income between 2014 and 2018.[21] According to
ProPublica, Musk paid no federal income taxes in 2018.[22] He stated his 2021 tax bill was estimated at $12 billion based on his sale of $14 billion worth of Tesla stock.[21]
Musk has repeatedly described himself as "
cash poor",[23][24] and has "professed to have little interest in the material trappings of wealth".[23] In May 2020, he pledged to sell almost all physical possessions.[24] Musk has defended his wealth by saying he is accumulating resources for
humanity's outward expansion to space.[25]
Notes
^According to the Wall Street Journal, he was worth $140 billion, with $52 billion of that attributable to his ownership of Tesla stock.