Elon Musk is the world’s wealthiest person, and his massive net worth is built largely on his stake in Tesla. But with other companies with significant valuation in tow, he’s slowly moving toward becoming the world’s first trillionaire.
While an individual net worth of $1 trillion used to be the stuff of speculative dystopian fiction, it seems like the once-out-of-reach benchmark of wealth may not be unattainable after all. If there’s any living person most likely to become the world’s first trillionaire, most would agree that it’s Elon Musk. As the world’s wealthiest person, he’s already on his way.
After all, more than a decade ago, a company reaching $1 trillion in market value was considered unfathomable. Now, as asset values continue to rise in an inflated investment environment, Apple (AAPL) , Microsoft (MSFT) , and Tesla (TSLA) are among the more than a handful of companies worth a trillion dollars or more.
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So, just what is Elon’s net worth as of 2025? How did he build his wealth — and how does he spend it?
Elon Musk is the world’s richest person, with a net worth exceeding $400 billion by some estimates.
What is Elon Musk’s net worth?
Elon R. Musk has a net worth of $426 billion, according to Bloomberg, as of early 2025. Forbes put Musk’s net worth at $416 billion around the same time. Musk is so wealthy that his net worth exceeds that of the second-richest person, Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos, by almost $200 billion.
The bulk of Musk’s wealth comes from his stake in electric vehicle maker Tesla, where he serves as chief executive.
A real-time capture of Elon Musk’s wealth based only on his stakes in Tesla and other major companies can be found here.
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How rich would Musk be if he had received his 2018 compensation package?
Musk would be worth a lot more had his proposed 2018 compensation package not been blocked by the court system.
In December 2024, a state judge in Delaware — where Tesla is incorporated — upheld a ruling earlier in the year that Musk was not entitled to a 2018 compensation package of stock grants, on the grounds that Musk dictated the structure of the performance-based stock option award rather than it being created independently by board members.
In a June 2024 shareholding meeting, 72% of votes submitted by Tesla’s shareholders approved the stock award, which amounted to 303,960,630 shares of the company’s common stock, and would have boosted Musk’s ownership in Tesla to more than 20%. In early January 2025, those 304 million shares were valued at $125 billion.
Had he received these shares, his 2025 net worth could have been as high as $551 billion — well over halfway to the $1 trillion mark.
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Elon Musk’s education and early career before Tesla
Elon Musk was born in South Africa on June 28, 1971. He entered Canada as a college student in 1988, and then left in 1992 for the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in physics and economics.
He reportedly dropped out of Stanford University shortly after enrolling in 1995, to focus on his entrepreneurial endeavors. He co-founded Zip2, an early online maps and directions services company, and three years later (in 1998), the online payments system PayPal.
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What companies does Elon Musk own? How much of his wealth do they account for?
Musk established his early wealth by founding companies and later selling his stakes in them. The sale of his stake in PayPal to eBay (EBAY) netted him $180 million, and he used proceeds to fund SpaceX, a commercial space technology company, in 2002 (the same year he became a U.S. citizen) and to purchase a stake in fledgling EV maker Tesla (later taking it public in 2010).
Tesla, SpaceX, and artificial intelligence (AI) startup xAI are major companies in which Musk’s holdings have significant value.
Musk’s 13% stake in Tesla is valued at $162 billion, as of early January 2025.
He reportedly has a 42% stake in SpaceX that is $147 billion — based on a $350 billion valuation of the company as of December 2024, according to Forbes.
Musk founded xAI, which focuses on “building artificial intelligence to accelerate human scientific discovery,” despite his warnings about the potential dangers of AI. His stake in xAI is 54%, according to Forbes, and based on a November 2024 valuation of $50 billion, that puts the value of his shares at $27 billion.
Musk — along with other investors — paid $44 billion to acquire Twitter and took it private in 2022. Forbes estimated that the social media platform, renamed X, lost considerable value since then — about 70% as of August 2024. Assuming that Musk is a majority owner with, let’s say a 51% stake, that stake would be valued at $6.7 billion.
Together, the combined value of Musk’s stakes in Tesla, SpaceX, and X amounted to $316 billion as of early January 2025.
Musk also owns other companies with smaller valuations, including the tunnel-constructing Boring company, Starlink, a provider of satellite internet service, and Neuralink, a neurotechnology company that develops computer interfaces with the brain.
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Elon Musk, right, is pictured here with President Donald Trump. Musk reportedly spent at least $250 million of his own money on Trump’s successful 2024 election campaign.
How does Elon Musk spend his money?
In previous years, Musk made significant investments in real estate, but he has recently turned his focus on philanthropy, namely through his eponymous Musk Foundation. The nonprofit, according to its website, dispenses grants in support of renewable energy research and advocacy, human space exploration research and advocacy, pediatric research, science and engineering education, and the development of safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity.
Musk is reportedly funding $100 million toward the creation of an early education school called Ad Astra in Bastrop, Texas, which is outside Austin, where Tesla is headquartered. The school is aimed at developing problem-solving skills for children aged 3 to 9.
Musk, a former Democrat turned Republican, has also courted controversy by helping to finance the 2024 election campaign of President Donald J. Trump, reportedly using at least $250 million of his own money. Trump rewarded Musk by tapping him to lead a new agency aimed at reducing government waste, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, in a nod to the meme-coin cryptocurrency Musk has championed in the past. As head of DOGE, there are concerns that he might use the same tactics he used to reduce costs at Twitter by laying off government employees he deems “unnecessary.”
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