After watching their wealth soar during the pandemic, billionaires have seen a decline in their net worth. Particularly tech equities have been falling, and the top 400 companies on the Forbes 400 list have lost a combined $315 billion.
They aren’t hurting, though. Many of them continue to be significantly wealthier than they were before the outbreak. With his wealth increasing from just under $20 billion in 2019 to a high $251 billion in 2022, Elon Musk is even more incredible.
After joining the exclusive club in 2012, Elon Musk quickly rose to the top of the list; nine years later. He is the CEO of the electric vehicle company Tesla, which is the main source of his riches.
Throughout his career to date, Musk has experimented with a variety of initiatives, including online payment systems, artificial intelligence, and above-ground, underground, and extraterrestrial transportation. His thoughts have the power to increase or decrease the value of cryptocurrencies, other businesses, and his own.
Elon Musk journey
Elon Reeve Musk was raised and briefly attended university in Pretoria, South Africa, where he was born. He was born into a wealthy family and showed an early aptitude for technology and enterprise. When he was only 12 years old, he created and sold the video game’s source code. His aspirations, though, were in America on the other side of the globe.
He was able to obtain a Canadian passport at the age of 17 and move to Canada because his mother was born there. He did this because, after becoming a US citizen in 2002, he knew it would be simpler to enter the US from Canada.
He moved to the United States after spending two years studying at Queens College in Ontario. There, he earned degrees in economics and physics before leaving for the country. He traveled to the west coast in 1995 to pursue a Ph.D. in energy physics at Stanford University, but he left after just two days.
It was the height of the internet boom, and Musk thought the internet offered more potential than physics. He founded his first business in the same year.
Elon Musk’s rise to extraordinary fortune as an entrepreneur
Musk established Zip2, a web software startup with his brother Kimbal, which they sold to Compaq for $307 million four years later. He then co-founded the online bank X.com, which later merged with Confinity to become PayPal. In 2002, the same year Musk became a US citizen and established his next company, eBay paid $1.5 billion to acquire PayPal.
SpaceX
Elon Musk has long believed that mankind must evolve into a multi-planet civilization in order for the human species to survive. His third business, SpaceX, was established as a result in 2002. Musk sought to create reusable, less expensive spacecraft for use in commercial space travel. The business had a deal with NASA to manage freight transfer for the International Space Station within six years (ISS).
The business started its first manned mission in 2020 with the goal of carrying people into space. This made it possible for NASA to stop depending on Russia for transportation and instead send people to the ISS on flights that took off from US soil. The company is currently developing its starship, which it intends to deploy to settle on Mars.
Automaker Tesla
Despite the fact that SpaceX was still in its infancy, Musk, never one to rest on his laurels, invested in Tesla Motors in 2004 and went on to become the company’s largest stakeholder and chairman of the board of directors, earning the title of co-founder in the process. The founders of the business aimed to create widely accessible electric vehicles. The business also manufactures lithium-ion batteries for use in solar-powered home energy storage systems, vehicles, and other applications.
Despite much skepticism from the auto industry, Tesla released its first model, a sports automobile called the Roadster, in 2008. Tesla started making its Model S vehicle four years later. After a few setbacks, the Model 3, the most affordable of the four vehicles Tesla presently offers, began its full manufacturing cycle. The company had sold more than a million Model 3s as of June 2021.
Tesla surpassed General Motors to become the most valued US automaker in 2017. The company’s vehicles revolutionized electric vehicles by making them appealing to the general public. His enormous wealth is mostly the result of the expansion of that market and the price of Tesla’s stock.
How much is Elon Musk actually worth?
Elon Musk’s $2 billion net worth first appeared on the Forbes Billionaires List in 2012. Musk’s net worth was $27 billion at the beginning of 2020, but it has since risen. According to Bloomberg, he eclipsed Warren Buffett in July of that year and now has a net worth of about $70.5 billion.
After a little more than a year, when Musk passed the $200 billion threshold, he surpassed Jeff Bezos to become the richest man in the world. Then, in November 2021, he made history by being the first individual to have a net worth of over $300 billion. He briefly fell below that line before rising back above $300 billion at the month’s end.
Tesla has suffered since the start of the year, just like other IT businesses. Despite having dropped more than 35% from its peak in November of last year, the share price of Tesla is still marginally higher than it was at the same time last year. Musk obtains stock in the manufacturer of electric vehicles instead of a salary, which accounts for a large portion of his wealth.
He has received the benefit of not having to pay income taxes as a result, for which he has received harsh criticism. He cashed in his options and sold some of his regular firm shares, so he will now have to pay a sizable tax burden. According to Reuters, Musk reduced his ownership stake in the firm from 20 percent to 15 percent by selling off over $32 billion worth of stock in less than a year.
Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in! pic.twitter.com/D68z4K2wq7
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022
