Elon Musk’s Net Worth
A lot can be said about Elon Musk, good and bad, but it is certain that he knows how to create waves. Beyond holding the front page of newspapers again with the intention of taking over Twitter, given his business that uses the technologies of the moment, Musk could become a model of the billionaire of this century. As CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company, and co-founder of OpenAI and Neuralink, Musk always seems to be at the forefront when it comes to launching the most futuristic technologies possible.
With stable businesses in a variety of innovative fields, from electric cars to private ships and missiles, star billionaire Elon Musk has become the richest person in the world by building a well-entrenched fortune in 21st-century technology.
What is Elon Musk’s Net Worth?
At the time this article is written Elon Musk’s net worth is $198 billion. With this fabulous sum, he holds the record for being the richest person in the world. Actually, he is the richest person in modern history.
Key Facts
- In 1999 Elon sold his first company Zip2 to Compaq for the sum of $340 million
- He owns 22% of Tesla
- He invested a portion of his windfall into X.com, which eventually became Paypal. This was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002
- In 2020 he sold six LA homes
- He owns 48% of SpaceX which is valued at $46 billion
- He testified once that he is “cash poor” and has a debt of $500 million
- In 2020 his net worth increased to $142 billion
Net Worth History
- January 1, 2020: $28 billion
- July 10, 2020: $70 billion, with $55 billion from Tesla and $15 billion from SpaceX
- July 13, 2020: $80 billion, with $65 billion from Tesla and $15 billion from SpaceX
- August 2020: more than $90 billion
- November 17, 2020: $100 billion, surpassing Mark Zuckerberg to become the third-richest person in the world for the first time
- November 24, 2020: $128 billion, surpassing Bill Gates to become the second-richest person in the world for the first time
- December 31, 2020: $170 billion
- January 7, 2021: $195 million, surpassing Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world for the first time
- January 8, 2021: $210 billion
- October 2021: $300 billion, when SpaceX was valued at $100 billion and Tesla’s market cap topped $1 trillion
- November 1st, 2021: $335 million, when Tesla’s market cap topped $1.2 trillion
Salary from Tesla
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As CEO of Tesla, Elon takes no salary, but he has a very unusual bonus plan which is tied to the company’s market cap. Tesla was valued at $50 billion when the plan was made. Based on that value of $50 billion 12 total milestones were established. Elon qualifies to receive all $100 billion from the bonus plan when he hits every single milestone. The shares for this plan are released every quarter after the Board of Directors confirms that the milestone was achieved.
He would have to receive zero compensation in case he didn’t succeed to achieve any of those 12 tranches.
But he unlocked all 12 tranches of the compensation plan within three years as in October 2021 Tesla’s market cap was above $1 trillion.
Real Estate Holdings
In 2017 Elon bought a 100-year-old, 16,000 square-foot villa in the Northern California town of Hillsborough for $23.364 million.
He had another six homes in Southern California, which he sold.
Early Life
Elon Reeve Musk was born in 1971 in Pretoria, one of the three capitals of South Africa. His father was an engineer and his mother was a model and nutritionist. Elon is the eldest of three children, all of whom have successful careers. His brother, Kimbal Musk, is an environmental activist and investor. His sister, Tosca Musk, is an award-winning director and producer.
After his parents’ divorce in 1980, Musk lived mainly with his father. Elon would later describe his father as “a terrible human being, almost anything terrible you could think of, he did.” “I had a terrible childhood. I suffered a lot. My children don’t have enough suffering” Musk said.
Musk also said that he had very few friends at school, and those years were brutal.
So, technology was a big chance for Elon Musk. At just 10 years old, Musk became familiar with programming via the Commodore VIC-20, a cheap computer. It wasn’t long before Musk became skilled enough to create Blastar, a Space Invaders-style video game. He sold the BASIC code for the video game to a magazine called PC and Office Technology for $500 and 11 cents.
After graduating from high school, Musk and his mother, brother, and sister moved to Canada, where he began studying at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. After two years of study, he moved to the University of Pennsylvania where he earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and economics.
After college, he left for California to pursue a doctorate at Stanford College but dropped out a few weeks later to focus with his brother Kimbal on launching their first company, Zip2.
His Success
With the help of investments from Silicon Valley, the company Zip2 which provided information on transport and traffic for newspapers such as the New York Times and Chicago Tribune ends up being bought by a division of Compaq Computer for $341 million, Musk thus obtaining $22 million.
Musk is about to launch his next company, namely the online banking site X.com using $10 million of the $22 million obtained from Zip2. A year later, his company merged with Confinity, Peter Thiel’s company, thus forming PayPal. The South African is appointed general manager, but a misunderstanding in the company leads to his dismissal and replacement with Peter Thiel in 2000.
However, the company launched by him and Thiel ends up being bought by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion, and Musk, as the main financier, earns $165 million. With $100 million from PayPal sales, the engineer is setting up Space Exploration Technologies or SpaceX. His goal is to make space travel 10 times cheaper, while his ultimate dream is making colonization of planet Mars possible.
In 2004, Musk made a $6.5 million investment in Tesla Motors, a company originally founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, which will produce electric cars exclusively. The South African takes an active role in the company and helps create and launch the first car in 2006. At the launch of the Roadster, Musk is also a financier and general manager of the company.
Musk continues to come up with ideas from science fiction, with the appearance of Hyperloop and The Boring Company. Hyperloop is based on the idea of a super-high-speed train that will travel in a tube that should transport passengers between Los Angeles and San Francisco in about 30 minutes. The Boring Company has a mission to build underground tunnels between America’s major cities to create areas of fast, uncongested traffic.
The year 2020 proved to be one of the most successful for Musk. SpaceX completes an agreement with NASA to send astronauts into space aboard the company’s rockets for the first time in November. Tesla entered the S&P 500 index in December among the top 500 companies, which increased its shareholding value considerably.
Personal Life
After emigrating to Canada, Musk enrolled at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. There, Musk met Justine Wilson, an emerging writer. The two were to marry and have five sons together, twins and triplets, before divorcing in 2008.
He also had a relationship with the actress Amber Heard and with the Canadian musician Grimes. He and Grimes welcomed a baby boy named X Æ A-Xii in May 2020.
Elon Musk became the father of twins last year, with one of the top executives at his artificial intelligence company, Neuralink. The founder of Tesla, who advocates for the increase of the birth rate, has nine children that are known so far.
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