Elon Musk’s Road To Riches: Behind The Billions

^{CEO of Tesla and SpaceX}

No. 1

^{Rank on 2023 Forbes 400 List}

$251 B

^{Net Worth as of September 8, 2023}

^{AGE: 52 | SOURCE OF WEALTH: TESLA, SPACEX |}^{SELF-MADE SCORE}^{: 8/10 | RESIDENCE: AUSTIN, TEXAS | CITIZENSHIP: UNITED STATES | MARITAL STATUS: SINGLE | CHILDREN: 11 | EDUCATION: BACHELOR OF ARTS/SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA}

Elon Musk is working to revolutionize transportation both on Earth, with electric car maker Tesla, and in space, with rocket producer SpaceX. Musk, who was born in South Africa, emigrated to Canada and later moved to the U.S. to attend university, became the world’s richest person in September 2021, as a result of a huge runup in the stock price of Tesla, where he started as an investor and then became the CEO and was named a cofounder. His net worth peaked at $320 billion in November 2021. Rocket maker SpaceX scored a $1.4 billion contract with NASA in 2022 for five missions to take astronauts to the International Space Station; it’s also forging ahead with its Starlink low earth orbit satellite network, which provides broadband internet access. After Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion in a deal that closed in October 2022, the social media company lost advertisers and users but got a new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, in June 2023. The following month, Musk decided to rename the company X. He is now CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and executive chair of X. For most of the first half of 2023, Musk was the world’s second richest person. In June 2023, Musk overtook Bernard Arnault of French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH to once again become the world’s richest person.

Wealth History

Asset Breakdown

^{As of September 8, 2023}

Philanthropy

1/5

^{Philanthropy Score}

Forbes estimates that Musk, who signed the Giving Pledge in 2012, has donated $281 million over his lifetime to charitable causes from his foundation and other charitable vehicles. That is less than 1% of his net worth as of September 8, 2023. Not included: $5.7 billion worth of Tesla shares that Musk reportedly transferred to the Musk Foundation in November 2021. That’s because to tally philanthropic giving, Forbes counts funds paid out by a billionaire’s private charitable foundation rather than the amount put into the foundation. Also not counted: the $2.2 billion of Tesla shares Musk donated in 2022; the recipient(s) of those shares has not yet been disclosed.

_{HERE ARE SOME OF MUSK’S LARGEST DONATIONS TO DATE:}

History

1980s

As a kid in South Africa, Musk taught himself to code. By age 12 he sold his first software—a space game called Blastar—for about $500.

1988

He immigrated to Canada just before his 18th birthday and first worked a variety of odd jobs, including cleaning the boiler room of a lumber mill. He enrolled at Queen’s University in Ontario, then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he got a bachelor’s degree in economics.

1999

Four years after Musk launched software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal, the firm was sold to Compaq in 1999, reportedly for more than $300 million.

2000

Musk merged an online bank he cofounded, X.com, with a competitor cofounded by Peter Thiel to form PayPal, which was acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.4 billion. Musk got married in January 2000 to Justine Wilson, a writer and student he’d met at Queen’s University; she signed a postnuptial agreement a few months after their wedding. Their first child, a son named Nevada, died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome at 10 weeks old.

2002

Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 in El Segundo, California—not far from the Los Angeles airport.

2004

He joined Tesla as an investor and chairman, a year after the company’s founding by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning; he was later granted the title of Tesla cofounder.

2008

Musk filed for divorce from Justine, with whom he shares five sons–twins and triplets. He became CEO of Tesla in October 2008, amid the financial crisis, and immediately laid off dozens of employees. That same year SpaceX launched the first privately developed rocket into orbit (he’s since adopted the title of “Technoking” at Tesla).

2010

Tesla went public on the Nasdaq in June, with the stock closing at a split-adjusted $1.59 on the first trading day; the company had just under $117 million in revenues that year.

2012-2014

Musk debuted on Forbes’ list of the world’s billionaires with a net worth of $2 billion in March 2012. SpaceX, then valued at $1.8 billion, sent the first private spacecraft to the International Space Station in May. That same year Musk divorced his second wife, actress Talulah Riley. The couple remarried 18 months later, in July 2013. It wasn’t meant to be. Musk filed for divorce a second time on Dec. 31, 2014. The couple did not have any children together.

2016

Tesla acquired SolarCity, a struggling solar panel installer backed by Musk and founded by his cousins, in August, sparking investor lawsuits that dragged into April 2022, when a judge ruled in Musk’s favor.

2018

In August, Musk tweeted about taking Tesla private, sending shares soaring and prompting an SEC settlement that now requires lawyers to pre-screen his tweets. Musk was widely criticized for smoking marijuana on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in September and for calling a British diver who helped rescue children from a flooded cave in Thailand “pedo guy.” Musk ultimately won a defamation lawsuit filed by the diver, who had drawn Musk’s ire after labeling a rescue submarine sent to Thailand by SpaceX and Boring Company a “PR stunt.”

2021

In May Musk told television viewers he has Asperger’s syndrome while guest hosting Saturday Night Live. In September, SpaceX launched the first all-civilian crew into orbit, as Musk overtook Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest person (after briefly passing him in early January) – the third person ever worth $200 billion or more. Tesla’s stock peaked in early November, after Hertz announced a large Tesla order, briefly making Musk the first person worth more than $300 billion. Days later, Musk began selling $16 billion of Tesla shares over two months after polling his Twitter followers, likely resulting in the largest-ever one-year tax bill for an individual (and reportedly prompting an SEC insider trading probe of him and Kimbal).

Also in November, Musk secretly fathered twins with an executive of his brain implant startup, Neuralink. In 2021 Musk split with his girlfriend, alt-pop star Grimes, with whom he has three children –son X Æ A-12 born in 2020, daughter Exa Dark Sideræl born in 2021, and son Tau Techno Mechanicus, born via a surrogate in June 2022. Musk, who reportedly told his first wife, “I am the alpha in this relationship,” as they danced at their wedding, has a total of 11 children with three women (including one child who died as an infant).

2022

In April, Musk launched a $44 billion hostile takeover bid for Twitter, after delinquently reporting a 9% ownership stake and initially accepting a board seat. Twitter’s board agreed to sell the company to Musk on April 25. He waffled on the deal for months. Twitter sued him to complete the deal and Musk ended up buying the company in late October. He owns an estimated 74% of Twitter; other investors include Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Twitter’s cofounder and former CEO Jack Dorsey and crypto company Binance.

2023

The decline in the value of Tesla stock resulted in Musk falling from the world’s richest to the world’s second richest person on Forbes’ 2023 list of the World’s Billionaires in April. But he regained the title of World’s No. 1 Richest in June 2023 on the back of a sustained rebound in the price of Tesla stock. At Twitter, Musk laid off nearly 75% of the social media company’s employees after purchasing it in October 2022. In July, a month after replacing himself as Twitter’s CEO and moving into the chairman’s role, Musk changed the company’s name to X.