To go on being billionaires if you want- and you didn’t just inherit money in your birth to be a Saudi prince – there is some way. This is the process that you can use to conceive just one useful thought like a new operating system or a new social network to make an enormous brand. Or, you may want to copy the Warren Buffet way and make a series of cautious low-risk investments over years before you see the money begin to trickle in. Then there is what Elon Musk decided to do.
Most of the richest people in the world made their money unlike Musk did as an example. He had several decent ideas instead of one brilliant one. He did not invest in some intelligent but safe securities, as he invested only in a few remarkably hazardous ones. However, he had some tricks up his sleeve despite this not being clear then. This year, the total of those bets made Elon Musk the Earth’s richest private individual, the effects of which are revolutionary – from privately launched space missions to a titan in electric vehicles that has left other automakers scrambling to keep pace.
The founder of modern tech companies like Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, has achieved household celebrity status. He is currently the wealthiest man alive and owns approximately 13% stake at a valuation price tag of 107bn USD (Bloomberg) by July 2023.
However, Musk’s business practices are eccentric and occasionally questionable. He agreed in 2022 to buy social media firm Twitter at US$44 billion only for him to retreat later on. However, he eventually consented to the closure of the deal on its initial conditions in a Delaware trial that was about to start.
Find out everything you need to know about Musk, and where he came from, his most prominent investment efforts of today.
Key facts about Elon Musk
Musk’s family was well-off. Since his childhood days, he was interested in computers and at the age of 7 years old he built his own video game. He fled to Canada at the age of 17, avoiding military service under the apartheid regime and studied at Queen’s University in Ontario. In 1992, he moved to the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in Business and Physics.
Approximately $232 billion worth as of July 2023 – per Bloomberg, the wealthiest person on earth! He is almost $30 billion above his competitor, The chairman of LVHM Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton Bernard Arnault).
Leads five ventures: Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, Neuralink, and The Boring Company.
Holding a dual degree, B.A., Physics and Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
In 2012, Musk signed on to Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge.
Founder of internet payment company Paypal, later bought by eBay for US$ 1.5bn in 2002.
Aided in opening up the tunneling business called The Boring Company which wants to solve issues relating to the traffic jams.
Founder and CEO of Neurlink, a company working towards developing brain-computer interfacing.
Settled in 2018 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission over tweets he made about securing funding to privatize Tesla at $42,000 a share.
Revealed a 9% share of Twitter in April and later agreed to a buyout with a total sum of $44bn in May. After that, he attempted to cancel the agreement but changed his mind and honored it on the same conditions.
What happened to Musk’s net worth?
Born in South Africa; lived in Canada; dropped out of a Ph.D. at Stanford and Musk became a millionaire before he hit thirty. He started ZIP2, which provided urban journey guides to newspaper companies with his brother Kimbal Musk, and sold it to COMPAQ at over $ 300 Million in 1999. Musk was about 27 years old and he possibly received $22m out of it.
In 1999, he also founded the first-ever internet-based bank known as X.com. It quickly consolidated with a start-up called Cofinity founded by Peter Theil forming PayPal. In 2002, eBay purchased the company at a $1.5 billion value. Musk left with about $165 million despite being booted out of Office for CEO.
He is also one of the founders of a space exploration venture known as SpaceX which he created in 2002. He invested in and became the chairman of an EV company called Tesla in the year 2004. In 2008, during the financial crisis, he invested $40 million into Tesla, saving it from imminent bankruptcy, and lent money worth $40 million as part of a rescue plan. He was appointed as CEO that same year.
During this time Musk said that he had “The worst year of my life”. His troubles were associated with his business failures –Tesla was still losing money and SpaceX did not have any major successes due to their frequent failure to launch a Falcon 1 rocket. As early as 2009, Musk’s life revolved around loans.
However, Tesla became public in 2010, and Musk’s estimated net worth increased gradually. According to Forbes’ in 2012, he became one of the youngest American billionaires with an estimated net worth of two billion dollars. The Boring Company is a tunneling enterprise founded by Elon Musk in 2016. In 2016, he went on and established neurotechnology startup Neuralink.
In Oct 2022, he purchased Twitter for USD 44 billion, acting as the company’s leader before stepping down in early June. While Bloomberg estimates this amount to be $239 billion, Forbes states this number as $242.4 billion.
What is Musk’s wealth based on?
Much of it is attributable to Musk’s fortunes, which rely heavily on his ownership shares at Tesla. He does not get paid by Tesla but his stock option is awarded when the company struggles to attain challenging performance.
In 2018, Tesla stated that “Elon will not be entitled to receive any guaranteed compensation whatsoever; no salaries, no cash bonuses, and no equity awards that vest just by time passing.” However, Elon’s remuneration “will equal 100% at-risk performance award with no guarantees, meaning he gets paid if only Tesla and all its shareholders have extraordinary success.
As reported by Bloomberg, around 50 percent of Musk’s net worth is invested in Tesla shares while above 20 percent is in SpaceX shares. Other liabilities include shares in Twitter and The Boring Company while the rest of his wealth is miscellaneous.
Elon Musk’s top investments
Some leading tech companies in which Elon Musk was involved are now among the largest companies in the US.
PayPal
Subsequently, X.com was established following the sale of a software company that enabled the development of online city guides for newspapers by Compaq Computer in 1999. Later, he joined ventures with a payment system company, Confinity and they later came together to form PayPal.
At this point, his 11.7% share of PayPal brought him around 180 million dollars post-taxes following its eventual sale to eBay worth 1.5 billion dollars in 2002. This led to wealth creation, especially for the founders and the pioneer employees who also ended up creating and funding more technologies. However, they later became known as the ‘PayPal Mafia’, the group of founders that comprised affirmer C.E.O. Max Levchenko, investor and political activist PeterTheel, and others.
Neuralink
According to their website, Neuralink, as a company, is working on designing ultra-high bandwidth BMIs (brain-machine interfaces) that will link human brains with computers. Google was among the venture capital companies that provided $205 million worth of funding for the company in 2021.
According to the company, the first short-term aim of Musk’s Neuralink project is to assist individuals living with traumatic brain injury. Secondly, his ultimate long-term objective is to decrease the prospect that AI presents to mankind. This is among the small companies that Musk is engaged with, having below 500 staff members.
Tesla
It was founded in 2003 and today it is referred to as the leading manufacturer of electric vehicles – Tesla. In 2004, Musk was a mere investor who later assumed the role of board chairman until 2008 when he also became the chief executive officer of Tesla. The first car from Tesla appeared in 2008, and in 2012, Consumer Reports rated it as the best overall car. In the summer of 2020, Tesla was the most valuable auto company globally and its share price exceeded one million dollars by fall 2021.
It holds a stake of about 13 percent owned by Musk who also wields considerable control at the company. His role is in product design, and manufacturing globally for Tesla EVs, battery, and solar energy products.
In 2018, Musk and Tesla agreed to pay $20 million each to settle securities fraud charges brought by the SEC after the latter had alleged that Musk’s tweet that he could take the company private at the price of $420 per share with Part of the settlement required Musk to resign as a chairman at Tesla for three consecutive years too.
SpaceX
Finally, Musk owns SpaceX which manufactures rockets and vehicles for Mars’ orbit and according to its statements later onward the universe. In 2002, Musk used most of his PayPal profits for the formation of SpaceX. The company has been awarded contracts by NASA and the USA air force for designing rockets.
Musk had owned close to half of SpaceX shares (a 42% ownership) through a trust as per the 2022 filing reviewed at Bloomberg.
The Boring Company
The objective of the Boring Company is to bring together a rapid, cheap tunneling technology and a reliable electric public transport system that will solve the urban congestion problem and enable high-speed travel over long distances.
One of its projects was the construction of a tunnel that was 1.15 miles long for research purposes in Hawthorne, California. It is also currently constructing Vegas Loops which is a light transport system in the Las Vegas Convention Center.
In April 2022, the last funding round of this company placed a $5.7-billion value on it while adding $675 million to its coffers. Leading VCs such as Vy Capital and Sequoia Capital were behind this funding.
SolarCity
In 2006, it was founded by two of Musk’s cousins. The company operated in the solar market by selling and installing solar generation systems as well as a wide range of other associated products, mainly targeting residential, commercial, and industrial customers.
In 2016, Tesla acquired SolarCity for $2.6 billion. The move was characterized by some critics as a bailout for SolarCity which failed to gain adequate financing. He argued he did not influence the valuation and thereafter won a shareholders suit touching on the purchase.
DeepMind Technologies
Musk founded an artificial intelligence company called Deepmind Technologies in 2010 and he is one of their key investors. The firm has created intelligent machines that are better at gaming and chess than mankind. For a long time, Musk has emphasized threats associated with AI and how it can ruin civilization. In 2014, Google bought DeepMind for approximately $600 million.
Elon Musk’s net worth
Elon Musk achieved this by starting up and investing in companies. Through this, he has been able to make more profits than he did when selling the early PayPal shares, by utilizing the money into highly performing business enterprises.
Since the beginning of 2020, the current estimated net worth of $232 billion that Bloomberg put him at pales considerably in comparison with the approximately $27.6 billion that he had then. However, since then Tesla’s shares have gone up more than ten times and Musk too has become the richest man on earth. Accordingly, he would be listed as number 53 among the most current billionaires with a net worth amounting to $27.6 billion as of the beginning of 2020.
Is Musk as rich and powerful as other billionaires?
Musk was the world’s richest man at the time of writing this piece as per Bloomberg’s estimations albeit exchanging positions frequently with other fellow billionaires.
At the moment, Musk’s fortune stands at about $38 billion higher than that of the late billionaire, Bernard Arnault. The fifth place goes to Jeff Bezos of Amazon with a total amount of 153 billion dollars, Bill Gates of Microsoft who has gained a total amount of 137 billion dollars, and Larry Ellison of oracle with 133 billion dollars.
