Elon Musk was already the richest person on earth. Thanks to the rising valuations of Tesla, xAI and SpaceX, he is now worth more than $400 billion, according to Bloomberg News calculations.
Specifically, he is worth $439.2 billion.
For reference, the next richest men in the world are Amazon (AMZN) founder and Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos, Meta (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Oracle (ORCL) Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. They are worth $244 billion, $219 billion and $197 billion respectively. Musk is also at least as rich as Mansa Musa, the emperor of the West African Mali empire and former record holder for the richest man ever, who historians estimate was worth around $400 billion, according to the BBC.
The impetus for Musk’s latest wealth boost is SpaceX’s new valuation of $350 billion, making it the most valuable startup in the world. On Wednesday, SpaceX and its investors agreed to buy $1.25 billion worth of stock from company employees and insiders.
“What’s really crazy about this is that almost no investors wanted to sell shares, even at a $350 billion valuation! SpaceX reduced the number of shares it bought back from employees to bring in new investors,” Musk wrote on his X on Wednesday.
In addition to SpaceX, Musk is the CEO of Tesla and owner of X. Corp. His other companies include artificial intelligence startup xAI, brain chip company Neuralink and tunnel construction company The Boring Company.
xAI recently raised $6 billion at a $50 billion valuation, less than two years after he founded it. That’s also more than double its valuation in May, when it was valued at $24 billion versus a $6 billion valuation by backers like Andreessen Horowitz and Saudi Arabian investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.
Musk owns more than 13% of Tesla shares, which have soared since President-elect Donald Trump won the presidential election in November. The stock climbed to a new all-time high of $415 per share on Wednesday, narrowly surpassing the previous intraday trading high of $414.50 per share on November 4, 2021.
In recent weeks, investors have been excited about Trump’s potential actions that could help the automaker, including streamlining regulations for autonomous vehicles and ending the $7,500 consumer tax credits for electric vehicles. Musk has said ending those credits would hurt Tesla’s rivals more than his company, though analysts expect some short-term downsides.
Several analysts have also raised their price targets on the stock in recent days as they look to catch up on the stock’s rise, often citing Tesla’s plans for self-driving vehicles and humanoid robots.
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