Elon Musk
 Musk at the Royal Society in London. Photo: Duncan.Hull, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
| |
| Net worth | $839 billion Forbes 2026 list, March 24, 2026[1] |
|---|---|
| World rank | 1st (Forbes 2026)[1] |
| Source of wealth | Tesla, SpaceX |
| Companies | SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, The Boring Company, X (formerly Twitter) |
| Citizenship | United States (since 2002); also South Africa and Canada |
| Born | June 28, 1971, Pretoria, South Africa |
| Education | University of Pennsylvania (bachelor's degrees, 1997) |
| Known for | Electric cars, reusable rockets, Starlink |
| Net worth figures are estimates by the source named and change every day. | |
Elon Musk is the chief executive and largest shareholder of Tesla and SpaceX, and the richest person in the world.[2] On the Forbes 2026 billionaires list, a snapshot taken on March 24, 2026, he was number one with an estimated $839 billion.[1] He has been the world's wealthiest person since 2025.[2]
Net worth
- March 2026: $839 billion, first on the Forbes 2026 list of 3,428 billionaires. Larry Page was second with $257 billion, so Musk's estimated fortune was more than three times the next person's.[1][3]
- June 2026: he became the first person worth more than one trillion US dollars when SpaceX sold shares to the public for the first time. A fall in SpaceX's share price took him back under the trillion mark the next month.[2]
- October 2026: Forbes put his net worth at about $1.1 trillion.[2]
Most of his wealth is his stake in SpaceX and Tesla, so the figure moves with their share prices.[2] In November 2025 Tesla approved a pay package for him worth up to $1 trillion over ten years, paid only if the company hits goals such as a market value of $8.5 trillion.[2]
How the fortune was made
Zip2
In 1995 Musk, his brother Kimbal and Greg Kouri started Zip2 in a small rented office in Palo Alto, California. It made online city guides, with maps, directions and business listings, for newspapers.[2] Compaq bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash in February 1999, and Musk's 7% share came to $22 million.[2]
X.com and PayPal
In 1999 he co-founded X.com, an online bank and e-mail payment company. In 2000 it merged with Confinity, the company of Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, which ran a more popular payment service called PayPal.[2] The merged company took the PayPal name in 2001, and in 2002 eBay bought it for $1.5 billion in stock. Musk, the largest shareholder with 11.72%, received $175.8 million.[2]
SpaceX
Musk founded SpaceX in May 2002 with $100 million of his own money, to build cheaper rockets.[2] The first three Falcon 1 launches failed and nearly bankrupted him, but the fourth reached orbit in 2008, and the same year NASA gave SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract to fly cargo to the International Space Station.[2] SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 first stage in 2015, flew astronauts to the space station in 2020 as the first private company to do so, and built the Starlink satellite internet network.[2]
Tesla
Tesla was started in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Musk led its first big investment round in February 2004 with $6.35 million, became its largest shareholder and chairman, and took over as chief executive in 2008.[2] The Roadster sports car came first, followed by the Model S (2012), Model X (2015), Model 3 (2017), Model Y (2020) and Cybertruck (2023).[2] Tesla went public in 2010, became the world's most valuable carmaker in 2020, and passed a stock-market value of $1 trillion in October 2021.[2]
Other companies
Musk co-founded the brain-implant company Neuralink in 2016 and founded The Boring Company, a tunnel builder, in 2017.[2] He bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X in 2023.[2] His artificial-intelligence company xAI became part of SpaceX in 2026.[2]
Giving
The Musk Foundation, which he funds and runs, supports renewable energy, space exploration, children's health, science and engineering education, and safe artificial intelligence. It held more than $14 billion at the end of 2024.[2]
Public life
Musk was the largest donor in the 2024 US presidential election. From January to May 2025 he advised President Donald Trump and led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), then went back to running his companies.[2] His political views and statements have made him a polarizing figure.[2]
Photos
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Musk at the Tesla factory in Fremont, California, 2011. Photo: Maurizio Pesce, CC BY 2.0 -
A SpaceX Falcon 9 launch carrying Starlink satellites. Photo: SpaceX, CC0 -
SpaceX's Starship lifting off on its fifth test flight. Photo: Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0
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All photos are from Wikimedia Commons; click a photo for its full credit and license.
Sources
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Forbes, "Elon Musk", 2026 World's Billionaires list (snapshot of March 24, 2026), read November 3, 2026. Net worth is a Forbes estimate.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 2.19 2.20 2.21 Wikipedia, "Elon Musk", read November 3, 2026. Billionaire Wiki's text is written in its own words; facts are checked against this article and its sources.
- ↑ Forbes 2026 World's Billionaires list, summarized on Wikipedia, "The World's Billionaires", read November 3, 2026.