Elon Musk's net worth has skyrocketed to a whole new stratosphere. The SpaceX and Tesla chief is the world's first trillionaire.
He reached the milestone just seconds after SpaceX went public in June 2026.
Musk's wealth is now more than triple that of other famous billionaires, like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.
How has Musk's net worth changed over time?
Musk, who was born in South Africa, moved to Canada and dropped out of a Ph.D. program at Stanford. He became a millionaire before he hit 30 thanks to Zip2, a website that provided city travel guides to newspapers. He cofounded the venture with his brother, Kimbal Musk, and the pair sold it to Compaq for more than $300 million in 1999 when he was 27.
His next big move came two years later, when he reinvested some of his profits to help start an online bank called X.com. The site soon merged with Peter Thiel's Confinity to become PayPal, which eBay bought for $1.5 billion in 2002.
That same year, Musk cofounded space exploration company SpaceX, and in 2004, he became an investor in and the chairman of EV company Tesla, which eventually became his first cash cow.
During the 2008 financial crisis, Musk saved Tesla from bankruptcy, investing $40 million and securing a $40 million loan. That same year, he was named Tesla's CEO.
It was "the worst year of my life," Musk said, with problems in his personal life compounding Tesla's poor performance and SpaceX's trouble launching the Falcon rocket.
By 2009, Musk was living off personal loans.
Things turned around in 2010, when Tesla went public, sending Musk's net worth climbing. In 2012, he debuted on Forbes' Billionaires List with an estimated wealth of $2 billion.
Musk, meanwhile, kept building. In 2016, he set up his tunnel-digging business, the Boring Company, and the next year, he founded the neurotechnology startup Neuralink.
It wasn't until the start of the pandemic that Musk's net worth began its rapid ascent, thanks to Tesla's stock price. Musk started 2020 with an estimated net worth of just under $30 billion. He was worth about $170 billion one year later — a more than five-fold increase. His fortune reached an estimated $340 billion in November 2021.
Still, Tesla's stock is famous for its volatility — meaning Musk's net worth would also fluctuate. The company's share price jumped following the 2024 election of Musk ally Donald Trump, only to drop by more than 50% amid a vehicle sales slump, the Tesla boycott movement, and Musk's stint in the US government.
While Tesla's stock has largely rebounded, SpaceX's growth has been more stable over the past couple of years, pushing Musk's net worth up and to the right.
An insider share sale in December 2024 valued the company at $350 billion, sending Musk's net worth up about $50 billion in one day and making him the first billionaire to reach the $400 billion mark.
One year later, Musk's net worth broke records again when he confirmed SpaceX was planning an IPO. After an insider share sale valued the private company at $800 billion, Musk's fortune surpassed $600 billion.
SpaceX's IPO, the largest in history, took place in June 2026 and became the most formative wealth-generating event of Musk's life.
SpaceX — which Musk had combined with xAI, the parent company of X, formerly known as Twitter — was quickly valued at more than $2 trillion when it debuted on the public markets, pushing the CEO's net worth to more than $1 trillion.
Where does Musk's fortune come from?
Musk's wealth, which used to be largely dependent on Tesla shares, is now dominated by SpaceX.
The rocket, satellite, and AI firm accounts for more than 70% of his net worth. Tesla represents a 13% stake, and Neuralink and The Boring Company make up the rest.
For his work at both Tesla and SpaceX, the CEO is largely compensated with stock options awarded when the company meets challenging performance metrics. In SpaceX's case, those goals include a colony on Mars and orbital data centers, while at Tesla, he's been charged with getting one million robotaxis on the road.
That gives Musk billions of reasons to make his sci-fi dreams a reality.
