Elon Musk’s net worth has soared to a record $648 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and his wealth added this year is more than LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault’s entire fortune of $205 billion.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s wealth soared by $178 billion in just two days, taking his year-to-date profits to an unparalleled $216 billion.
If this were his total wealth, he would rank sixth on the richest list — ahead of not only Arnault but also former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
Mr. Musk’s record wealth is partly a reflection of Tesla shares, which closed at an all-time high of $490 on Tuesday, as investors cheered news that the EV maker was experimenting with unmanned robotoxicity on the streets of Austin, Texas. Musk owns about 12% of Tesla stock, worth about $200 billion.
But the bigger factor in this week’s surge in his wealth is that SpaceX’s valuation has reportedly doubled since the summer to $800 billion, based on a secondary stake sale by the aerospace company ahead of a possible IPO next year.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is now more than twice as wealthy as Alphabet co-founder Larry Page, the second-richest person on the list, and his wealth has increased by $96 billion since the beginning of the year, giving him a net worth of $264 billion, making him second only to Musk.
He is also more than four times as wealthy as Warren Buffett, the outgoing CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett has donated more than half of his fortune to good causes and is worth $150 billion.
Mr. Musk’s personal fortune exceeds the market capitalization of Oracle, MasterCard and Johnson & Johnson, three of the 20 most valuable U.S.-listed companies with market capitalizations of more than $500 billion. His recent performance has narrowed the gap with Visa, which has a market capitalization of $660 billion.
Mr. Musk’s epic wealth gathering
The serial entrepreneur has made an impressive return to wealth in recent months. Tesla shares nearly halved between mid-January and mid-March as his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) sparked a public backlash and shareholders worried that he was distracting himself.
Musk briefly ceded the top spot on the billionaire list to Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison in September, before Tesla’s stock soared to an all-time high.
Tesla and other big U.S. tech companies have seen their stock prices soar this year, driven by big talk around AI. In Mr. Musk’s case, he has excited investors by spending millions on AI to develop Tesla’s self-driving cars and humanoid robots.
In contrast, skeptics like Michael Burley of “The Big Short” fame warn that AI companies are overspending on microchips and data centers, and predict that the stock market bubble is bound to burst.
The AI boom has led to huge wealth gains for major shareholders such as Mr. Musk, Mr. Page and his co-founder Sergey Brin, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Mr. Ellison, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.
Musk could become the world’s first trillionaire after Tesla shareholders approved his compensation package in November, and his Tesla stock promises to roughly double over the next decade if he hits milestones such as selling 1 million Optimus robots and increasing adjusted profits to $400 billion from about $17 billion last year.
