Elon Musk, South African native son of Maye and Errol Musk, is the world’s richest man in response to Forbes. Elon Musk’s web price is ~$237.9 billion. To place into perspective, that wealth equals about 80 Donald Trumps (reported web price ~$3 billion), or about twice as a lot as Invoice Gates (web price ~$113.3 billion).
In contrast to the stereotypical billionaire, Musk is notoriously frugal. In keeping with Inc, he lives in a 400-square-foot tiny home price about $50,000. He even famously refused to purchase a brand new mattress when he was dwelling in Los Angeles along with his on-and-off companion, Canadian musical sensation Grimes.
He’s additionally famously outspoken and lively on Twitter, the place he has greater than 100 million followers.
It doesn’t matter what you consider him, Musk and his companies have captured the general public creativeness, formed popular culture, pushed the event of once-unimaginable applied sciences, and have a watch towards shaping the way forward for humanity.
You personal shares of Apple, Amazon, Tesla. Why not Banksy or Andy Warhol? Their works’ worth doesn’t rise and fall with the inventory market. They usually’re lots cooler than Jeff Bezos.
Get Precedence Entry
How Did Elon Musk Make His Cash?
How did this eccentric billionaire earn the billions of {dollars} he refuses to spend? His path to riches concerned beginning and investing early in a collection of profitable companies.
His involvement within the enterprise world began when he was a younger boy. Musk had a driving curiosity in video video games and taught himself the best way to code. By the point he was 12 years previous, he had bought the code for a BASIC-based online game he known as Blastar to {a magazine} for $500.
His journey to billions additionally took him around the globe to obtain the absolute best schooling.
Musk moved to Ontario, Canada, at 17 and studied on the College of Pretoria. He later studied at Queen’s College earlier than he transferred to the College of Pennsylvania. After incomes a bachelor’s diploma in economics and physics, Musk moved to California in 1995 with the aim of finding out at Stanford College however in the end selected a distinct path.
Quickly, Musk would launch the primary of his many enterprise ventures, Zip2, along with his brother Kimbal. The remainder performs out as follows.
Zip2 Yellow Pages (1995-1999)
Elon and Kimbal Musk borrowed $28,000 from their father to launch a startup that may turn into Elon’s first main success. The co-founders named their startup Zip2, which was the equal of a web based Yellow Pages with maps — basically the primary technology-driven metropolis information.
Customers utilizing the nascent web lastly had the instructions to wherever they needed to go at their fingertips. Once they discovered the companies they have been in search of, they might be introduced with a map to indicate them the best way to “zip to” the enterprise, therefore the title Zip2.
In 1999, Elon and Kimbal realized how profitable their small enterprise had turn into. Compaq Computer systems paid $307 million to accumulate the expertise. By this time, Musk solely owned about 7% of the corporate, however the sale put about $21.49 million in his pocket.
It’s possible you’ll not know the title X.com, however I’m certain you recognize the corporate it was: PayPal. After the sale of Zip2, Elon based X.com, one of many world’s first on-line banks.
X.com proved to be an enormous success and attracted the eye of Cofinity, an organization based by Peter Theil, Luke Nosek, and Max Levchin. The 2 firms merged in 2000 and adjusted the title of the mixed firm to PayPal.
In 2002, the group bought PayPal to eBay for a whopping $1.5 billion. On the time, Musk owned 11.72% of the corporate. Which means his share of the corporate was price about $175.8 million.
SpaceX (2002-Current)
When the PayPal deal closed, Musk may have simply retired and lived a financially free life. Nonetheless, he had different plans. He used the cash he earned from the PayPal acquisition to launch an area exploration firm he known as SpaceX.
Musk, like many people earthbound people, has a deep curiosity in house. His dream is to colonize Mars, and his most bold assertion thus far has been that he plans to place human beings on the pink planet by 2026.
In 2006, simply 4 years after launching the corporate, SpaceX made its first try and ship a automobile into the huge vacuum of house. The automobile, the Falcon 1 rocket, failed to succeed in Earth’s orbit, however all wasn’t misplaced. Following the failure, SpaceX gained a NASA contract beneath its Industrial Orbit Transportation Program.
Sadly, that was a vibrant mild in what can be a darkish two years for SpaceX and NASA. The subsequent two makes an attempt the corporate made to ship the Falcon 1 into Earth’s orbit failed, almost bankrupting the corporate and its eccentric founder.
Nonetheless, in 2008, the corporate lastly succeeded and the Falcon 1 orbited Earth, resulting in the corporate’s largest contract but. Shortly after the profitable mission, SpaceX acquired a $1.6 billion contract from NASA beneath its Industrial Resupply Companies program.
In the present day, Musk remains to be the biggest SpaceX shareholder. He owns greater than 47% of the shares and 78% of the corporate’s voting rights.
The corporate remains to be working to colonize Mars, however that’s not its solely aim. A number of specialists from SpaceX and Tesla have been assigned to work on a transportation expertise Musk calls the Hyperloop.
The Hyperloop is actually a practice in a vacuum. With no drag on the automobile or G-forces on passengers, the Hyperloop is being designed to journey at excessive speeds for minimal value. In keeping with Musk, a Hyperloop system could be constructed from Los Angeles to San Francisco for about $6 billion. If he can pull that off, Musk’s newest expertise would be the least expensive type of transportation to cowl such lengthy distances.
SpaceX remains to be a personal firm, so it’s tough to get an correct studying of what Musk’s shares within the agency are price. The corporate’s most up-to-date non-public fundraise was at a valuation of $125 billion. At that valuation, Musk’s share of the corporate is price about $58.75 billion — not unhealthy for an organization he began when his complete web price couldn’t have been greater than $200 million.
Tesla (2004-Current)
Opposite to widespread perception, Elon Musk isn’t a co-founder of Tesla (initially Tesla Motors), the wildly widespread electrical automobile marker. The corporate was based in 2003 by Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard. The 2 employed Ian Wright a number of months later. It wasn’t till early 2004 that the group at Tesla realized a necessity for enterprise capital and obtained in contact with Musk.
Musk was so impressed by the corporate that he invested $6.5 million, taking about 86.67% of the corporate’s first Collection A fundraising spherical. In complete Tesla raised $7.5 million in its first spherical of fundraising.
In the present day Musk owns roughly 17% of Tesla shares. Though he wasn’t a founder, Musk has performed an integral function within the improvement of the corporate since his funding in 2004.
Tesla has had its justifiable share of ups and downs, however Musk’s funding has paid off. The automaker is a publicly traded firm with a greater than $755 billion valuation. Which means Musk’s stake within the firm is price about $128.35 billion.
Not too long ago, Tesla inventory has fallen on arduous instances, however even with the ~40% drop in worth the inventory skilled within the first half of 2022, Musk’s early funding within the firm is the most important contributing issue to his wealth.
SolarCity (2006-2016)
SolarCity is one among Elon Musk’s most controversial enterprise strikes. The corporate was based by Musk’s cousins, Lyndon and Peter Rive, however Elon was its largest shareholder. The three Musk-eteers have been on a mission to cut back energy value, grid consumption, and greenhouse fuel emissions with photo voltaic expertise.
The corporate developed, bought, and put in photo voltaic vitality programs for residential, business, and industrial purposes.
The issue is that within the 10 years from 2006 to 2016, the corporate failed to provide a revenue. In 2016, Musk owned about 22% of SolarCity and sat on its board of administrators.
On the identical time, Musk was additionally Tesla’s largest shareholder and a key board member of the electrical automobile producer. In 2016, Tesla acquired the struggling photo voltaic vitality firm for $2.6 billion. Elon’s 22% share of the corporate was valued at about $572 million within the deal.
Years later, buyers have been livid as a result of Tesla couldn’t flip SolarCity into the profitable firm Musk believed it might turn into. In keeping with TechCrunch, the corporate’s shareholders unsuccessfully sued Musk for $13 billion on account of the deal.
Neuralink (2016-Current)
Musk has his fingers in a number of areas of expertise, however for a lot of, his Neuralink firm is probably the most fascinating. The corporate is engaged on creating implantable units that act as brain-machine interfaces, or BMIs.
The corporate’s system consists of skinny strands of fiber implanted straight into the mind. The strands learn indicators from the mind and use synthetic intelligence (AI) expertise to find out what these indicators imply.
Neuralink remains to be extremely secretive about its improvement of BMIs, however in response to Gizmodo, the corporate has no less than tried to open an animal testing facility.
Neuralink is a personal firm, so figuring out how a lot it contributes to Musk’s web price is tough. Some sources estimate the corporate’s worth at between $500 million and $1 billion. It’s tough to find out what share of the corporate Musk nonetheless owns. There’s no public documentation of how a lot he began with, however we all know the corporate has raised over $300 million in 4 rounds of fundraising.
Contemplating the stage of the corporate, the quantity of fundraising, and a pure guess that Musk and his cofounder Max Hodak began the corporate with an equal 50-50 possession break up, we will estimate that Elon nonetheless owns round 1 / 4 of the corporate, which might add between $125 and $250 million to his web price.
The Boring Firm (2016-Current)
Elon Musk based The Boring Firm to resolve a comparatively boring drawback — site visitors. Because the inhabitants grows and extra vehicles hit the street, site visitors will solely worsen. Musk’s answer to this situation is making roads beneath roads in easy-to-dig, low-cost tunnels.
Nonetheless, the corporate isn’t simply specializing in tunnels; it additionally has its fingers in public transportation with The Loop.
The Loop is an all-electric public transportation mannequin that brings shoppers from level A to level B with no stops alongside the way in which. Musk designed the answer to be emission-free, environment friendly, and low-cost. The doorway to the corporate’s first commercially-operating loop is on the Las Vegas Conference Heart.
Based mostly on the newest spherical of fundraising, The Boring Firm is price about $5.7 billion. Though Elon Musk’s share of the corporate isn’t public data, we all know he owned 90% of it in 2018. After different fundraises that possible occurred alongside the way in which, he bought about 11% of the corporate earlier this yr.
Being conservative, we will say Musk possible nonetheless owns no less than 60% of The Boring Firm, which might contribute about $3.42 billion to his web price.
Closing Phrase
Elon Musk often is the richest individual on the earth, however he’s removed from performed constructing his wealth. In some circumstances, he does so with a easy Tweet. He has famously despatched a number of cryptocurrencies to the moon with easy posts on Twitter, possible producing sizable earnings every time.
Nonetheless, after studying how Musk made his cash, you may come to the identical conclusion I did. Musk made his cash by developing with out-of-the-box concepts and having the center (and assets) to comply with by way of on them.
Do you assume Musk will get people to Mars within the subsequent 4 years? I believe it’s a stretch, however that’s his aim and he’s sticking to it. If he accomplishes that aim as he did with so many different enterprise ventures previously, there’s no telling what number of billions of {dollars} it would add to his web price.
