Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, is now halfway to becoming the first trillionaire, according to Forbes magazine.
On Wednesday, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO briefly crossed a personal financial milestone, with his net worth reaching $500.1 billion, before dipping slightly to $499.1 billion, Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires tracker reported.
The surge in Musk’s wealth comes amid a rebound in Tesla shares, following a rocky period marked by his foray into politics and other controversies. The 54-year-old billionaire is the first individual ever to surpass the $500 billion mark in net worth.
Trailing Musk in the wealth rankings are Oracle co-founder and CEO Larry Ellison, with a net worth of $350.7 billion, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, at $245.8 billion.
Musk’s rise has been fueled by his stakes in multiple high-profile ventures. After studying at the University of Pennsylvania and briefly attending Stanford University, he made his first major windfall in 1999 by selling an online publishing software company to Compaq for over $300 million.
He later co-founded a company that would become PayPal, and after exiting that venture, founded SpaceX in 2002. Musk joined Tesla in 2004 as chairman before becoming its CEO and leading the electric vehicle company to global prominence.
Born in South Africa, Musk has since become the defining figure of 21st-century tech entrepreneurship, with ambitions spanning electric vehicles, space exploration, and artificial intelligence.
AFP
