Do you Know the net worth of Elon Musk? Have you ever guessed where he comes from and where he attended school? Do you know how Musk’s career began and how he made his wealth? This article answers all your questions about Elon Musk net worth.
Who is Elon Musk?
Elon Reeve Musk is an entrepreneur and business magnate. He is the founder, CEO and Chief Engineer at SpaceX; early-stage investor, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; and co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI. Elon Musk is the richest person in the world.
Where Elon Musk Originated
Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa. His mother is Maye Musk, a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada but raised in South Africa. Elon’s father is Errol Musk, a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer (he once purchased a stake in a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika). Reeve’s maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was an American-born Canadian. And Musk has British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. The family was wealthy in Elon’s youth and “owned one of the biggest houses in Pretoria”. After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk mostly lived with his father in Pretoria and elsewhere, a choice he made two years after the divorce and subsequently regretted.
Around age 10, Musk developed an interest in computing and video games and acquired a Commodore VIC-20. He learned computer programming using a manual and, by age 12, sold the code of a BASIC-based video game he created called Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500.
Elon Musk Education
He attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School and Bryanston High School. But he finally graduating from Pretoria Boys High School. To avoid mandatory service in the South Africa military, he attended University of Pretoria for 5months.
In 1990 he attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Musk transferred to University of Pennsylvania. In 1997, he graduated with BSc economics and a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics.
In 1995, Musk was accepted to a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) program in materials science at Stanford University in California.
Career and Businesses
Elon Musk founded and co-founded the following companies;
- Zip2
- X.com
- Paypal
- SpaceX
- Tesla
- SolarCity
- Tesla fuel
- Neurolink
- The Boring Company
The Wealth of Elon Musk
Musk made $165 million when PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002. He was first listed on the Forbes Billionaires List in 2012, with a net worth of $2 billion.
At the start of 2020, Musk had a net worth of $27 billion. Throughout that year, his net worth increased by $150 billion, largely driven by his ownership of around 20% of Tesla stock. During this, Musk’s net worth was often volatile. For example, it dropped $16.3 billion in September, the largest single-day plunge in the history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
In November of that year, Musk passed Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to become the third-richest person in the world; a week later he passed Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to become the second-richest.
In January 2021, Musk, with a net worth of $185 billion, surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world. Bezos reclaimed the top spot the following month. On September 27, 2021, Forbes announced that Musk had a net worth of over $200 billion, and was the richest person in the world, after Tesla stock surged. In November 2021, Musk became the first person with a net worth over $300 billion.
Around three-quarters of Musk’s wealth derives from Tesla. Musk does not receive a salary from Tesla; he agreed in 2018 to a compensation plan with the board that ties his personal earnings to Tesla’s valuation and revenue. The deal stipulated that Musk only receives the compensation if Tesla reaches certain market values. It was the largest such deal ever done between a CEO and board. In the first award, given in May 2020, he was eligible to purchase 1.69 million TSLA shares (about 1% of the company) at below-market prices, which was worth about $800 million.
Summary of Elon Musk Net Worth
- Elon Musk is working to revolutionize transportation both on Earth, through electric car maker Tesla — and in space, via rocket producer SpaceX.
- He owns 23% of Tesla but has pledged more than half his stake as collateral for loans; Forbes has discounted his stake to take the loans into account.
- The Tesla CEO stepped down as chairman in 2018, after making alleged “false statements” about a plan to take Tesla private, triggering an SEC probe.
- SpaceX, Musk’s rocket company, is valued at $74 billion after its latest funding round in February 2021.
