Real reason why Elon Musk's wealth surpassed $500,000,000,000 momentarily
If he's not making history with his plans for Mars colonisation or political announcements on X, Elon Musk makes headlines for his wealth.
On Wednesday (1 October), the Tesla CEO briefly became the first person ever to reach a net worth of $500 billion (£371 billion), before falling back below that milestone just hours later.
Musk's half-trillionaire status followed another rise in share price for his electric vehicle company.
What is Elon Musk's net worth?
By the end of the trading day, the SpaceX founder's net worth had settled at $470 billion (£348.7 billion) - representing a single-day increase of $10.5 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. Currently, his net worth stands at $482 billion (£359 billion).
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To put that daily gain in perspective, 159 of the 500 richest individuals tracked by Bloomberg have a total net worth of less than $10 billion.
How did Elon Musk get his wealth?
The dramatic rise in Musk's wealth is primarily driven by his stake in Tesla which saw a 3.3 percent increase in shares on Wednesday. The company's stock has climbed more than 70 percent over the past six months, while reportedly recovering from a low point between March and April.
However, shares remain slightly below the record high reached in December 2024, despite ongoing challenges including weak sales in Europe and increasing competition from Chinese manufacturers.
Tesla shares were up an additional 0.7 percent in pre-market trading on Thursday (2 October), suggesting Musk's wealth would continue to climb when US stock markets reopened. The South African owns approximately 12-13 percent of Tesla.
How does Elon Musk compare to other billionaires?
Musk recently lost his position as the world's richest person to Oracle founder Larry Ellison for a short period, but has since extended his lead. The pair sit above Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos in the wealth rankings.
The gap between them now stands at $121 billion, with Musk at $470 billion and Ellison at $349 billion (£259 billion) in second place.
Interestingly, that $121 billion difference is equivalent to the entire net worth of Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder who ranks 15th on the global rich list.
While Tesla stock is the primary driver of Musk's wealth, he also owns several other companies, including SpaceX, The Boring Company, and xAI. Some of these private ventures have also seen their valuations increase this year, adding to his overall net worth.
Much of Ellison's impressive wealth growth, nearly five decades after co-founding Oracle, comes from the company's position at the forefront of AI development. This shift brought the tech mogul's net worth from $107 billion in 2023 to $349 billion today.
Elsewhere in Oracle news, it was revealed that billions of dollars were spent in a Microsoft scandal.
The company allegedly hired investigators to sift through Microsoft's trash to discover that their rival was secretly funding academic groups and think tanks to influence public opinion.