The title of world’s richest person can vary on any given day, based on business share prices—but Elon Musk has recently held that position. Musk has been dubbed a genius for his business acumen, communication style, and role as a tech visionary.
Musk is the CEO and co-founder of the electric automobile firm Tesla (TSLA), as well as the CEO and main designer of the aerospace company SpaceX. Elon Musk made his fortune mostly through the companies he started, but he also made money from passive investments. Continue reading to find out which of Musk’s ventures made the top five.
IMPORTANT TAKEAWAYS
PayPal, SpaceX, DeepMind Technologies, Tesla, and The Boring Company are among Musk’s best investments.
Elon Musk is a well-known engineer, industrial designer, and technology entrepreneur who has disrupted numerous sectors.
Musk is frequently referred to as the world’s richest person.
1. PayPal (Paypal)
Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services, and email payment startup, in 1999. A year later, X.com merged with Confinity, which became PayPal in 2001. (PYPL).
eBay (EBAY) paid $1.5 billion for PayPal on October 3, 2002.
Musk had 7,109,989 shares in PayPal at the time of the sale, making him the company’s largest shareholder with an 11.7 percent stake.
Musk is no longer a shareholder in PayPal. He left his job once the company was sold and utilized the earnings to fund investments such as SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity.
2. Xerox PARC
Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corp., also known as SpaceX, in 2002.
The founding objective of the corporation is to revolutionize space technology, including the development of spacecraft that will transport humans to Mars and other locations in the solar system.
In 2006, NASA gave SpaceX a hefty contract. Falcon 1, the first private liquid-propellant rocket to reach space, was launched by SpaceX in 2008. SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft arrived to the International Space Station in 2010. (ISS). SpaceX was awarded a second contract in 2012 to help transport crew members between the ISS and Earth.
$216 billion
Elon Musk’s reported net worth, as of March 6, 2022
Another $2.9 billion contracts with NASA was signed in 2021 to transfer astronauts aboard its Starship spacecraft from lunar orbit to the moon’s surface.
3. DeepMind Technologies
DeepMind Technologies, an artificial intelligence (AI) business, was founded in late 2010, with Musk as a primary angel investor. Google announced the acquisition of the company in January 2014 for an undisclosed sum.
Musk is famously concerned about AI supplanting humans, and he is said to have invested in DeepMind not to earn money, but to keep up with how quickly AI technology is evolving.
Deep reinforcement learning was a breakthrough in AI, but DeepMind has yet to find many viable commercial applications. The technology has been used internally by Alphabet, Google’s parent firm, to cut the power costs associated with cooling Google’s servers in data centers.
4. Tesla Motors, Inc.
Musk was not a founder of Tesla, but he did lead an early round of funding in 2004. Musk rose from board member to CEO of Tesla in 2008, while also serving as CEO of SpaceX.
Tesla launched its initial public offering (IPO) on Nasdaq on June 28, 2010, with shares of common stock being accessible to the public at $17 per share.
Tesla stock was trading for well then $800 per share on March 7, 2022.
Tesla’s objective is to accelerate sustainable transportation by making mass-market electric automobiles available to the general public. Tesla announced the development of completely electric tractor-trailer vehicles in November 2017, which were preordered by corporations such as United Parcel Service (UPS) and PepsiCo.
The Model S, Model X, Model 3, and the high-end Roadster supercar are among the company’s electric vehicles.
Elon Musk held 177 million shares in Tesla as of December 28, 2021, valued at approximately $142.3 billion.
Elon Musk remains the company’s largest individual stakeholder, with significant influence over the company’s long-term strategy and operational objectives.
5. The Boring Corporation
Musk created The Boring Company, an infrastructure, and tunnel construction company, in 2017. The organization was formed on the notion that traffic is terrible, but that traveling above ground is unnecessary—traffic problems might be “fixed” by utilizing the millions and miles of dirt beneath roadways. The company’s mission is to minimize tunneling costs while increasing production efficiency.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority approved a $48.6 million plan from The Boring Company in March 2019 to develop the LVCC Loop, an underground tunnel that will run beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center and include three stations and a pedestrian tunnel. The Boring Company will formally open the LVCC Loop in April 2021. As of 2022, The Boring Company had completed further projects in Hawthorne, California, and is now working on another in Las Vegas.
Elon Musk discusses the five major assets that have contributed to his more than $160 billion net worth.
Elon Musk’s net worth of more than $160 billion places him as the second richest person on the planet, after only Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Musk highlighted the five major investments that power his huge wealth during a bitcoin-focused seminar on Wednesday.
Unsurprisingly, his fortune, like that of most billionaires, is concentrated in a few names, and Musk owns only one public company.
These are the five major investments that have contributed to Elon Musk’s fortune of more than $160 billion.
1. Tesla
He owns 22.4 percent of the company as of December 31. Musk’s salary arrangement allows him to gain billions more in Tesla stock.
Based on Tesla’s market worth of $631 billion as of July 21, the value is $141 billion.
Aside from the investments mentioned above, Musk also stated that he owns a share in two of his early-stage private firms, Neuralink and Boring Company, but that those investments are minor in comparison to the others.
2. SpaceX stake:
Estimated to be 48%, but might be lower if Musk’s stock was eroded during the last funding round.
Value: $35 billion, based on SpaceX’s most recent funding round valuation of $74 billion and Musk’s continued ownership of 48% of the space exploration business.
3. Bitcoin
“The bitcoin I possess is significantly more valuable than the Ethereum or doge [that I own],” Musk remarked at the conference on Wednesday. Musk also stated that both SpaceX and Tesla own bitcoin and that he is open to Tesla accepting bitcoin as payment if bitcoin mining becomes more reliant on clean energy.
Musk’s stake is currently unknown.
4. Ethereum
Musk’s stake is currently unknown.
5. Dogecoin (5th)
Musk’s stake is currently unknown.
Musk, dubbed “the dogefather,” has been a long-time supporter of dogecoin and frequently makes jokes about the meme-inspired cryptocurrency. In anticipation of Musk’s hosting on Saturday Night Live in May, Dogecoin peaked at around $0.75. Dogecoin has dropped by more than 70% from its high.
Elon Musk advised his Twitter followers on Monday to “own physical things” when inflation is high.
He appears to have made an exception for bitcoin, ether, and dogecoin, stating that he will not sell his holdings.
However, he stated that he would not sell his bitcoin, ether, or dogecoin holdings.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the world’s richest person, stated that when inflation was high, it was preferable to own physical goods rather than US dollars. However, he seems to create an exception for cryptocurrency.
Should You Make Investments Like Elon Musk?
People all around the world are fascinated by Elon Musk and how he’s collected such wealth as the world’s richest person and the founder of more than one firm that has revolutionized its respective industry. Given the track record of his investments, few would argue that Musk is a talented entrepreneur. Though you can choose to invest in one or more of Musk’s firms, your investment and business selections are personal and should be tailored to your specific needs.
What Businesses Does Elon Musk Own?
Musk is best known for co-founding and leading the electric vehicle firm Tesla, but he also co-founded and leads SpaceX, the neurotechnology company Neuralink, and The Boring Company.
How much did Elon Musk profit from PayPal?
Based on the overall projected acquisition price of $1.5 billion, Musk gained up to $175 million when PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002.
Musk was the largest stakeholder at the time of the sale, with an 11.7 percent interest in PayPal, or 7,109,989 shares.
“As a general concept, for people searching for guidance from this thread, it is generally better to possess physical things like a home or stock in firms you think make good products than money when inflation is high,” Musk stated in a Twitter thread about inflation.
“I still own and will not sell my Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Doge fwiw,” he said.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation in the United States reached 7.9 percent year on year in February, the highest level since 1982.
Tesla and SpaceX, according to Musk, are under “strong recent inflation pressure in raw materials and logistics.”
Musk revealed in May 2020 that he intended to sell “virtually all” of his tangible possessions, including his multimillion-dollar real estate portfolio. In December 2021, he sold his final remaining residence.
The millionaire entrepreneur supports cryptocurrency, but with reservations. He has frequently shown his support for dogecoin and has addressed the benefits of cryptocurrency with key personalities in the tech world.
Tesla stated that it purchased approximately $1.5 billion in bitcoin in early 2021 to be used as an inflation hedge.
Tesla’s stock price has dropped by around 35% this year, reducing Musk’s fortune by nearly a quarter — but he is still the world’s richest person, with a net worth of roughly $206 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
Commodity prices were already rising as the global economy recovered from the pandemic, owing to supply-chain disruptions. Because both nations are major suppliers, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last month exacerbated supply-side stresses in the energy, metals, and grains markets.