Elon Musk has made history by becoming the first person ever worth more than $500 billion.
According to Forbes, Musk’s fortune briefly reached $500.1bn on Wednesday in New York before dropping slightly below that mark. This keeps him far ahead as the richest man in the world.
His wealth comes not only from Tesla, where he owns about 12%, but also from the rising value of his other companies — SpaceX and his new artificial intelligence firm xAI.
The world’s second richest person is Oracle founder Larry Ellison, whose net worth stands at about $350.7bn. Ellison briefly passed Musk last month after Oracle’s shares jumped on strong cloud and AI business results.
Tesla shares have climbed more than 20% this year, including a 3.3% rise on Wednesday. Investors are encouraged by Musk’s renewed focus on his businesses after earlier criticism of his political role with Donald Trump’s government efficiency team.
Even so, Musk has continued to voice strong opinions on issues such as immigration and diversity programmes.
Tesla’s board chair, Robyn Denholm, recently said Musk is now “front and centre” at the company. The board has also approved a possible $1 trillion pay package for him over the next decade if he can meet huge goals — including boosting Tesla’s value eightfold, selling a million AI robots, and producing 12 million more cars.
Last month, Musk bought $1bn worth of Tesla shares, seen as a major show of confidence in the company.
Tesla still faces tough competition, especially from China’s BYD, but Musk is pushing the company to shift from being just a carmaker to a full AI and robotics business.
