Kirsty Wigglesworth/Pool via REUTERS
- Elon Musk has become the first person worth $500 billion.
- Musk’s net worth is closely tied to Tesla stock, which is up around 13% year-to-date.
- Last month, Oracle chairman Larry Ellison briefly dethroned Musk as the world’s richest person.
Elon Musk is halfway to being the very first member of the trillionaire’s club.
Around 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Musk’s net worth hit the $500 billion milestone, according to Forbes’ billionaire index, making him the first person to ever reach the benchmark. By early Thursday, his net worth had settled around $499.1 billion, but was up to $502.9 billion by mid-morning, according to Forbes’ list.
Much of Musk’s wealth is connected to his stake in Tesla, and the company’s stock rose about 4% on Wednesday, which added an estimated $9.3 billion to his net worth, per the wealth index. On Thursday, Tesla reported better-than-expected third-quarter deliveries of nearly 500,000 vehicles, as car buyers rushed to take advantage of the $7,500 EV tax credit in the US ahead of its September 30 expiration.
Tesla’s stock jumped in premarket trading on Thursday following the deliveries release before paring the gains and trading down around 1% as of 10:25 a.m. in New York. Tesla’s stock is up around 13% since the beginning of the year despite a challenging EV market and backlash tied to Musk’s political actions.
In early September, Oracle chairman Larry Ellison briefly dethroned Musk as the world’s richest person. On Thursday, however, Musk was worth $149 billion more than Ellison, according to Forbes’ index.
A compensation package that Tesla proposed last month could eventually make Musk the first trillionaire, if it’s approved and the CEO delivers on a series of highly ambitious targets. Musk’s wealth is also linked to his private companies, such as SpaceX, one of the world’s most valuable startups, and xAI.
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