Warren Buffett’s late business partner, Charlie Munger, once said the “hard part” of getting rich is pulling together the first $100,000, as that’s often a “long struggle” for someone starting at zero.
Elon Musk is at the polar opposite end of the wealth spectrum — worth so much on paper that he can gain or lose tens of billions of dollars and barely move the needle on his net worth.
After just two trading days this year, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has added $24 billion to his personal fortune, lifting it by about 4% to $644 billion, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The world’s richest person by far — he’s worth more than double Alphabet cofounder Larry Page in second place — was last year’s biggest wealth gainer with a $187 billion increase.
Musk is comfortably leading that list in 2026 as well. As of Monday’s close, Interactive Brokers founder Thomas Peterffy is a distant runner up with a roughly $8 billion gain.
It’s not exactly clear why Musk’s fortune has swelled this year. Tesla stock has only inched up 0.4%, boosting the value of its CEO’s stake by less than $2 billion even if his previously disputed stock options are included.
SpaceX’s valuation rocketed to $800 billion in December, but that was reflected in Musk’s wealth gain last year. Nor have there been any publicized valuation increases for his other companies, which include xAI, Neuralink, and The Boring Company.
That suggests Bloomberg has simply tweaked its calculations, causing a change in net worth that would be material even for Musk’s fellow centibillionaires, but appears closer to a rounding error for Musk.
Tech billionaires like Musk have been some of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom, as investors continue to bet big that their companies will capitalize on the red-hot trend.
Page and his cofounder, Sergey Brin, have both added over $2 billion to their fortunes this year, thanks to Alphabet shares climbing 1% or so. They grew $101 billion and $92 billion richer respectively last year, trailing only Musk in wealth gain.
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