Wealth of Elon Musk

Elon Musk is the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$330 billion as of March 2025, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and $359.5 billion according to Forbes, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.
Having been first listed on the Forbes Billionaires List in 2012, around 75% of Musk's wealth was derived from Tesla stock in November 2020. Describing himself as "cash poor", a year later, he became the first person in the world to have a net worth above $300 billion. By December 2024, he became the first person to reach a net worth of $400 billion.
Elon Musk made $175.8 million when PayPal was sold to eBay in October 2002. He was first listed on the Forbes Billionaires List in 2012, with a net worth of $2 billion.
Musk paid $455 million in taxes on $1.52 billion of income between 2014 and 2018. According to ProPublica, Musk paid no federal income taxes in 2018. He stated his 2021 tax bill was estimated at $12 billion based on his sale of $14 billion worth of Tesla stock.
Musk has repeatedly described himself as "cash poor", and has "professed to have little interest in the material trappings of wealth". In May 2020, he pledged to sell almost all physical possessions. Musk has defended his wealth by saying he is accumulating resources for humanity's outward expansion to space.
At the start of 2020, Elon Musk had a net worth of $27 billion. By the end of the year his net worth had increased by $150 billion, mostly driven by his ownership of around 20% of Tesla stock. During this period, Musk's net worth was often volatile. For example, it dropped $16.3 billion on September 8, the largest single-day plunge in Bloomberg Billionaires Index's history at the time. In November of that year, Musk passed Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to become the third-richest person in the world; a week later he passed Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to become the second-richest.
In January 2021, Musk, with a net worth of $185 billion, surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world. Bezos reclaimed the top spot the following month. On September 27, 2021, after Tesla stock surged, Forbes announced that Musk had a net worth of over $200 billion, and was the richest person in the world. In November 2021, Musk became the first person to have a net worth of more than $300 billion.
On December 30, 2022, due to declining stock values in Tesla, Musk had lost $200 billion from his net worth, the first person in history to do so, which was recognized by Guinness World Records in January 2023.
Musk's net worth surged after the 2024 United States presidential election, and in December 2024, he became the first person to have a net worth of more than $400 billion.
A primary customer, the federal government of the United States has signed contracts worth $20 billion with SpaceX as of November 2024.
Musk's association with the Trump administration received backlash, resulting in his net worth dropping by $126 billion between December 2024 and March 2025.
Around 75% of Musk's wealth was derived from Tesla stock in November 2020, a proportion that fell to about 37% as of December 2022, after selling nearly $40 billion in company shares since late 2021. Musk does not receive a salary from Tesla; he agreed with the board in 2018 to a compensation plan that ties his personal earnings to Tesla's valuation and revenue. The deal stipulated that Musk only received the compensation if Tesla reached certain market values. It was the largest such deal ever done between a CEO and a company board. In the first award, given in May 2020, he was eligible to purchase 1.69 million Tesla shares (about 1% of the company) at below-market prices, which was worth about $800 million.
In January 2024, Delaware Judge Kathaleen McCormick ruled in a 2018 lawsuit that Musk's $55 billion pay package from Tesla be rescinded. McCormick called the compensation granted by the company's board "an unfathomable sum" that was unfair to shareholders. In response to the ruling, Musk posted on X: "Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware." A re-ratification shareholders' vote passed in mid-June 2024, although much follow-up litigation is expected, including a lawsuit filed by a Tesla investor beforehand that alleged Musk employed "coercive tactics" to move the vote in his favor.
Musk's wealth is managed by his family office called Excession LLC, formed in 2016 and run by Jared Birchall.
According to the biographer Walter Isaacson, Musk has little interest in philanthropy. He believes that he can do more for humanity by leaving his money in his companies and pursuing the goals of sustainable energy, space exploration and AI safety with them. The Musk Foundation has been criticized for both its selection of recipients of donations and a relatively low payout ratio. In 2021 and 2022, the Musk Foundation awarded less than 5% of its assets in donations, after its assets grew to several billion dollars. This means that it fell short of the legal minimum donation required to maintain its tax-exempt status. The Guardian criticized the fact that the foundation financed various projects of Musk and his family members, although this is not unusual for billionaires and wealthy donors. The New York Times concluded that through 2022, about half of the Musk Foundation's grants went to organizations "tied" to Musk, one of his employees, or one of his companies. Musk's philanthropy would be "largely self-serving." In one instance, after Musk challenged World Food Programme director David Beasley to draft a plan to use money of Musk's that Beasley said could contribute to ending world hunger, Musk instead donated the $6 billion in question to his own foundation even after Beasley's plan showed that the money could feed 42 million people for a year.
Musk has asserted that declining birth rates pose an existential threat to humanity and in 2021 donated $10 million to the University of Texas at Austin to research the potential risks.
In December 2023, tax records revealed that Musk had donated $100 million to a new foundation, "The Foundation", set up to create a primary and secondary school focused on teaching science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects. The foundation included plans to expand the project to the university level accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. In 2022, Musk allocated Tesla, Inc. stock valued at $2.2 billion to The Foundation.
In January 2015 Musk donated $10 million to the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, an organization focused on challenges posed by advanced technologies.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk donated $50 million in the fall of 2022 to Citizens for Sanity, a political action committee (PAC) aligned with the policies of Donald Trump.
Musk donated $10 million in 2023 to support the Ron DeSantis 2024 presidential campaign.
In 2024, Musk supported the Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign, creating America PAC and donating $270 million to it. He also gave $20.5 million to pro-Trump RBG PAC. His donations in the 2024 election cycle totaled more than $291 million, the most of any donor.