Elon Musk has done it again. On October 2, 2025, Forbes confirmed that the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive became the first human being to reach the staggering milestone of $500 billion in net worth. Musk’s fortune briefly crossed the half-trillion-dollar threshold before settling just under it at $499.1 billion by market close. Still, he is officially the richest person alive – and by a wide margin.
Who is Elon Musk
Musk is the South African-born entrepreneur who has shaped entire industries. He is the visionary behind Tesla, the electric vehicle company that revolutionized the auto market; SpaceX, which dominates the commercial space industry; and xAI, his fast-growing artificial intelligence startup. Over the past two decades, he has become the face of technological daring, pushing projects in clean energy, AI, aerospace, and even satellite communications through Starlink.
How His Wealth Was Measured
Forbes has been tracking Musk’s wealth in real time through its Billionaires Index. This is the same ranking that identified him as the first to cross $400 billion last year. On Wednesday afternoon, Forbes’ tracker showed Musk’s net worth hitting $500.1 billion at 4:15 p.m. Eastern. By 5 p.m. it slipped back slightly, but the milestone had already been secured.
The gap between Musk and the next in line is enormous. Oracle founder Larry Ellison sits at number two with an estimated net worth of about $350.7 billion. That makes Musk’s lead an astounding $150 billion. To put that in perspective, Ellison would need to add the combined wealth of Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffett just to catch up.
How Elon Did It
The primary engine of Musk’s fortune remains Tesla, where he holds about 12 percent of the stock. After a bumpy start to the year, shares have surged nearly 14 percent, with a dramatic 35 percent rise since Tesla’s board proposed a record-breaking $1 trillion compensation package for Musk in September. That plan, the largest ever offered to a corporate executive, ties his personal rewards to ambitious company growth and gives him greater influence over Tesla’s future.
Musk also made a personal show of confidence in Tesla last month when he purchased about $1 billion in stock. Investors saw this as a powerful signal of his focus on the company’s transformation from a carmaker into an AI and robotics powerhouse.
But Tesla is not Musk’s only lever. SpaceX, valued at $400 billion, continues to dominate space launches and satellite operations. Meanwhile, xAI Holdings—his merger of artificial intelligence startup xAI with the social platform X—has reached a combined valuation over $100 billion and is positioning its Grok chatbot to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
Forbes journalist Matt Durot wrote that Musk is now “halfway to becoming the first ever trillionaire.” Analysts point to his comeback focus on Tesla and the enormous valuations of his other companies as proof that his empire is still in rapid expansion mode. Robyn Denholm, chair of Tesla’s board, remarked that Musk is now “front and center” after months of dividing time between government service and his businesses.
Musk himself insists the massive compensation plan is not about the money. “It’s not about ‘compensation,’ but about me having enough influence over Tesla to ensure safety if we build millions of robots,” he explained in a September post on X. He argued that he wants control to safeguard the company’s future from short-term interests.
A Half-Trillion and Counting
From $24 billion in 2020 to $500 billion in 2025, Musk’s climb has been unmatched in speed and scale. He was the first person to reach $100 billion, then $200 billion, $300 billion, and $400 billion, and now stands alone at $500 billion. At this rate, the talk of Musk becoming the first trillionaire no longer sounds like science fiction. If his companies continue on their current trajectory, that future could arrive within a decade.
For now, the headlines belong to him alone: congratulations, Elon Musk, the first person ever worth $500 billion.
