Elon Musk is the world’s richest person, ranked No. 1 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list with a net worth of $839 billion. He is the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX and the owner of X, formerly Twitter.
Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. According to Wikipedia, he emigrated to Canada in 1989, where he holds citizenship through his mother, and earned bachelor’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997 before moving to California. He became a US citizen in 2002.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 1, with $839 billion
- Later estimates: Wikipedia reports that Forbes put his wealth at about $1.1 trillion in October 2026, after SpaceX’s June 2026 public offering briefly made him the first US-dollar trillionaire. Wealth trackers differ, so any single figure is an estimate
From Zip2 to Tesla
- 1995: co-founded Zip2, a web software company
- 1999–2000: after Zip2’s sale, co-founded X.com, which merged with Confinity in March 2000 to form PayPal; eBay bought it in 2002
- 2002: founded SpaceX and became its CEO and chief engineer
- 2004–2008: joined Tesla as an early investor in 2004 and became CEO and product architect in 2008
Tesla went public in 2010 and became the most valuable carmaker in summer 2020. In October 2021 it reached a market value of $1 trillion.
Other Companies
- OpenAI: he co-founded it in 2015 and later left; he then set up xAI, which Wikipedia says became a SpaceX subsidiary in 2026
- Twitter/X: he bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X in 2023
- Neuralink and the Boring Company: founded in 2016 and 2017
Politics and Pay
Musk was the largest donor in the 2024 US presidential election, supporting Donald Trump. After Trump took office in January 2025 he was an adviser and the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency until he left in May 2025. In November 2025 Tesla approved a pay package valued at $1 trillion over ten years, payable only if milestones are met, such as a market capitalisation of $8.5 trillion.
Why It Matters
Musk’s fortune is tied to the share prices of Tesla and SpaceX, so it can swing by tens of billions in a single day. He has held the top spot among the world’s richest since 2025, according to Wikipedia.
Net worth figures change daily with share prices. Rankings here follow the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, with wealth measured on March 1, 2026.
Image: Elon Musk speaking in Colorado, July 2022. Photo: Trevor Cokley / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
