Elon Musk’s current net worth is $23.4 billion and he is listed as the 40th richest person in the world on Forbes. He is one of the greatest technology entrepreneurs of all time.
His first big win was as the co-founder of Zip2, a web software company, which was acquired by Compaq for $340 million in 1999. Musk made $22 million from his 7% share of Zip2 in the sale.
He took $10 million of the money he received from the sale of Zip2 and used it for his next big win as as the co-founder of PayPal which was acquired by Ebay for $1.5 billion in 2002.
With the $180 million Musk received from selling his 11.7% stake in PayPal to eBay he invested it all in SpaceX, Tesla, and Solar City.
“My proceeds from the PayPal acquisition were $180 million. I put $100 million in SpaceX, $70m in Tesla, and $10m in Solar City. I had to borrow money for rent.” – Elon Musk
He was the founder and CEO of SpaceX, co-founder of Tesla, Inc., and he also acted as the chairman and help start Solar City which was later acquired by Tesla.
Musk owns approximately 38.6 million shares of Tesla according to a Feb. 14, 2019 SEC filing which is about 20% of the company.
According to private investors familiar with the company’s latest capital round SpaceX is valued at $33.3 billion. Elon Musk currently has a 54% stake in SpaceX.
Musk was a key Angel Investor that helped launch an artificial intelligence company DeepMind Technologies in 2010. The company sold to Google for a reported price of $400 to $600 million.
He is also the co-founder of Neuralink; founder of The Boring Company, and co-founder of OpenAI.
Bloomberg reports that private investors value the Boring Company at about $920 million. Elon Musk owns 90% of the equity in the Boring Company.
Microsoft invested $1 billion in his company OpenAI to support the building of artificial general intelligence.
His brain computing startup Neuralink has raised $39 million so far of the planned $51 million funding round, according to a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Elon Musk also owns five homes worth over $70 million in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. His fifth home alone is valued at $24 million but is not finished yet.
Elon Musk’s wealth was built through the founding of innovative trail blazing tech companies with a focus on future technologies that pressed what was possible in the present to the edge. Elon Musk continually rolls his money from his wins into bigger and more audacious business ventures. He is a tireless entrepreneur and innovator and it will be interesting to see how all his ventures play out over time.
