Elon Musk is the world's richest person. He became the first person with a net worth over half a trillion dollars in October 2025, according to Forbes. He is the boss of SpaceX, Tesla, and X (formerly Twitter). Tesla shareholders approved a pay deal that could be worth $1 trillion. The planned flotation of SpaceX could increase his net worth to about $1 trillion. However, he is also known for using X to share his views on politics.
Musk was born in South Africa and left for college in Canada and the US. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. He dropped out of Stanford to start two companies during the dotcom boom. One of them became PayPal, which was sold for $1.5 billion. He then used that money to start SpaceX and Tesla. In 2022, he bought Twitter for $44 billion, but its value later fell to $9.4 billion.
Musk also has ambitions in artificial intelligence. He founded xAI in 2023 and sued OpenAI, but a jury dismissed the case in 2026. Journalist Chris Stokel-Walker said, "I'm never hugely convinced that he knows what he wants to do tomorrow. He very much leads by instinct." Musk's net worth is now about $700 billion, according to Bloomberg. He has 14 children and has said he wants to help the underpopulation crisis. He also worked with President Trump but left the White House in May 2025 after a public feud.
