Elon Musk, CEO of two large companies, is rich. In fact, the other day, he became a billionaire. Written, a billion looks like this:
1,000,000,000,000
But after trading on MondayHis net worth skyrocketed to $1.3 billion. according to rich people wealth tracking site Forbes. The next person on the list after Musk, Google co-founder Larry Page, has $301.4 billion. In other words, Elon Musk has not just a trillion dollars, but roughly a trillion dollars more than the next richest man.
This is counted (or maybe just rounded) differently by Bloombergwhich says Musk’s net worth is only $1.27 billion. Unfortunately for Musk, assuming that is the correct calculation, Musk would not still be the richest person in the world if he lost $1 trillion in net worth, but in any case, he would still be the richest person in the world if he lost $900 billion.
To be clear, it’s not like he crossed the threshold to have a 13-figure net worth because he did a good job as CEO that day and the profits poured into SpaceX or Tesla, and that money was funneled to him. It doesn’t work that way. He approximately 42% of SpaceX that Musk owns increased in value as people eagerly bought the shares when they became publicly available, raising the company’s overall valuation. This is how we measure the wealth of magnates.
That also means an especially good or bad trading day for SpaceX or Tesla.of which Musk owns around 12.8%—It will continue to cause dizzying fluctuations in Musk’s net worth from day to day. He lost 100 billion dollars in one year back in 2022which was extraordinary at the time. But he earned at least that amount on Monday alone. If that gets you down, think about how much you could lose the next day. Or the next day.
