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Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X looks on during the Milken Conference 2024 Global Conference Sessions at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California on May 6. (David Swanson/Reuters via CNN Newsource)
By Matt Egan, CNN
New York (CNN) — Elon Musk’s sprawling empire — spanning everything from electric vehicles and social media to space rockets and miniature brain implants — may soon make him the world’s first trillionaire.
Musk’s business success has made him one of the most influential — and controversial — people in the world. The Tesla boss is already the richest person on the planet, with a fortune estimated at nearly $250 billion.
Now, Musk could become the world’s first trillionaire, a milestone that Informa Connect Academy says he’s on track to hit by 2027.
Informa notes that Musk’s net worth has been growing rapidly at an average rate of 110% per year, making him the “clear favorite” to hit the $1 trillion first.
Musk does face competition though.
The meteoric rise of Nvidia, the company whose computer chips are powering the artificial intelligence boom, could make Jensen Huang a trillionaire in 2028, according to Informa. Huang, Nvidia’s CEO and co-founder, has a net worth of $104 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Indian billionaire Gautam Adani is also on track to become a trillionaire by 2028.
Whether Musk gets to the trillion-dollar mark first — or at all for that matter — will depend in large part on the future of his biggest success: Tesla.
The EV maker founded by Musk has become the world’s most valuable auto company, with a price tag of about $ 710 billion. That makes it worth more than Coca-Cola, Bank of America and Boeing combined.
Tesla is easily Musk’s biggest asset. He owns nearly 13% of the company, a stake worth about $93 billion at current prices.
Musk owns another 303 million stock options linked to his epic and controversial compensation package, which was struck down by a judge but then revived and approved by shareholders.
If Tesla continues to thrive, it could push Musk’s fortune beyond $1 trillion.
“We believe Musk has positioned himself to achieve new heights over the coming years as Tesla capitalizes on full self-driving, Robotaxis and the future of EVs,” Dan Ives, senior equity analyst at Wedbush Securities, told CNN in an email.
Of course, that is no guarantee.
Tesla faces fierce competition, especially from cheaper rivals in China. The company has struggled at times, with softer sales crashing the stock by two-thirds in 2022. The automaker also issued multiple recalls for its vehicles, including a software recall of nearly all of its cars on US roads because of a glitchy Autopilot feature.
Musk had once revealed that Tesla was just days away from filing for bankruptcy in 2008 before it secured a last-minute loan to keep it afloat.
In 2018, Musk also landed in hot water with regulators and shareholders for saying he had “funding secured” on a deal to take Tesla private for $420 a share. Musk was forced to pay millions of dollars in fines and legal fees and step down as executive chairman.
“Musk has had his back against the wall many times with Tesla and despite the haters and skeptics he turned Tesla around,” Ives said. “He is the Teflon kid.”
The Tesla brand also faces risks linked to the swirl of controversy that has followed Musk around for years.
Just this week, Musk deleted a post that questioned why former President Donald Trump has faced two apparent assassination attempts while President Joe Biden and Vice President have not encountered any.
“And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala 🤔,” Musk wrote in the post. He claimed the post was a joke and later deleted it.
Although Tesla is Musk’s biggest asset, it’s hardly his only one. He also owns stakes in tunnel construction company The Boring Company and artificial intelligence startup xAI.
And then there’s SpaceX, the spacecraft maker that made history on Thursday by pulling off the first non-government spacewalk ever.
As Bloomberg notes, Musk owns about 42% of SpaceX, a private company valued in June at a whopping $210 billion.
Musk also owns Neuralink, a brain chip implant startup that hopes to help people who are paralyzed regain movement.
A slice of Musk’s wealth also comes from perhaps his most controversial business: social media platform X. Musk acquired X (formerly known as Twitter) in 2022 — after at first trying to get out of the $44 billion deal.
And X has rapidly lost value under Musk’s ownership while coming under fire for its stance on content moderation and the spread of misinformation, not to mention Musk’s own antisemitic tweets.
At one point last year, Musk apologized for what he called his “dumbest” ever social media post while simultaneously telling advertisers: “Go f**k yourself.”
The-CNN-Wire
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