Who is Elon Musk and what is his net worth?

13 hours agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on Google Liv McMahon, Natalie Sherman, Dearbail Jordan & Osmond ChiaBusiness & technology reporters The Tesla boss became the first person ever to achieve a net worth of more than $500bn It seems like not a day goes - and in the future, we may be calling him a trillionaire. The boss of SpaceX, Tesla and X (formerly Twitter) is the world's richest person. He became the first person to achieve a net worth of more than half a trillion dollars (£370.9bn) in October 2025, according to Forbes, and a month later, Tesla shareholders approved a record-breaking pay deal that could be worth $1 trillion. However, such a milestone may come sooner as the planned flotation of rocket-builder and satellite operator SpaceX, which also owns X, Grok and Starlink, could boost Musk's net worth to about $1tn. But the billionaire is also known for using his social media platform to air his views on a vast array of topics, particularly politics. In early 2024, his reach expanded further after Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election - in which the Tesla executive played a key but controversial role - before their relationship imploded in a bitter feud. Musk has also waded into political controversy both in the US and across the Atlantic, where his posts and comments about current affairs in the UK, Germany and other European states have frequently angered politicians. These forays into politics have, however, sometimes appeared to come at a cost to his businesses. Analysts attributed slumps in Tesla sales in 2025 to be partly due to customers turning against Musk. Where was Elon Musk born? Born in Pretoria, South Africa, Musk showed his talents for entrepreneurship early, going door-to-door with his brother selling homemade chocolate Easter eggs and developing his first computer game at the age of 12. He has described his childhood as difficult, affected ' divorce, bullying at school and his own difficulty picking up on social cues because of Asperger's Syndrome. At the earliest opportunity, he left home for college, moving to Canada and then the US, where he studied economics and physics at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League college. In a 2010 essay for Marie Claire, his first wife, Justine Musk, a writer whom he met in college and married in 2000, wrote that even before making his millions Musk was "not a man who takes no for an answer". "The will to compete and dominate, that made him so successful in business, did not magically shut off when he came home," she recalled, adding that he told her while dancing at their wedding, "I am the alpha in this relationship." How did Elon Musk make his money?