Tesla boss Elon Musk became the first person in world history to have a net worth of at least $500bn (£370bn) on Wednesday – before dropping back beneath that milestone a few hours later.
The Tesla CEO briefly surpassed the half-trillionaire status line after another rise in share price for the electric vehicle company.
Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index tracks the net worth of the richest 500 people on the planet and is updated daily after the New York Stock Exchange closes. Based on those day-end figures, Mr Musk’s net worth was $470bn (£348.7bn) – a rise of $10.5bn across a single day. For context, 159 of those in Bloomberg’s top 500 richest in the world have a net worth of below $10bn.
Shares in Tesla rose 3.3 per cent on Wednesday and are a further 0.7 per cent higher in pre-market trading, indicating Mr Musk’s wealth will rise further once stock markets open again in the US. Mr Musk owns around a 12-13 per cent stake in the company.
However, his future pay packet could see him hold a far larger amount of shares, which could make him become the world’s trillionaire if he hits certain milestones while leading the firm.
In addition to Tesla, Mr Musk owns firms such as SpaceX, The Boring Company and xAI. Some of those private ventures have seen higher valuations placed on them this year, too.
Shares in Tesla are up more than 70 per cent over the last six months following a low point across March to April, though they remain slightly below the record high price achieved in December 2024. That’s despite the EV-maker continuing to face difficulties in sales, particularly in Europe, and with greater competition from Chinese firms.
Mr Musk’s most recent surge in net worth comes less than a month after he very briefly lost top spot as the world’s richest person.
That, for part of a day at least, belonged to Larry Ellison, the chief executive of Oracle, whose share price climbed by more than a third in one day in early September.
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However, the gap has since widened with Mr Musk, at $470bn, clear of Mr Ellison in second place, whose net worth is now $349bn (£259bn).
To put the size of the gap between first and second into perspective, the $121bn between them is exactly the same as the total net worth of Bill Gates – the Microsoft founder who himself is the 15th richest on the planet.