Elon Musk (born June 28, 1971, Pretoria, South Africa) is a South African-born American entrepreneur and the wealthiest person in the world. Co-founder of Zip2 and X.com (which merged with Confinity to form PayPal), and founder of SpaceX, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. He became a major early funder and later CEO of Tesla. In 2022, he acquired Twitter, rebranding it as X in 2023. In 2025, he served as Senior Advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump and de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency (🏷️#DOGE), stepping down after four months in May 2025.

Key Companies

Tesla — CEO; EV manufacturer; ~$1.14T market cap as of April 2026; Musk holds ~13% equity plus a restored $115B options package (304M options at $23.33 strike, Delaware Supreme Court reversed voiding in Dec 2025). Revenue ~$95B in 2025.
SpaceX — CEO and chief engineer; reusable rockets, Dragon, Starship, Starlink (~7,000 satellites, 5M+ subscribers). Contracted for NASA Artemis Moon lander. Filed confidential IPO paperwork.
xAI — AI research company, merged into SpaceX in February 2026 in an all-stock deal valuing the combined entity at $1.25T (SpaceX at $1T, xAI at $250B).
X (formerly Twitter) — acquired 2022; rebranded 2023.
Neuralink — neurotechnology; co-founded 2016.
The Boring Company — tunneling; founded 2017.

Net Worth

As of April 2026: ~$809B (Forbes) / ~$636B (Bloomberg Billionaires Index — more conservative private-asset valuation). Wealth milestones: $400B (Dec 2024), $500B (Oct 2025), $600B (mid-Dec 2025), $700B (late