Elon Musk halfway to becoming world’s first trillionaire: report

Published October 2, 2025
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France, on June 16, 2023. — Reuters/File
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France, on June 16, 2023. — Reuters/File

Billionaire Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, is nearly halfway to becoming the planet’s first trillionaire, Forbes magazine has reported.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO became the first person to achieve a net worth of $500 billion, briefly, as the shares in his electric vehicle company rebound from his clumsy stint in politics, amid other gains.

The 54-year-old’s net worth hit $500.1bn on Wednesday before dipping back to $499.1bn, the publication’s “Real-Time Billionaires” tracker reported.

Ranked after him are Oracle CEO Larry Ellison with a net worth of $350.7bn, followed by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg with a net worth of $245.8bn on the Forbes list.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania and dropping out of Stanford University, Musk banked his first millions when he sold an online publishing software company to US computer maker Compaq for more than $300 million in 1999.

His next company eventually merged with PayPal, and after leaving that venture, the South African-born tech entrepreneur founded space rocket company SpaceX in 2002 and became the chairman of electric carmaker Tesla in 2004.

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