Today is a historic day for wealth-obsessed people like myself.
For the first time in CelebrityNetWorth's history, we updated someone's net worth to a number we've never used before:
$400 billion
As you probably discerned from the title of this article and your general common sense, the lucky person whose net worth was updated to that never-before-used number was… Elon Musk.
Elon's wealth surge comes primarily thanks to his stake in Tesla. Tesla's stock price has nearly doubled since mid-October.
In the middle of the trading day today, Tesla's stock price hit $409.73. Tesla closed the day at $400.99. Even at the lower closing price, Elon Musk's net worth ended the day at $400 billion. Elon is the first person in history to have a net worth of $400 billion.
***Update*** Tesla shares soared again on Wednesday, ending the day up 6% at $424.77. At that level, Elon ended the day with a net worth of $450 billion.
(Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
How We Got Here
When we launched CelebrityNetWorth back in 2009, Bill Gates was the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $40 billion. Today, a $40 billion fortune would not even rank you among the 40 richest people in the world.
When we launched CNW in 2009, Elon Musk was not a billionaire. He may not have even been a hundred-millionaire. During a particularly precarious period in 2007, Tesla was perilously close to running out of money. To save the company, Elon famously put all of his cash reserves into Tesla. As he was also in the midst of a costly divorce, some outlets at the time went so far as to speculate that Elon was broke.
Tesla went public in June 2010 with a market cap of $2.2 billion. On that day, Elon was worth around $200 million on paper. He finally became a billionaire for the first time in 2012. He first became a $100 billionaire in August 2020.
On October 28, 2021, Elon's net worth topped $300 billion for the first time.
On November 4, 2021, Elon was briefly worth $340 billion, enough to break John D. Rockefeller's 80-year streak as the richest human in modern history (when adjusting for inflation).
The next year or so was brutal for Elon's fortunes, primarily because of a major drop in Tesla's share price.
Elon ended 2022 having seen his net worth drop all the way back down to $130 billion.
A resurgence of Tesla's stock price and a new valuation at SpaceX allowed Elon to end 2023 with a net worth of $230 billion.
The first half of 2024 was yet another significant decline, all the way back down to $168 billion in April. The last few months have been a steady march back up to the top. And that brings us to the present, with Tesla's share price above $400 and with Elon sporting a record-setting $400 billion net worth.
First Trillionaire
While Elon may be the first person to have a net worth above $400 billion and the richest human being of all time, with a slight twist in history, he never would have been in the running for either record. Bill Gates easily could have and should have become the world's first trillionaire earlier this year when Microsoft's market cap hit $3 trillion.
Disclosure: I own shares of Tesla in a retirement account. I bought my shares on November 11. I paid $349 a share. Obviously, I feel very smart today, but I felt pretty stupid in the days immediately following my share purchase when the stock sunk down to $311. This article is not investment advice.
