Key Takeaways
- With a net worth of approximately $242 billion in 2024, Elon Musk is a cultural zeitgeist. His wealth, lifestyle and investments drive enormous interest.
- Musk’s investment portfolio includes Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and Twitter, and spans multiple industries.
- His personal wealth reached a high of nearly $257 billion in 2023 and he is regularly named the world’s wealthiest individual.
- Musk’s wealth stems from early successes with Zip2 and PayPal, along followed by a portfolio of successful tech investments.
Love him or hate him, Elon Musk has cemented his position as both a cultural icon, an online troll and an investment maestro. With a staggering net worth of approximately $242 billion in 2024, he once again claimed the title of the “World’s Richest Person.” It’s hardly surprising that Elon Musk’s investments are a hot topic.
Over the past year, the term “Elon Musk” was searched around 24 million times on Google as people sought to uncover the secrets behind his vast wealth. In this article, we take an in-depth look at the Elon Musk’s investments in 2024, with some key insights on each one.
Elon Musk investments 2024
While it’s not possible to know exactly where any entrepreneur puts their money – or exactly how much – we can still build a fairly clear picture of the industries and trends they are backing. Here are the key players in Elon Musk’s 2024 portfolio.
Tesla (TSLA)
Tesla is an American energy and electric vehicle company founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning, JB Straubel and Ian Wright. Elon Musk was one of its first investors. The company is best known for its electric vehicles, which are the main driving force behind the public company’s share performance. Tesla was among the first of Elon Musk’s companies and also one of his most notable investments.
As of 2024, Tesla has a market capitalization of nearly $836 billion, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world. Elon Musk became the Tesla CEO in 2008 and has been heavily involved ever since, retaining the position to this day. Tesla has created six gigafactories in California, Nevada, Texas, New York, Germany, and China.
But it hasn’t always been plain sailing, with Tesla’s autopilot feature throwing the company’s future into question. Several accidents involving the semi-autonomous driving system led to investigations by regulatory authorities. Tesla has also been involved in labor disputes and allegations of unsafe factory working conditions.
Despite these issues, Tesla continues to lead the EV market and innovate in the energy sector, with stock prices reflecting the company’s success. Tesla is by far the most significant part of Musk’s investment portfolio, with a total of 715,022,706 shares or a 20.5% stake in Tesla.
SpaceX
SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, driven by the goal of enabling humans to live on other planets. With Elon as CEO, the company has significantly reduced the cost of space travel and increased the reliability of space missions through its reusable rocket technology.
As of 2024, this private company is valued at approximately $210 billion, making it one of the most valuable private companies globally. When it comes to private equity, CEO Elon Musk has 42% equity in SpaceX.
Some of SpaceX’s achievements include the first privately funded spacecraft to reach the International Space Station, the development of the Falcon and Starship rockets, and the deployment of the Starlink satellite constellation aimed at providing global internet coverage.
SpaceX has faced some scrutiny for its safety practices. The rapid development and testing of its Starship rockets have come under fire, following multiple high-profile failures. The company has also been sued over the environmental impact of its launch sites, and conflicts with other satellite operators.
Despite the challenges, SpaceX remains focused on establishing a sustainable human presence on Mars and expanding its Starlink internet service.
Neuralink
Neuralink is a neurotechnology company founded by Elon Musk in 2016. Headed by CEO Jared Birchall, the pioneering company manufactures implants that enable direct communication between the human brain and computers. It aims to help people with neurological disorders, such as paralysis, restore lost sensory and motor functions.
Ethical concerns have been raised regarding the safety and long-term effects of implanting devices into the human brain. Animal rights organizations have criticized the company for its use of animal testing in developing and refining its technology. Additionally, Neuralink’s ambitious goals have led to skepticism within the scientific community about the feasibility and timeline of achieving its objectives.
The first Neuralink human trial happened earlier this year when the company put an implant on Noland Arbaugh.
As of 2024, Neuralink is a privately held company, with an estimated valuation of around $5 billion. Musk’s stake at the company is unknown but it’s speculated that he’s one of the biggest shareholders. Elon Musk’s initial investment in Neuralink in 2016 was $100 million. Today, it’s probably worth a lot more.
The Boring Company
Founded by Elon Musk in December 2016, The Boring Company specializes in reducing traffic congestion. Its networks of underground tunnels can accommodate high-speed transportation systems, as part of Musk’s broader vision for sustainable urban mobility. The CEO of the company is Steve Davis.
The company’s most notable project is the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop, a 2.7 km tunnel system between points within the Las Vegas convention center.
The Boring Company is privately held, with an estimated valuation of over $5 billion. Around 10% of private equity was given to early employees with the remaining 90% going to Musk. This means Musk owns a stake in the company at over $4 billion.
Fun FactCritics have raised concerns about the feasibility, cost-effectiveness, and environmental impact of the Boring Company’s tunnel construction projects. Some of the company’s initial project proposals encountered regulatory hurdles and public opposition, resulting in delays and modifications to the original plans.
xAI – $750 Million
If there’s one thing we know for certain about Musk, it’s that he’s a huge fan of artificial intelligence. His stark support for AI became clear back in 2015 when he invested in OpenAI. Musk left OpenAI in 2018 but despite his absence the company grew over the years and made headlines with its ChatGPT model.
Musk made his intent of getting back into the artificial intelligence race by founding xAI in March 2023. He assumed the role of CEO and revealed that the ultimate goal of the AI startup is “to understand the true nature of the universe”. The company added an AI assistant to Twitter with the launch of GrokAI in November 2023.
In its latest funding B round, xAI gathered $6 billion and Musk himself invested $750 million. Some of the notable investors in the funding round included Andreessen Horowitz, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding. The post-money valuation of xAI currently stands at $24 billion.
Founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter became one of the world’s most used social media platforms. Musk acquired the platform via hostile takeover in October 2022. The deal was one of the most talked about deals in recent history, due to both the rancor between Dorsey and Musk, and Twitter’s colossal price-tag (we’ll come back to that).
Shortly after the deal went through, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal was replaced with Linda Yaccarino and Musk became the company’s president. These changes were only beginning of a much larger story.
In July 2023, Twitter officially rebranded to X – and has been flanked with controversy ever since. Musk immediately overhauled the company’s content moderation policies, prompring fiery debates over free speech and misinformation. There have also been lawwsuits relating to data privacy issues, and allegations of poor treatment of legacy Twitter staff.
Pre-acquisition, Twitter was a publicly traded company with a market cap of approximately $44 billion. After the takeover, Musk reverted the company’s status to private, in a bid to maximize his freedom over the comany’s operations. In 2024, Twitter’s market evaluation is estimated to be around $12.5 billion, marking a massive drop of more than 70% since the purchase. With Musk owning a 79% share, his stake comes to $9.8 billion.
Elon Musk’s net worth in 2024
Up until 2020, when people thought about the richest man in the world, two names came up – Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. But in 2021, newcomer Musk cruised into second place, having increased his wealth dramatically in the previous year. Since then, Musk is engaged in a permanent battle for the top spot, with Jeff Bezos and Bernard Arnault also jostling for position.
In 2024, Musk is once again in the race for the richest person in the world. His net worth dropped from the $257 billion high in December 2023 to $221 billion in late June 2024 due to the drop in Tesla stock price. At the start of July 2024, Tesla prices made a significant recovery and propelled Musk to the top. Whether he’ll keep the title for the remainder of the year remains to be seen.
How did Elon Musk make his money?
Elon Musk’s journey to riches began with Zip2, a web software company he co-founded with his brother Kimbal Musk. Zip2 developed online city guides for newspapers and in 1999 Compaq acquired it for nearly $300 million.
This successful exit provided Musk with his first major financial windfall. He went on to found X.com, an online payment company, which later rebranded to PayPal after a merger. PayPal revolutionized online payments, and in 2002, eBay purchased it for $1.5 billion in stock.
With significant capital, Musk turned his attention to more ambitious ventures. He founded SpaceX in 2002 to reduce space transportation costs and enable the colonization of Mars. In 2004, Musk joined Tesla Motors, an electric vehicle startup, as chairman and later CEO.
Musk also founded Neuralink in 2016 to develop brain-machine interfaces and The Boring Company in 2017 to build underground transportation tunnels. His visionary leadership and willingness to invest his own money in high-risk, high-reward ventures have been pivotal in his financial success.
In 2022, he acquired Twitter for $44 billion, making it one of the most high-profile tech deals in recent years.
How much money does Elon Musk make in one day?
At the time of writing, Elon Musk’s daily incomes is estimated to be around $432 million per day in 2024.
People are often fascinated by the vast amounts of money Musk makes per day. To truly grasp how much the tech mogul earns, we can break it down to different time periods. Here’s a quick overview:
Period |
Earnings |
|---|---|
| Per second | $5,000 |
| Per minute | $300,000 |
| Per hour | $18 million |
| Per day | $432 million |
| Per year | $157.7 billion |
To put things into perspective, the average salary in the USA is approximately $77,000 per year. In just a minute, Elon earns almost four times that amount.
What crypto does Elon Musk own?
We can only really guess about which cryptocurrency Musk holds, based on his comments and interviews. But Doge and Bitcoin both seem a safe assumption.
Musk is no stranger to the crypto world and he has been a major voice in some big moments. For instance, in 2021 he announced that Tesla would start accepting Bitcoin as payment, pushing the price to an all time high. In 2019, Tesla enabled DOGE payments, causing similar surges in the market.
Yet despite his passion for market moving, Musk remains enigmatic about his personal crypto holdings.
Musk seemed to confirm that he holds some DOGE in an X Spaces podcast:
“I still own a bunch of dogecoin, and SpaceX owns a bunch of bitcoin”
This leads us to Bitcoin. The world’s leading cryptocurrency, is on the SpaceX and Tesla books. Tesla’s holdings of BTC remained unchanged throughout the first quarter of 2024. The company holds a total of 11,509 BTC, which translates to $719 million at current price.
Closing thoughts
Elon Musk’s investments in 2024 showcase his diverse portfolio and influence across various industries. From revolutionizing transportation and space travel to advancing neurotechnology and infrastructure, Musk seems set to shape the future.
Understanding Musk’s investments provides insight into the strategies behind one of the world’s wealthiest individuals.
