Elon Musk Net Worth 2026: Life on the Trillion-Dollar Line

Elon Musk’s net worth is about $977 billion, according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires list on October 13, 2026. He is the richest person in the world by a huge margin, worth more than two and a half times as much as No. 2 Jeff Bezos.

Elon Musk: quick facts

Net worth

$977 Billion

Source of wealth

SpaceX, Tesla

Profession

Entrepreneur, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX

Nationality

American, South African, Canadian

Place of birth

Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa

Date of birth

June 28, 1971 (age 55)

His fortune now moves by tens of billions of dollars a day. Musk became the world’s first trillionaire when SpaceX went public in June 2026, slipped below $1 trillion weeks later, and has crossed back and forth over the line several times since. On October 9, 2026, Forbes had him at $1.012 trillion; four days later a SpaceX share slide pushed him back under.

Almost all of that wealth sits in two companies: his stake in SpaceX, which now includes the AI firm xAI and the social network X, and his stake in Tesla. He takes no regular salary from either.

Elon Musk at a glance

• Net worth: about $977 billion (Forbes real-time, October 13, 2026)
• Born: June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa
• Citizenship: South African, Canadian and American (U.S. citizen since 2002)
• Profession: entrepreneur; CEO of Tesla and SpaceX
• Key companies: SpaceX (including xAI and X), Tesla, Neuralink, The Boring Company
• Biggest payday: the SpaceX IPO in June 2026, the largest stock offering in history
• Children: at least 14
• Marital status: divorced; married twice to Talulah Riley and once to Justine Wilson

His net worth by year is charted at the end of this article.

Where Elon Musk’s money comes from

Source	Details	Estimate
SpaceX	Rockets, Starlink internet, xAI and X; listed on Nasdaq since June 2026	Forbes counts a stake of about 38% including options, his largest asset by far
Tesla	Electric cars, batteries, self-driving software, robots	Nearly 11% stake counted by Forbes; worth well over $150 billion
Restricted Tesla stock	Shares from the 2018 pay package that vest in January 2028	About $102 billion, excluded by Forbes until it vests
Neuralink	Brain-computer interface startup	Valued at about $9 billion in 2025
The Boring Company	Tunnel construction startup	Valued at about $5.7 billion in 2022
Cash and other assets	Proceeds of past stock sales, minus loans and taxes	Small next to his stock holdings

Musk’s major company stakes

Musk’s wealth comes from owning large pieces of companies he founded or took over early. The table below shows the key deals that built his fortune, in order.

Company	Year	What happened	Money involved
Zip2	1999	Sold to Compaq	Musk received about $22 million for his 7% stake
X.com / PayPal	2002	PayPal sold to eBay for $1.5 billion	Musk, the largest shareholder, received about $175.8 million
SpaceX	2002	Founded	Musk put in about $100 million of his own money
Tesla	2004	Led the Series A round	Invested $6.35 million
Twitter (now X)	2022	Bought the company	About $44 billion
xAI and X	2025	xAI bought X in an all-stock deal	X valued at $33 billion, xAI at $80 billion
SpaceX and xAI	2026	SpaceX acquired xAI	Combined value of $1.25 trillion
SpaceX IPO	2026	Listed on Nasdaq at $135 a share	Raised $75 billion

Early life

Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. His father, Errol, was an electromechanical engineer, and his mother, Maye, is a model and dietitian who was born in Canada.

He taught himself computer programming as a child. At 17 he moved to Canada, using the citizenship he held through his mother, and enrolled at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1990.

Two years later he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in physics and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Wharton School.

First fortune: Zip2 and PayPal

In 1995 Musk, his brother Kimbal and Greg Kouri founded Zip2, which made online city guides and maps for newspapers. Compaq bought it in February 1999 for $307 million. Musk’s share was about $22 million.

He used much of that money to start X.com, an online bank, in 1999. A year later it merged with rival Confinity, whose money transfer service was called PayPal, and the combined company took the PayPal name.

In 2002 eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion in stock. As the biggest shareholder, Musk received about $175.8 million before taxes. He was 31.

Tesla: from early investor to largest shareholder

Musk did not found Tesla, but he led its first major funding round in February 2004, investing $6.35 million and becoming chairman. He took over as CEO in 2008, during the financial crisis, when the company was close to running out of cash.

Tesla went public in 2010. Its stock rose sharply in 2020 and 2021, and in January 2021 Musk became the richest person in the world for the first time, with a fortune near $190 billion. In 2016 Tesla also bought SolarCity, a solar company Musk had helped start with his cousins.

The 2018 pay package and the court fight

In 2018 Tesla’s board gave Musk a performance award of stock options in 12 tranches, each tied to market value and business targets. Tesla hit all of them, and the options grew to be worth tens of billions of dollars.

A shareholder sued. In January 2024, a Delaware judge cancelled the entire award, ruling that the board was not independent and that shareholders had not been given full information. Tesla shareholders voted to approve the package again in June 2024, and Tesla moved its legal home to Texas.

On December 19, 2025, the Delaware Supreme Court reversed the lower court. It said cancelling the award was the wrong remedy, restored the package and awarded the plaintiff just $1 in damages.

Musk exercised the options in June 2026. He received about 304 million shares at a split-adjusted price of $23.34 each, a gain of roughly $116 billion on paper. The shares stay restricted until January 2028, which is why Forbes leaves them out of his net worth for now.

The 2025 “trillion-dollar” pay package

On November 6, 2025, more than 75% of voting Tesla shareholders approved a new award of up to 423.7 million shares over 10 years. It vests in 12 blocks.

To earn all of it, Tesla must reach a $8.5 trillion market value and hit operating goals such as millions of vehicle deliveries, a fleet of robotaxis, a million humanoid robots and much higher profits. If every target is met, the stock could be worth about $1 trillion. Forbes does not count any of it yet.

SpaceX and Starlink

Musk founded SpaceX in May 2002 with about $100 million of his PayPal money. After three failed launches, its Falcon 1 reached orbit in 2008. NASA contracts followed, and reusable Falcon 9 rockets made SpaceX the world’s busiest launch company.

Its satellite internet service, Starlink, turned SpaceX into a money machine. Starlink brought in about $11.4 billion in revenue in 2025 and was reported to have passed 10 million subscribers in early 2026.

SpaceX’s private value climbed fast. A tender offer in August 2025 valued it at about $400 billion, and a December 2025 offer valued it at $800 billion. That second deal pushed Musk to an estimated $677 billion, making him the first person worth more than $600 billion.

The SpaceX IPO

SpaceX priced its initial public offering on June 11, 2026, at $135 a share, raising $75 billion, the largest IPO ever. Shares began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX the next day.

On the first day of trading, Forbes named Musk the world’s first trillionaire. The stock then fell sharply in the following weeks, and by July his net worth had dropped below $700 billion. A rally in the autumn brought him back near $1 trillion.

Musk holds super-voting shares that give him control of the company. He and other insiders agreed not to sell their shares for about a year after the IPO, so most of his fortune is locked up until mid-2027.

Twitter, X and xAI

Musk bought Twitter for about $44 billion on October 27, 2022, paying with Tesla stock sales, his own equity and about $12.5 billion in loans. He fired most of the staff, renamed the site X and changed its verification system. Many advertisers left, and the business was widely reported to be worth far less than he paid.

In 2023 he founded xAI, the company behind the Grok chatbot. In March 2025 xAI bought X in an all-stock deal that valued X at $33 billion and xAI at $80 billion.

In February 2026, SpaceX acquired xAI, valuing SpaceX at about $1 trillion and xAI at about $250 billion. The deal folded X and Grok into SpaceX shortly before its IPO.

Other ventures

• Neuralink: co-founded in 2016 to build brain-computer implants. It raised money at a valuation of about $9 billion in 2025 and has implanted devices in human patients.
• The Boring Company: started in 2016 to dig tunnels for traffic. It runs a tunnel system under the Las Vegas Convention Center and was valued at about $5.7 billion in 2022.
• OpenAI: Musk co-founded the AI lab in 2015 as a nonprofit and donated about $50 million, then left its board in 2018. He later sued the company over its move toward a for-profit structure.

Politics and DOGE

Musk was the largest individual donor of the 2024 U.S. election, spending about $290 million, mostly to support Donald Trump and other Republicans.

After Trump took office in January 2025, Musk led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an effort to cut federal spending, as a special government employee. He left at the end of May 2025, when his 130-day term ran out.

Soon after, he publicly fell out with Trump over a major tax and spending bill and in July 2025 announced a new political party, the America Party. Tesla’s sales and stock were volatile during this period, which also affected his net worth.

Real estate

In May 2020 Musk said he would sell almost all his physical possessions and “own no house.” Over the next 18 months he sold seven homes in California for a combined total of roughly $130 million.

Property	Year sold	Reported price
Bel Air main residence (bought for $17 million in 2012)	2020	About $29 million
Former Gene Wilder house, Bel Air (bought for $6.75 million)	2021	About $7 million
Group of four Bel Air homes (bought for about $55 million in total)	2021	About $62 million
Hillsborough estate near San Francisco (bought for about $23.4 million in 2017)	2021	About $30 million

He sold the Gene Wilder home to the late actor’s nephew and lent the buyers part of the purchase price so the house would stay in the family. Since then Musk has said he mainly lives in a modest house he rents from SpaceX near its Starbase launch site in South Texas.

Personal life

Musk has been married three times. He married Canadian author Justine Wilson in 2000; they had six children, including a son who died in infancy in 2002, and divorced in 2008. He married British actress Talulah Riley twice, in 2010 and 2013, and both marriages ended in divorce.

He has three children with the musician Grimes, four with Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis, and one with writer Ashley St. Clair, for a total of at least 14 children. He lives mainly in Texas, where Tesla, SpaceX, X and The Boring Company are now based.

Philanthropy

Musk signed the Giving Pledge in 2012, promising to give away most of his wealth. He runs the Musk Foundation, which he started with Kimbal in 2001.

• In 2021 he gave Tesla shares then worth about $5.7 billion to charity, mostly to his own foundation.
• The foundation funded a $100 million prize for carbon-removal technology and gave $55 million to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in 2021.
• Its assets passed $14 billion by the end of 2024.

Critics, including reporting in The New York Times, have noted that the foundation has given away less than the 5% of assets that private foundations are generally required to pay out each year.

Big jumps in Musk’s fortune

• January 2021: becomes the world’s richest person for the first time, near $190 billion
• December 2024: first person worth $400 billion
• October 2025: first person worth $500 billion
• December 2025: passes $600 billion after the $800 billion SpaceX valuation
• March 2026: $839 billion on Forbes’ annual World’s Billionaires list
• June 2026: first trillionaire on the day of the SpaceX IPO

How Elon Musk compares

Billionaire	Estimated net worth	Main source
Elon Musk	About $977 billion	SpaceX, Tesla
Jeff Bezos	About $378 billion	Amazon
Larry Page	About $289 billion	Google (Alphabet)
Michael Dell	About $278 billion	Dell Technologies
Mark Zuckerberg	About $255 billion	Meta

Figures are from Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires list on October 13, 2026. Musk is worth more than the next three people combined. See the full ranking of the richest people in the world and other business people.

Frequently asked questions

How much is Elon Musk worth?

About $977 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time estimate on October 13, 2026. His fortune has moved above and below $1 trillion several times since June 2026.

Is Elon Musk a trillionaire?

He was the first person to reach $1 trillion, on the day SpaceX went public in June 2026. Because his wealth tracks SpaceX and Tesla shares, he has since dropped below and climbed back above that mark several times.

How much of SpaceX does Elon Musk own?

Forbes estimates his stake at about 38% including options. His super-voting shares give him control of the company.

How much of Tesla does Elon Musk own?

Forbes counts a stake of nearly 11%. Restricted shares from his 2018 pay package, which vest in 2028, would add roughly 8% more.

Does Elon Musk get a salary?

No regular salary. His pay from Tesla comes as stock awards tied to performance targets, such as the 2018 package and the 2025 award approved by shareholders.

Does Elon Musk own a house?

He sold his California homes in 2020 and 2021 for about $130 million in total and says he mainly lives in a house rented from SpaceX in South Texas.

Sources: Forbes (Real-Time Billionaires list, October 2026; World’s Billionaires list 2026; reporting on the SpaceX IPO and Musk’s wealth milestones), Bloomberg, CNBC, Tesla and SpaceX securities filings, Delaware Supreme Court ruling (December 2025), Wikipedia. All net worth figures are estimates.