CEO of Tesla, Twitter, SpaceX... Elon Musk has made a reputation for his successful businesses. But just how successful is he?
Once the world’s richest man, Elon Musk has been on everyone’s lips for several consecutive years, and continues to do so. His bombastic promises and successful businesses made him as recognizable as the President of the United States, and possibly even more. But what is Elon Musk’s net worth as of 2023?
Elon Musk always invested and created futuristic companies that invested in groundbreaking technologies. His most important venture, Tesla Inc., has passed the $1 trillion mark in evaluation under Musk’s rule. Though he didn’t found Tesla, a common misconception, his personal charisma made it one of the most successful startups in history.
Tesla is an electric vehicle company, striving to develop the first fully self-driving car that is commercially available. Its business model revolves around developing few but excellent cars, whose price tag matches that of established brands like Audi and BMW.
Despite the violent fall in stock price that Tesla experienced in 2022, it is still the world’s biggest EV manufacturer.
Elon Musk is also the CEO and co-founder of SpaceX, a spacecraft manufacturer and communication developer. SpaceX created Starlink, a satellite internet communication system that is able to provide access to the net everywhere in the world. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Elon Musk gave Ukraine access to the internet through Starlink.
With SpaceX, Elon Musk constantly repeated that he would take mankind on Mars by 2035. Clearly a gross overestimation of the company’s capabilities, and a promise that Musk himself stopped repeating.
The Twitter disaster
Part of the reason why Tesla’s stocks plummeted in value was Elon Musk’s interest in a new, unusual for him, venture. In 2022, he decided to personally purchase Twitter, one of the most famous social media platforms.
Since then, Musk’s management of the platform has been so disastrous and so intense that it kept him away from his other companies. At one point, Tesla lost $47 billion in just one day, and investors were increasingly wary of Musk’s leadership.
Indeed, Elon Musk managed to become the man with the biggest loss in wealth ever. In less than a year, his net worth declined by over $200 billion, losing the number 1 spot as world’s richest man.
Nevertheless, Elon Musk is still the second wealthiest man on the planet, with a net worth of $188,8 billion. He has been replaced on the top spot by Bernard Arnault, the French businessman owner of several luxury brands.
Despite the recent loss, Elon Musk is still one of the most influential people on the planet. His decisions affect millions of people, and he knows it, for better or for worse.
