No fortune in history has moved like this one — up 8 orders of magnitude in 27 years, including the single largest wealth loss ever recorded on the way. Here is the full timeline.
- 1999 $22M
Sells Zip2 to Compaq. First fortune at age 27.
- 2002 ~$200M
eBay buys PayPal for $1.5B; Musk nets ~$180M and pours it into SpaceX and, later, Tesla.
- 2008 Nearly $0
Tesla and SpaceX both within weeks of bankruptcy. The fourth Falcon 1 launch works; NASA signs a $1.6B contract days later.
- 2012 $2B
Joins the billionaire list after the Tesla Model S launches and SpaceX docks with the ISS.
- 2020 $100B+
Tesla's pandemic-era 8× rally vaults him past $100B in under a year.
- Jan 2021 $185B
Becomes the richest person on Earth for the first time, passing Jeff Bezos.
- Nov 2021 $300B
First person ever worth $300B as Tesla crosses a $1.2T market cap.
- Dec 2022 $137B
The crash: Tesla falls ~65% after the $44B Twitter purchase. Guinness records it as the largest personal fortune loss in history (~$180–200B).
- 2024 $400B+
Tesla recovers; SpaceX and xAI valuations soar. First person past $400B in December.
- Oct 2025 $500B
First person worth half a trillion dollars.
- Dec 2025 $600B → $700B
Tesla rally plus the Delaware Supreme Court restoring the 2018 CEO award (~304M options) on Dec 19.
- Feb 2, 2026 $800B
xAI merges into SpaceX — a $1.25T combined valuation, the biggest merger of all time.
- Jun 11, 2026 $813B
SpaceX prices its IPO at $135/share ($1.77T valuation), raising $75B — the largest IPO ever, ahead of Saudi Aramco.
- Jun 12, 2026 $1T+
SPCX opens at $150 on Nasdaq. Elon Musk becomes the first trillionaire in human history.