There’s just one query left about Elon Musk: Will his wealth streak to $500 billion within the subsequent day or two? Or will he hit that magic determine someday early subsequent week? He may preserve climbing even after January 20 when Donald Trump is sworn in because the forty seventh US President.
Musk, at 53, has already eclipsed all different modern-day mega-billionaires by an extended stretch. Simply final week, he turbocharged previous $400 billion on December 11. He shortly climbed to $447 billion, then made one other stratospheric leap to $486 billion, in accordance with the newest Bloomberg Billionaires Index. On Tuesday alone, he added $19.2 billion to his fortune, adopted by one other $12 billion on Wednesday. Since Trump’s presidential election win, Musk has turn out to be a staggering $182 billion richer.
Musk’s meteoric rise has been propelled by the tech-heavy Nasdaq alternate which crossed the 20,000-mark for the primary time final week. But Musk, who says the “final success is constructing a civilization on Mars” and goals to retire on the purple planet, is clearly in a league of his personal. His fortune dwarfs these of different mega-billionaires like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ($251 billion) and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg ($221 billion), whose mixed wealth nonetheless falls in need of Musk’s whole.
However Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg aren’t the one gamers on this high-stakes billionaire race. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, ranked twelfth with $115 billion, trails far behind the frontrunners however has nonetheless added an astonishing $71 billion in 2024. In the meantime, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, a fixture on wealthy lists for the reason that Nineteen Nineties, is now value $194 billion, gaining $70 billion this yr alone.
On the house entrance, each Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani and Adani Group head Gautam Adani, have fallen out of Bloomberg’s elite $100-billion membership this yr. Ambani’s power and retail sectors have been combating rising debt whereas Adani’s empire has been buffeted by US bribery prices which the billionaire has denied.
To make certain, Musk’s flagship corporations, Tesla and SpaceX, are thriving. However the huge query is whether or not their astronomical valuations are pushed by intrinsic worth — or by the so-called “Trump Impact”, with Musk cosying as much as the incoming president at Mar-a-Lago and having a direct Oval Workplace line.
May this proximity to Trump result in additional advantages, propelling Musk towards turning into the world’s first modern-era trillionaire? There may be hypothesis that Trump will take away tax credit for electrical automobiles that boosted gross sales of Tesla rivals whereas SpaceX derives most of its earnings from authorities contracts. Trump has been pitching Musk’s ambition of placing spacemen on Mars.
Does that sound far-fetched? Take into account this: Musk is a founding member of the “PayPal Mafia”, alongside Silicon Valley heavyweights like Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman (the LinkedIn founder).
Hoffman, who backed Kamala Harris reasonably than Trump, offered LinkedIn for $26 billion and has since invested in main start-ups like Airbnb as a enterprise capitalist. Notably, JD Vance, the vice president-elect, as soon as labored for Thiel’s Mithril Capital.
Crypto market
Musk’s shut ties to the incoming administration have additionally supercharged the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin, the flagship cryptocurrency, was valued at $60,858 on October 1. By December 5, it had blasted by way of the $100,000 mark and climbed additional to $107,487 on Monday.
Cryptocurrency markets are flashing inexperienced. MicroStrategy, a software program firm with substantial Bitcoin holdings, has been added to the Nasdaq 100, giving the index “oblique publicity” to Bitcoin. Presto Analysis even predicts Bitcoin may hit $210,000 by 2025.
Nonetheless, Musk’s success isn’t solely tied to the Trump Impact. SpaceX, now valued at an eye-popping $350 billion, has achieved 420 profitable launches with solely three failures — a outstanding observe document. Much more spectacular, its Falcon boosters have efficiently landed 384 occasions out of 396 makes an attempt. This means to reuse boosters permits SpaceX to launch payloads at charges opponents can’t match.
Crucially, SpaceX’s Starlink now has 6,784 satellites in low-Earth orbit, producing an estimated $6.6 billion in income this yr. That determine may surge to $11 billion subsequent yr, probably making the corporate extremely worthwhile.
On Earth, Tesla’s inventory can be racing forward. Its share value has surged 71 per cent to $424, closely greased by Trump’s election win.
All of this assumes the inventory market gained’t collapse within the coming months. Ruchir Sharma, chair of Rockefeller Worldwide, has warned the US market is heading for a downturn. He’s described it as “the mom of all bubbles,” although he additionally acknowledges there’s little signal of an imminent deflation.
If that is certainly an enormous bubble, valuations — together with Musk’s — may come crashing down. But when the rally continues, Musk is sort of sure to interrupt the $500-billion barrier within the very close to future.
Musk’s flagship corporations, Tesla and SpaceX, are thriving.
However the huge query is whether or not their astronomical valuations are pushed by intrinsic worth
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