Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk has reached a new milestone, becoming the first person to hit a net worth of $500 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
The 54-year-old billionaire briefly crossed the mark on Wednesday as shares in his electric vehicle company rebounded after months of turbulence.
Forbes’ “Real-Time Billionaires” tracker showed his wealth touching $500.1 billion before settling back to $499.1 billion later that day.
Forbes noted that Musk is now nearly halfway to becoming the world’s first trillionaire.
Other billionaires trail behind him. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison ranks second with a net worth of $350.7 billion, while Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg follows with $245.8 billion.
Musk, who was born in South Africa, studied at the University of Pennsylvania before briefly attending Stanford University. He made his first millions in 1999 after selling an online publishing software company to Compaq for more than $300 million.
He later co-founded X.com, which merged with PayPal. After leaving the payments company, Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 and became chairman of Tesla in 2004.
Forbes said his growing wealth is being driven by the performance of Tesla shares and the expansion of his space company.
