Elon Musk started 2021 by becoming the richest person on the planet, leaving the erstwhile titleholder, Amazon's Jeff Bezos far behind. For now, Musk is the flavor of the season as well, showing his philanthropic side as well as his entrepreneurship. Whilst Bezos’ treatment of Amazon employees has made the shares of Amazon fall by 1.2%, lowing his net worth to $182.8 billion.
Tesla’s shares fell as well, but Musk is still worth $182.9 billion, making him the richest person on the planet, period. Of course, all this keeps changing when the stocks go up and down, a lot of which also depends on the people’s perception of both Amazon and Tesla.
Musk’s worth has grown and 2020 may have been a dark year for most of the planet, but as far as his net worth goes, it was all bright and sunny. Elon Musk’s fortune was valued at $24.6 billion in March 2020, and the growth has been $150 billion, quite a remarkable feat.
Here are some of the secrets to Elon Musk’s still-growing fortune, and what we can learn from it.
Tesla’s Rocketing Share Prices
Musks’ fortune is not something he had actively pursued. It comes from Tesla’s success story as the fastest-growing electric car brand in the world, the kind that could even get up and put down its own factory in China, a country notorious for wanting to own everything in it. Tesla’s share price has rocketed up, increasing more than ninefold from then to now.
In July 2020, Elon Musk became the seventh-richest person, and in November he passed Bill Gates, the Microsoft mogul to become the second-richest person in the world. In fact, Bill Gates's entire fortune is about $132 billion, something Musk has gained more than in 2020 alone.
Tesla’s market value stands at a very impressive $800 billion today, making it the largest automobile company in terms of market capitalization. To put things into perspective, Ford’s market is valued at about $40 billion, while Toyota is at $200 billion. Basically, today, Tesla is worth more than Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, GM, and Ford combined.
Musk’s Success Is Tesla’s Success
When Elon Musk hit the news, titled as the richest person in the world, he reacted by replying to a Twitter user who had shared the news, saying, “how strange”.
In fact, one of his earlier Tweets is self-explanatory, as he wrote, “About half my money is intended to help problems on Earth, and a half to help establish a self-sustaining city on Mars to ensure the continuation of life (of all species) in case Earth gets hit by a meteor-like the dinosaurs or WW3 happens and we destroy ourselves”.
With Biden all set to swear in, the US is going blue, meaning that as green initiatives are likely to gather steam, Tesla and Musk’s worth may soon rise even bigger. Biden had mentioned something about tax benefits on electric vehicles and if the same is offered on Tesla, people are likely to queue up for Tesla even more. Better sales mean better shares, ergo, better value.
Environmental concerns are helping nudge people in the direction of electric cars already and mostly every carmaker is launching alternatively-fueled vehicles. We may be at the cusp of an electric revolution…
Elon Musk’s Secrets To Success
According to an interview with BBC, Elon Musk has no interest in money per se. This is the man who is selling off his homes and vows to own none. Technically speaking, his $180-plus billion fortune is not stowed as wads of endless cash in a vault. This is more of net worth on paper, calculated based on his shares in Tesla and SpaceX amongst others, and their market value in turn.
Obviously, he lives the good life, but money is not what drives him. For instance, Tesla follows or plans to follow an open-patent policy because Musk believes the future is electric but it is not Tesla’s alone. When he saw NASA’s space program’s hurdles, he launched SpaceX, the cheapest rocket-launching solution yet, with the end goal of putting someone on Mars. Musk’s idea is to create another sustainable planet before the Earth goes bust.
He’s not afraid of big risks and often views each failure as learning modules to success. Musk does not listen to the naysayers, and whilst the critics were maintaining a death watch on Tesla, he kept pouring money into it. People laughed at SpaceX, and even his youngest son’s name, but Elon Musk lives in the future, planning a century ahead, rather than just years.
His vision of Tesla has made it a tremendous success and through open-patents, Musk wants fossil-fuels to be a thing of the past, yesterday.
The man is unstoppable, and his zeal to do everything he can, pulling 120-hour work-weeks, is what has made him the richest person on the Earth. And if the future holds, probably on Mars as well.
Sources: Forbes, CNBC, BBC