Elon Musk made his money primarily through a series of entrepreneurial ventures and strategic investments in technology companies.
- His first major success was co-founding Zip2, an online city guide software company, which he sold to Compaq in 1999 for $307 million, earning Musk about $22 million
- He then founded X.com, an online payment company that later became PayPal. When eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion, Musk, as the largest shareholder, made approximately $175 million from the sale
- With the capital from these early ventures, Musk invested in and helped build Tesla Motors, becoming its CEO and largest shareholder. Tesla's stock price surged especially after 2020, making up the bulk of Musk's wealth
- He also founded SpaceX in 2002, a private aerospace manufacturer and space transport company, which has grown significantly in valuation and contributed substantially to his net worth
- Additional ventures include Neuralink (neurotechnology), The Boring Company (infrastructure and tunneling), and acquiring Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion
Most of Musk's wealth is tied to his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX, with Tesla shares alone valued in the tens of billions. His compensation from Tesla is largely stock-option based, linked to company performance milestones, rather than a conventional salary
. In summary, Elon Musk's fortune was built by founding and scaling innovative tech companies—starting with Zip2 and PayPal—and then leveraging that capital and experience to lead Tesla and SpaceX to massive growth and valuation increases, making him one of the richest people in the world
