Elon Musk Biography: Networth, Story, Early Life, Qualification, Works and Success Story

Elon Musk Networth

Elon Musk is currently the richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $407.3 billion.Most of his wealth comes from his ownership in companies like SpaceX, Tesla, and X Corp (formerly Twitter). He owns about 42% of SpaceX, which was worth nearly $350 billion in late 2024. He also owns around 13% of Tesla, which adds a big part to his fortune.

Musk has a 79% stake in X Corp, although its value has dropped a lot since he bought it for $44 billion in 2022. Even though his net worth fell by over $100 billion in 2025, his wide range of investments has kept him at the top of the list of the world’s wealthiest people.

Elon Musk Story

Elon Musk was born in South Africa in 1971. He later became a successful American entrepreneur. He helped start PayPal, an online payment system, and founded SpaceX, a company that builds rockets and spacecraft. He also became the CEO and one of the main investors in Tesla, the electric car company.

Elon Reeve Musk is the oldest of three children. He holds citizenship in South Africa, Canada, and the United States. His mother, Maye Musk, is a model and nutritionist, while his father, Errol Musk, is an engineer. Elon has spoken about having a difficult relationship with his father.

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Elon Musk Early Life

Elon Musk was born in South Africa to a Canadian mother and a South African father. As a child, he loved reading books and working with computers. He was shy and often bullied at school, sometimes even beaten up. Things changed when he had a growth spurt in his teenage years and became strong enough to stand up for himself.

At just 12 years old, Musk created a simple video game and sold it to a computer magazine. In 1988, he left South Africa after getting a Canadian passport. He did this because he didn’t want to join the military under the apartheid system and hoped to find better opportunities in the United States.

Elon Musk Qualification

Elon Musk moved to Canada at age 17 to attend Queen’s University and avoid mandatory military service in South Africa. He became a Canadian citizen that same year, partly because it would make it easier for him to later move to the United States.

In 1992, Musk moved to the U.S. to study at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a degree in economics and another in physics. After that, he enrolled at Stanford University in California to start a Ph.D. in energy physics. However, he left the program just two days later to start his first company, choosing entrepreneurship over academics.

Elon Musk Works

In the summer of 1995, Elon Musk moved to Silicon Valley and joined a PhD program in applied physics at Stanford University. However, he dropped out just two days later to start a business. His younger brother, Kimbal Musk, who had just graduated from Queen’s University, joined him in California. The brothers started a company called Zip2, which was an online business directory with maps. This marked the beginning of Elon Musk’s journey into the business world. Zip2 attracted investors and grew into a successful company. In 1999, they sold Zip2 to Compaq for $307 million.

Elon then launched an online financial company called X.com. Around the same time, another company called Confinity, started by Peter Thiel and others, became a competitor. In 2000, the two companies merged and focused on a product called PayPal, which allowed people to send money online. In 2002, eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion, and Musk, as the largest shareholder, received $165 million in eBay stock at the age of 31. After PayPal, Musk went on to create or lead companies like Tesla and SpaceX. He used much of his early fortune to build these businesses, which focus on solving big problems like climate change, living only on one planet, and the future of human survival.

Elon Musk Success Story

Musk also founded SpaceX, a company that builds rockets and works closely with NASA and the U.S. Air Force. SpaceX has signed big contracts to launch rockets and handle military missions. Musk has often shared his dream of sending astronauts to Mars with NASA, aiming for a mission as early as 2025. His journey hasn’t been easy.

He was bullied in school and started small as a business owner, but he always aimed high and never gave up. Besides electric cars, Tesla is also active in clean energy. It bought a company called SolarCity, which focuses on solar power. Tesla now makes two solar battery products: the Powerwall, for home energy backup, and the Powerpack, for use in businesses or by electricity companies.

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