What is Elon Musk's source of income? how he became the world's richest man
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But, how did Elon Musk get so rich - and what’s his background?
What is Elon Musk’s background?
Elon Musk was born into a wealthy family in Pretoria, South Africa in 1971.
His mother, Maye, was a dietitian and model who had come from Canada, while his father, Errol, was an engineer.
In 2021, the entrepeneur revealed he has Asperger's syndrome - a condition which means he interprets the world around him differently to people who don’t have the condition.
Musk was reportedly good with computers when he was a child and designed a video game aged just 12-years-old.
He left for Canada at the age of 17 to avoid military service under the Apartheid regime.
A period studying at Queens University, Ontario was followed by a transfer to the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, where he studied physics and business.
After graduating, he briefly enrolled for a physics PhD at Stanford University, California before setting up online business directory Zip2 with his younger brother Kimbal in 1995.
The pair sold the firm in 1999 for $307 million, with Elon Musk himself receiving $22 million from the deal.
How did Elon Musk make his money?
Unlike most other billionaires, Elon Musk made the bulk of his wealth through several successful business ventures rather with one big success.
After selling Zip2, he went into online banking and payments with controversial businessman Peter Thiel - setting up what would eventually become PayPal.
His stake in the business netted him $180 million when it was bought by eBay in 2009.
In 2002, he founded SpaceX with an ambition to colonise Mars using affordable rockets.
The following year, he ploughed $6 million into Tesla despite the company having not even produced a real car.
Both firms struggled initially, but SpaceX took off in 2008 after penning a $1.6 billion deal with NASA and Tesla’s first vehicle - Model S - went into mass-production in 2012.
SpaceX is now a key partner in NASA missions, while you see increasingly Tesla cars on streets across the world as people have become more environmentally conscious.
Elon Musk’s fortune has grown to astronomical proportions as a result of Tesla’s share price, which tripled in value to more than $1 trillion (£801.7 billion) in 2021 - although it is now worth around $730 billion (£585.2 billion).
He held between 17% and 21% of the company’s shares before he bought Twitter - a stake currently valued in the region of $150 billion (£120.3 billion).
However, he has sold roughly $8.5 million (£6.8 billion) of his Tesla stake to fund his buyout of the platform.
Meanwhile, Mr Musk’s 48% stake in $100 billion (£80.2 billion) firm SpaceX makes up most of the rest of his fortune.
Elon Musk has also set out with two other business ventures in the last five years.
The Boring Company is a firm that digs big holes in the ground, while Neuralink is aiming to develop telepathic links to machines - an innovation which could transform the lives of people who have neurological disorders or severe spinal injuries.
Elon Musk’s Twitter buyout explained
On 4 April, Elon Musk bought a 9.1% stake in Twitter before announcing a takeover bid a few days later.
The social media giant’s board initially sought to halt the takeover, but then performed an about-turn - agreeing sell the company to Musk for $44billion (£35.3 billion) on 25 April.
Twitter executives reportedly came under shareholder pressure to acept the deal after details emerged about how Elon Musk would finance his bid.
However, after almost two months of threatening to end the buyout, Elon Musk finally said he was pulling the plug on the deal on 8 July.
His change of heart appears to be related to the number of fake or spam accounts found on the platform - although there has been some speculation that the deal was only intended to destabilise Twitter, or to get it to reconsider its freedom of expression policies.
Mr Musk alluded to his opinions of the site’s hate speech policies in a series of Tweets posted on 26 April, and has also previously said his buyout was a bid to “own the libs” - i.e. frustrate people who are politically central or left-of-centre
The businessman also said he would welcome disgraced former US President Donald Trump back to Twitter.
Trump was permanently suspended from the social media site in January 2021 “due to the risk of further incitement of violence" after rioters attempted to overturn the result of the 2020 US election at the Capitol in Washington DC.
While Elon Musk has announced his Twitter deal is dead, Twitter chair Bret Taylor has said the company is “committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon” and would pursue legal action if that was not possible.
Since the takeover was launched, Twitter has brought in a hiring freeze, laid off workers, halted discretionary spending and fired two of its top managers.
The company has now moved to sue Mr Musk for backing out of the deal in a lawsuit filed in Delaware.
It could result in Elon Musk being legally forced to complete his Twitter takeover, or having to fork out billions of Dollars in damages.
Delaware’s judicial system has previously forced companies to go through with buyouts they’ve attempted to row back on.
Why is Elon Musk controversial?
Elon Musk is a divisive figure - idolised by people who like his maverick streak, and detested by those who despise his views and his wealth.
As well as his Twitter free speech stance, recent controversies surrounding Mr Musk include his downplaying the severity of Covid-19 and reports of a poor working culture at Tesla - news Mr Musk denies.
Mr Musk has also argued against paying more tax, despite an investigation by news site ProPublica finding he paid a low rate between 2014 and 2018.
While his business success is in no doubt, Mr Musk’s erratic public behaviour in recent years has also led to several high profile gaffes that have cost both him and his investors millions of dollars.
One of the most famous was when he smoked weed during a filmed podcast interview with Joe Rogan in 2018 - something which crashed Tesla shares by more than 9%.
That same year, he also blamed marijuana for an announcement he made on Twitter about taking Tesla back into private ownership for $420 a share - the number 420 being a reference to weed.
Tesla shares rose 11% with the Tweet, but the subsequent marijuana revelation saw them dive 8.8% just a few weeks later.
It also led to a battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission - a government body that regulates stockmarket activity - which accused Mr Musk of providing misleading information about his intentions.
The SEC has since opened another investigation into whether Mr Musk and his brother broke insider trading laws after he published a Twitter poll in November 2021 asking his followers whether he should sell off some of his Tesla stake.
The poll came just hours after his brother had allegedly sold $108 million in Tesla shares.
Mr Musk has made an apparent reference to cannabis again in his bid to buy Twitter, as he cited a share price of $54.20.
What is Elon Musk’s net worth?
According to Forbes, as of 18 August Elon Musk was worth $269.3 billion (£224.5 billion).
It marks a $31.4 billion rise on his 11 July net worth, which was $237.9 billion (£199.1 billion).
The figure frequently changes as Mr Musk’s wealth is mostly tied to his Tesla stake, which goes up and down depending on the markets.
To put his wealth into perspective, Elon Musk is worth more than the gross domestic product (GDP) of more than 150 countries and territories, according to the latest World Bank data.
This includes the entire GDPs of countries like Portugal, New Zeland and Iran.
Musk’s wealth is almost 10% of the UK’s entire GDP.
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