A Profile On The World’s Richest Man – Elon Musk

On the 7th January, Elon Musk became the world’s richest person. His net worth surpassed $185bn, in part due to the surge in share prices for Tesla. As of December 2019, he owned 20.8 per cent of all Tesla shares. He has become a significant figure of public interest in recent years. An entrepreneur, industrial designer, and engineer, Musk’s wealth has developed vastly across the 21st century.

In his early career, he co-founded Zip2 and X.com, both of which were acquired for centimillions in the early noughties. In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, a company dedicated to manufacturing cheaper aerospace transportation options, with an eye to enable human colonisation of Mars. By 2008, Musk had become the CEO of Tesla, Inc, which manufactures electric cars.

(Source: The Mercury News)

It is the swift success of Tesla which has contributed to Musk’s wealth; surging in value throughout the last year, Tesla hit a market value of $700bn last week. BBC Technology Correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones estimates that Tesla’s worth has increased seven-fold in the course of a year, a staggering increase.

Musk responded to a tweet announcing his new status as world’s wealthiest person (overtaking Jeff Bezos of Amazon) with two tweets, ‘How strange’ and ‘Well, back to work’. In following days, he tweeted again: ‘Btw [abbreviation: by the way], critical feedback is always super appreciated, as well as ways to donate money that really make a difference (way harder than it seems).’ This indicates Musk’s desire to share his wealth; journalist Justin Rowlatt reporting that ‘his desire to solve technical problems […] rather than dollars in the bank […] is his yardstick of progress’.

In recent years, Elon Musk has proved a controversial figure. In July 2020, he tweeted ‘Pronouns suck’, which has been interpreted as a transphobic comment, one which his partner, musician Grimes, publicly condemned. Also in 2020, he garnered criticism for purporting that by April, there would be ‘close to zero’ cases of the coronavirus: Politico named this one of the “most audacious, confident and spectacularly incorrect prognostications about the year”.

Despite raising such public vitriol in certain instances, Musk has clearly navigated economic success admirably, mostly through shareholding and owning Tesla, SpaceX and Paypal. In a world wherein billionaires, indeed, centibillionaires, are on the rise, forcing the public to ask where such personal wealth should be distributed. In the eyes of Elon Musk, the most exciting prospect is that of terraforming Mars. Whether he can muster the technology and subsequent funds for such a feat remains to be seen – although $185bn hardly seems like a bad place to start.

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