Elon Musk became the first person ever to be worth $400 billion Wednesday after his car company, Tesla, continued its recent Wall Street surge and his rocket company, SpaceX, saw its valuation explode higher following a new deal.
Musk was already the world’s richest person heading into Wednesday, thanks in large part to Tesla’s share price racing higher in recent weeks. Tesla’s stock has jumped 67% since November 5, aka Election Day, when Donald Trump, Musk’s preferred candidate, won his second term.
Tesla’s share price hit $415 on Wednesday morning, setting a new all-time high for the electric car maker. The stock price dropped slightly afterwards, hovering near $413 per share, which is about a 3% increase from where it closed on Tuesday.
And that wasn’t the only move that helped boost Musk’s net worth. SpaceX and its investors completed a deal to buy $1.25 billion worth of shares from other company insiders on Wednesday — a deal that boosted SpaceX’s valuation to $350 billion in the process. That helped add about $50 billion to Musk’s net worth.
By mid-morning, Musk’s net worth was $439 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
Earlier this month, Fidelity marked up the value of X — the social media platform Musk owns — by 32.37%. Following the mark up, X is worth 72% less than the $44 billion Musk paid for the app formerly known as Twitter in 2022.
Musk himself said he was “obviously overpaying” for X right before the deal closed in 2022. But he said the “long-term potential for Twitter in my view is an order of magnitude greater than its current value.” X is now worth $12.32 billion, according to Fidelity, following the mark up.
X has seen a wave of left-leaning users — including several high-profile reporters and celebrities — flee the app following the election. But those losses seem to have been offset by new downloads, with X’s daily user base in the States remaining steady post-election at about 29 million.
