Elon Musk and his constellation of companies became considerably more valuable in 2024, propelled in part by his growing ties to President-elect Donald Trump and an advisory appointment in the incoming administration. Musk’s electric vehicle, space and A.I. ventures have, for the most part, soared in value; sending the entrepreneur to extraordinary heights of wealth.
A consistent rally in Musk-related companies since Trump’s election win pushed Musk’s net worth past $400 billion today (Dec. 12), making him the first person to ever reach this milestone. Combined with his new role as co-head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), 2025 is shaping up to be a year of unprecedented power for Musk.
Not all the billionaire’s companies have prospered in the past 12 months, though. Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of X, formerly known as Twitter, continues to lose money for investors. Tesla (TSLA) stock, however, has maintained a consistent rally in recent months and closed at a record high yesterday (Dec. 11), while SpaceX earlier this week became the most valuable private startup in the world with a valuation of $350 billion.
Musk’s bets on A.I., underground tunnels and neuroscience, meanwhile, have also paid off for the entrepreneur. Here’s a look at how 2024 treated the billionaire’s ventures:
Tesla, the only public company headed by Musk, has seen its stock price surge since Trump’s election win in November. For the first time since 2021, its shares—which have risen by around 71 percent this year—reached an all-time high of $425 yesterday. With a market cap of $1.3 billion, Tesla is currently the eighth most valuable publicly listed company in the world.
During the quarter ended September, the automaker reported an 8 percent year-over-year jump in revenue to $25 billion. Musk in recent months has increasingly positioned Tesla to become a company centered around self-driving, robotics and A.I.
Musk's aerospace company SpaceX was recently valued at $350 billion in a secondary share sale that boosted its CEO's fortune by $50 billion. It was last valued at $210 billion during a June tender offer, meaning SpaceX has grown by more than 66 percent in six months.
2024 also saw the space company accomplish a test flight for its Starship prototype when its booster was successfully retrieved on land. The rocket, the tallest and most powerful in the world, lies at the center of Musk's dreams to eventually colonize Mars.
Musk threw his hat into the A.I. race last year with the creation of xAI. The startup's primary product thus far is Grok, a chatbot competing with the likes of OpenAI's ChatGPT. It is available to premium X subscribers and, as of recently, opened up limited access to free users of the social platform.
In November, xAI raised $5 billion in a round that valued the A.I. startup at $50 billion, more than doubling its previous valuation of $24 billion in May. The round was participated by the venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
X is still worth more than $10 billion, but it's a far cry from what Musk paid for it in 2022. The social media platform's valuation has steadily declined in the years since Musk's $44 billion acquisition, in part due to declining ad revenue.
However, the company has seen growth in recent months. Fidelity, which valued its initial X stake at $19.66 million two years ago, in September valued this stake at around $4.2 million. But by October, Fidelity said its stake had recovered to $5.5 million, which would value X at around $12.5 billion.
The Boring Company is Musk's solution to congested traffic. The tunneling venture, which aims to eventually enable widespread underground transportation, was last valued at more than $7 billion in October 2023. The valuation represented an increase from the $5.7 billion figure it received in April of 2022, when a round led by Sequoia and Vy Capital raised $675 million for the startup.
Musk's brain implant startup Neuralink was valued at $5 billion by private investors last year, more than doubling the nearly $2 billion valuation it received in 2021 during a private fundraising round. The venture, which centers around inserting brain chips into human patients and allowing them to control computers with their mind, completed its first two implants in 2024. In August, Musk said Neuralink was hoping to perform a total of ten procedures by the end of the year.
