Patrick Pleul / POOL / AFP via Getty; Rebecca Zisser/BI
Elon Musk has had a year for the record books.
His businesses have taken off, with Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, and Neuralink all touching new valuation highs. Their success has boosted Musk's net worth to above $450 billion for the first time, putting him over $200 billion ahead of the world's second-richest person, Amazon's Jeff Bezos.
Musk has also become a power player in US politics after wielding his cash and clout to help win Donald Trump a second term in office. As one of the president-elect's closest advisors, he's now gearing up to overhaul the US government.
The situation seems worse at X, formerly Twitter, after Musk's $44 billion takeover and reshaping of the platform sparked an advertiser exodus.
Take a look at Musk's 2024 in charts (all data is accurate as of Friday, December 20):
Tesla shares have shot up as much as 85% this year, driving the electric vehicle maker's market value above $1.4 trillion for the first time. They've since retreated but continue to trade near record levels.
The automaker has benefited from market buzz around artificial intelligence — which it's harnessing to develop self-driving cars and humanoid robots — plus a robust US economy and the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates.
Investors are also betting that Musk's businesses will benefit from his close ties to Trump, which could translate into less stringent regulations, government subsidies, tariff exemptions, and more.
SpaceX's valuation nearly doubled from $180 billion at the end of last year to $350 billion this month, based on the price paid by the company and its backers for employee shares in its latest tender offer.
Musk's rocket, spacecraft, and satellite communications company made several technological breakthroughs this year. For example, it plucked the first-stage booster of its new Starship out of the air using a massive pair of mechanical "chopsticks" in October.
Musk's net worth slumped in the spring as Tesla stock tumbled, dropping below $170 billion at its nadir.
But it rebounded by over $300 billion to touch an unprecedented $486 billion on December 17, as Tesla hit fresh highs and SpaceX notched a $350 billion valuation.
Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, was only founded in July 2023.
Yet it notched a post-money valuation of $24 billion in May following its Series B funding round. That rose to $50 billion in November, reports say, meaning the maker of the Grok chatbot is worth roughly as much as Monster Beverage.
It remains tricky to gauge the health of X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter that Musk took private in 2022. One way is to use Fidelity's monthly estimates of the value of its stake in the business.
The mutual fund giant's figures imply that X's valuation has crashed since Musk's purchase. The tech billionaire laid off a large part of the company's workforce and relaxed content moderation in support of greater free speech, triggering an advertiser exodus that hammered the company's revenues.
Regardless, Musk recently posted on X that the platform has roughly 1 billion active users, although around 40% of them only log on during important world events.
Musk was one of the biggest spenders in the US presidential election, deploying over $270 million to back Trump's race for president, run ads against Democrats, and promote conservative viewpoints.
His starring role in Trump's victory and emergence as one of the president-elect's closest advisors and a co-chief of the new Department of Government Efficiency suggests that his investment in the election has paid off.
Neuralink, Musk's neurotechnology company, was valued at $8 billion this summer, up from about $2 billion three years earlier.
The developer of brain-computer interfaces wants to allow people with quadriplegia to control computers with their thoughts. Musk released footage this spring of the first patient to receive one of its brain implants.
