How Elon Musk Made His Fortune - WSJ

Elon Musk Buys Twitter. Here's How He Made His Fortune

The Tesla CEO was a millionaire in his 20s and has parlayed each business success into new endeavors

By Thomas Gryta and Dave Cole Updated Oct. 28, 2022 Tap story

Mr. Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of Twitter, ending a monthslong saga of whether he would or wouldn’t purchase the company. The deal adds an influential social-media platform to the billionaire’s varied business pursuits, which have included making electric cars, building spaceships and selling flame throwers.

Mr. Musk started an internet business called Zip2 with his younger brother, Kimbal Musk, in the 1990s dot-com boom, seen here on the Internet Archive. The company helped newspapers go online and was sold to Compaq Computer in 1999. Mr. Musk walked away with $22 million at the age of 27.

Internet Archive

After spending $1 million on a McLaren sports car, he rolled the rest into his next startup, X.com, later named PayPal. It was sold to eBay for $1.4 billion in 2002. Mr. Musk collected more than $100 million from the deal at the age of 31.

Paul Sakuma/Associated Press

Most of his PayPal proceeds went into Space Exploration Technologies, also known as SpaceX, which he founded in 2002.

Dan Tuffs/Getty Images

This browser does not support the video element.

Last year, the private company was valued at close to $100 billion, based on financing rounds. The company’s success has won contracts with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, including a deal to build a new capsule to land astronauts on the moon.

NASA

Tesla was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, with Mr. Musk joining as a first-round investor in 2004. He has countered suggestions that Tesla wasn’t built from the ground up, saying the company was only a shell at the time.

Reed Saxon/Associated Press

Joanne Ho-Young Lee/The Mercury News/Getty Images

Tesla unveiled its first car, the Roadster, in 2006, and its first high-volume production car, the Model S, began deliveries in 2012. The Model X sport-utility vehicle launched in 2015, and the Model 3, its biggest seller, came in 2017.

Mason Trinca/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Tesla went public in 2010 at $17 a share with a market cap of $1.33 billion. That valuation exceeded $1 trillion last year, before falling to around $700 billion more recently. Mr. Musk, the world's richest person, has a net worth of more than $200 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Patrick Pleul/Press Pool

Tesla spent $2.1 billion in 2016 acquiring SolarCity, a residential solar-panel installer founded by two of Mr. Musk’s cousins, with him as the largest shareholder. Mr. Musk contends the deal made strategic sense, but some Tesla shareholders have sued over the price.

Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg News

Mr. Musk didn’t slow down. He founded Neuralink, which aims to implant tiny brain electrodes that could help paralyzed people walk again. He also founded the Boring Co., a tunnel-digging company that sold a flame thrower to the public in 2018.

Neuralink via AFP/Getty Images

Mr. Musk has made waves in cryptocurrency as well. Tesla and SpaceX have invested in bitcoin, although his comments around its environmental impact caused price swings. Dogecoin, a onetime gag cryptocurrency, has also moved on his tweets.

Robyn Beck/Press Pool

Robyn Beck/Press Pool

Now he adds Twitter, completing a takeover agreement originally struck in April. The deal gives him control over the social-media network where he is also among its most influential users.

AFP/Getty Images

Produced by Dave Cole

Cover Image: Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP/Getty Images

This article may be updated

Elon Musk Purchases Twitter, Firing Top Executives