Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, has soared past Jeff Bezos to become the richest man in the world, with an estimated net worth of $230 billion. As noted by the Daily Sceptic last week, Musk is a steely-eyed lockdown sceptic, having ignored orders to close his California-based Tesla factory and described some of the Covid restrictions in the Golden State as ‘fascist’. He’s now relocated Tesla’s headquarters to Texas. Also worth remembering that he was chastised by Newsweek for participating in a sceptical discussion about Sweden’s management of the pandemic started by me. The Daily Mail has more.
Elon Musk’s net worth has surpassed $230 billion making him the richest man on the planet after shares at Space X soar by 33% and sell for more than $100 billion, after only joining the Forbes top ten billionaire list in the middle of last year.
The Tesla CEO has now outstripped the former richest person, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and is currently wealthier than Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined. …
[T]he Tesla founder recently saw his and his SpaceX company’s wealth swell after a share sale at SpaceX on October 8th worth $100 billion in a secondary offering.The company had an agreement with both new and existing investors to sell up to $755 million in SpaceX stock from insiders at $560 per share, multiple people close with the deal told CNBC.
The 33% increase in its new share price brings the company’s valuation to $100.3 billion after initially offering the deal to investors in February, when SpaceX’s valuation stood at $74 billion at 419.19 a share.
The first round of offerings raised nearly $1.2 billion, the outlet reports.
The company’s new increased valuation places it in the rare company of a private ‘centicorn’ or ‘hectocorn,’ which are companies with a valuation of $1 billion unicorns 100 times over.
According to Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List as of October 17th, 2021
SpaceX is now the second-most valuable private company worldwide behind only China’s Bytedance, according to CB Insights.
That’s a far cry from just over a year ago, when Musk didn’t even make Forbes top ten billionaires list, which Bezos dominated at number one with a then-net worth of $113 billion.
The SpaceX founder was quick to boast about taking the number one spot on the rich list, tweeting a second place medal at Bezos after the Blue Origin and Amazon founder shared some motivational words about his company.
Bezos had previously held the title of world’s richest person at $197.8 billion as of 2021, after the pandemic and lockdowns saw a boom in online sales.
Worth reading in full.
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I’d be very careful about Musk – in my view, his ‘fortune’ is built on a proverbial house of car(d)s.
Whilst I’m not implying anything illegal (at this point, anyway), I was watching a recording of a TV programme about a 19th Century Yorkshire rail barron who built his fortune (acquired vi an inheritance) up on ‘investing’ in new tech, which then collapsed leaving him ruined, under Police investigation and with investors losing practically all their money.
His story sounded very familiar indeed.
The vast majority of UK 19C railway schemes went bust but it was still a major part of the industrial revolution even if the process disrupted the canals into obsolescence, their owners bankrupt.
Just like the dot.com boom which left us with Elon Musk, Amazon and Google but only old people ‘going shopping’ on the deserted High Street, still using landlines and watching terrestrial TV.
From what I hear, Musk’s ‘fortune’ isn’t from selling Tesla cars, but a paper one from selling carbon credits to other car makers. He then recycles the money to keep going and to fund his space programme, which is what he really cares about.
That TV programme I mentioned was partly about George Hudson, who ‘creatively accounted’ his way to an even bigger fortune, only to lose it all once that fraud was exposed and the railway building boom (like, as you say, the late 90s dot com boom) burst.
Musk has had several brushes with the authorities, both from a business perspective and because he has on more than one occasion spoken before thinking – IMHO he was lucky to escape penalty as regards that lawsuit from that British cave diving rescue chap.
In reality, I think many of his ilk (and I do including Trump in this group) are viewed positively because they often go against the Establishment, but they are often nowhere near model citizens, often far from it, and get lauded because they are the best of a bad bunch on offer.
See my reply to Matt Mounsey below. I expect he paid the cave diver off.
Good for him. But he needs to start putting some serious money behind resisting the covid panic fascism that he’s highlighted, that’s so heavily backed by some of his fellow big tech oligarchs.
This sudden increase in wealth seems to be based almost entirely on the share price of SpaceX – a company which almost certainly has never made a profit (it is not publicly traded so we don’t know for certain).
In any case, since when is extreme wealth a sign of good judgement over matters of public health and government policy?
“In any case, since when is extreme wealth a sign of good judgement over matters of public health and government policy?”
Who said it was? I don’t think that’s the implication or the article. If there’s any implication, it’s that we have someone rich and powerful on our* side.
*Our meaning the sceptics, not you.
He is simply responding to the US Government’s and California’s policies on Covid in ways that are best for him and his businesses.
Hey, downtick. Your non comment is hilarious!
Space X has reduced the cost of launching satellites from $400/$500 million to around $40 million per launch. The head of Russia’s space programme who was once critical of Musk and the US is now openly complementary comparing US entrepreneurs that sink their money into projects that benefit the US as opposed to Russian oligarchs that by flash boats, houses and cars.
. . . aaaaaaand anyway, in other news . . .
So?
Well probably nothing will come of it, specifically, but having prominent, rich people on our side is better than having them against us.
I’d think more of him if he would put even a fraction of that mind boggling fortune where his mouth is in trying to fight back against the other prominent rich tech giants who have contributed to the status quo and the GR policies
A “sceptical” man, especially one that questions climate policy, might want to examine the real sources of Musk’s wealth a bit further. He isn’t getting wealthy from selling cars. He’s wealthy from selling carbon
indulgencescredits.Musk has created a ‘cult’. A body of millions of ( mainly) US small, medium and large investors who worship him and ‘believe’ in him.
I honestly thought it would collapse years ago, and advised one of those ‘believers’ to get out. They ignored me and have got richer as a consequence.
There is so much money looking for a home with interest rates on the floor for so long that he has tapped into the dream for so many.
Snake oil salesman extraodinaire.
Snake oil salemen don’t completely up-end the satellite launch market by doing what many engineers called impossible (landing and re-using rocket boosters), and doing it for less money than any other space organisations, and they don’t get Nasa contracts to supply the ISS and to take astronauts to orbit.
They also don’t create the worlds biggest rocket (Starship + Superheavy) AND intend to make that completely re-usable.
Musk may be many things, and you may not like him – you’re entitled to that view, but he has out-performed by many orders of magnitude the other space organisations, including NASA which still has yet to fly their SLS rocket, which is billions over budget and years late. The very antithesis of snake-oil.
The Green lobby, led by Al Gore, created Carbon Tax Credit market/racket which you rightly compare to Papal Indulgences; why shouldn’t Elon Musk take advantage of it as only the super wealthy can.
I don’t even like the man ever since his creepy Twitter calling one of the Thailand cave diver heroes ‘that pedo guy’.
Interesting. And I think he’s too big for the bastards to touch.
I remember reading a tweet or whatever from him re PCR tests a year or so ago. He said he’d had a positive and almost immediately thereafter a negative, closely by another positive, saying what the hell is going on. His scepticism possibly flows from things like that.
Whatever you think of him he is clearly a critical thinker – and we need as may influential people on board as possible.
Yes, very rich and doesn’t seem to care too much what people think of him. Useful combination for anyone choosing to speak out publicly against the madness.
Not my hero. He’s just a younger Bill Gates, give it time.
Space X rockets etc. are more useful that Microsoft Office which is a work generator and huge money spinner for MS. Gates also asserts the entire world must be vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 which may take 3 years, by which time variants will be immune to the vaccines. Gates said that vaccines was his best investment yet.
Yep. Bill Gates wanted to cover the globe in sattelites. Oh look who’s got a space program for launching satellites! Be in no doubt that Musk is helping to build the global surveillance state. His cars are already dystopian enough, riddled with anti-features and surveilling the crap out of users.
He is for Universal Basic Income. He is for chips under your skin (see Neuralink). He may be a lockdown sceptic, but he is clearly a proponent of transhumanism and the Great Reset.
Pathetic article by the Mail, one stock photo of the protagonist accompanied by several nearly identical ones of Bezos and his wife (one lucky paparazzi getting well rewarded).
Equally pathetic response by the readers whose comments are either rude remarks about Mrs. Besoz or jealous bitching about the rich.
I think the reason why Musk has not been shot down yet is that the establishment needs him as a propaganda channel / cult leader for the young. In reality he is an “anti-authority” or “rebel” poser in very close cahoots with established authorities (including Chinese ones)… and probably somewhat/very worried about his personal well-being by this time.
http://mileswmathis.com/musk.pdf
http://blog.banditobooks.com/the-spacex-ruse-continues/
Musk also re-shored most of his manufacturing so that he makes 85% of all his parts and he hires people based on merit, or how they think, and not university degrees.
Who cares?
I have to ask, why won’t Elon speak out? Immediately stop vaxxed that do not work, offer early treatment with repurposed drugs, immediately replace any political or medical authority that continues draconian measures.
Just think how many Covid early treatment kits one of these men could provide to every single person on earth and end the Covid “crisis” tomorrow. Perhaps one of them will.