Elon Musk's Net Worth Hit $485 Billion Tuesday… Hypothetically Could Become The World's First Half-Trillionaire *Tomorrow*

While most of the world is on drone-watch, we here at CelebrityNetWorth are on Elon Musk-half-trillionaire watch.

In case you missed our previous coverage, I thought Elon Musk would cross the half-trillion mark today (Tuesday). He didn't.

After ending last week with a net worth of $450 billion, Elon's fortune jumped $25 billion to $475 billion on Monday. Based on that jump… and his absolutely insane $200+ billion fortune explosion in the last few weeks… I predicted that Elon would become a half-trillionaire sometime Tuesday. Unfortunately, Elon's net worth *only* increased by $10 billion to $485 billion on Tuesday after Tesla's stock price ended the day up 3.64% at a new all-time high of $479. So, now I'm predicting that Elon will become the world's first half-trillionaire on WEDNESDAY. Hypothetically. Maybe not. Who knows. But it's fun to predict!

Disclosure: I got caught up in the post-election Tesla/Elon hype on November 11 and bought some shares in a personal investment account. I paid $349 a share. This article is not investment advice. There is no rational reason that Tesla's market cap has increased by $500 BILLION since early November. It's very possible Tesla will tank tomorrow. Obviously, I personally hope that does not happen 🙂

Who was the World's First Billionaire?

John D. Rockefeller was the world's first billionaire. He achieved that feat in 1916. To understand how big of a number that was, consider the fact that in 1916, the entire GDP of the United States was $50 billion. That's 20%. In 2023, US GDP was $27.36 trillion. So imagine if someone's net worth today was 20% of $27.36 trillion. That would be $5.742 trillion. Elon's current $485 billion net worth is equal to 1.77% of US GDP.

After adjusting Rockefeller's peak net worth to the present relative value, most historians peg his all-time fortune at the modern equivalent of $340 billion. That allowed him to be the richest person in history uncontested for around 80 years until late 2021, when he was briefly topped by Elon. Elon's fortunes dwindled dramatically over the next two years before hitting $350 billion on November 23 of this year. On December 10, he became the first person to have a net worth cross $400 billion. The very next day, he became the first person to have a net worth cross $450 billion. Then $475 billion. And now $485 billion. And perhaps $500 billion tomorrow!