Elon Musk put $277 million into the election. He’s $200 billion richer this year
"Elon Musk’s net worth has climbed by more than $200 billion in 2024, a massive increase in the same year that the world’s richest person spent at least $277 million backing Donald Trump and other Republican candidates.
The bulk of the increase, more than $170 billion, has come since Election Day.
Trump’s election sent stock in electric automaker Tesla, a company central to Musk’s wealth and where he is CEO, soaring. Shares were trading at prices around 70 percent higher on Friday than on Election Day.
As of Friday, Musk’s fortune was about $442 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That estimate includes a pay package from Tesla worth more than $50 billion that is held up in court after a Delaware judge ruled to strike it down in January and upheld her decision this month. Tesla has pledged to appeal.
Trump has indicated he will be friendly to businesses and investors of all kinds when he returns to office. Musk’s empire is poised to especially benefit from the president-elect’s promised cuts to regulation — and potentially also overt favors to the tech billionaire, who has become a loyal political lieutenant.
Trump picked Musk to co-chair a nongovernmental advisory group on cuts to federal spending and regulation known as the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, potentially allowing the tech entrepreneur to shape policies that affect his businesses. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
“Elon Musk is a once in a generation business leader and our federal bureaucracy will certainly benefit from his ideas and efficiency,” said Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the Trump-Vance Transition. He described Musk and Trump as “great friends and brilliant leaders working together to Make America Great Again.”
Musk launched his entrepreneurial career in 1995 when he abandoned a graduate program at Stanford to found a start-up later called Zip2 that created online city guides. It was sold for about $300 million in 1999.
He went on to co-found an online banking company, X.com, that merged with another start-up to create PayPal. Auction site eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
Musk went on to pivot into the more physical ventures that have come to define him, most prominently Tesla and rocket-maker SpaceX; but also brain interface developer Neuralink; and tunnel construction start-up the Boring Company.
The huge success of Tesla and SpaceX catapulted him to the rank of world’s richest person — and arguably the United States’ most successful immigrant.
“Elon stuck his neck out, he made a big bet — and he was right,” said Gene Munster, managing partner at investment firm Deepwater Asset Management.
The fortunes of Tesla, the jewel in Musk’s portfolio, are entangled with federal regulation. The billionaire has staked the company’s future on self-driving vehicles and taken the largely unique approach of trying to enable cars bought by consumers to drive themselves without supervision — a concept for which there is not yet a well-established regulatory regime.
Musk said in a July earnings call that regulators are “morally obligated” to clear the path for autonomous vehicles if a company can prove a reliable safety record.
Federal approval for Tesla’s Cybercab, an autonomous vehicle the company hopes to deploy by around 2027, is now seen as more likely due to Trump’s promises to cut regulation and his close relationship with Musk.
Musk also said in October he would use the future “Department of Government Efficiency” to help create a federal approval process for autonomous vehicles. On Friday, Reuters reported that Trump’s transition team had recommended axing a federal reporting requirement for crashes involving vehicles with driver-assistance features — a policy that it said Tesla opposes.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has used that public data in investigations and recalls into the company’s technology. Removing the reporting requirement could ease the scrutiny on Tesla and autonomous vehicle makers.
Dan Ives, an analyst at financial firm Wedbush Securities, wrote last month that “Trump will fast track the autonomous and AI initiatives in our view over the next 12 to 18 months.” That would be a “game changer” for Tesla, he said.
Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at auto industry ratings and research provider Edmunds, said that significant uncertainty remains for the company’s work on autonomous driving but that the regulatory outlook now appeared clearer. “I imagine that things will go in Tesla’s direction — at least for the next four years,” she said.
Musk’s assets also include significant shares in four private companies where he is an executive or owner: SpaceX, Neuralink, social media company X and artificial intelligence developer xAI.
SpaceX and Neuralink also operate in heavily regulated industries that could benefit from Musk’s role on the efficiency commission and his desire to ease regulations across the federal government. The rocket maker has become essential to the U.S. space program and could benefit from policy changes made by Trump or his pick to lead NASA, billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman.
Isaacman has twice orbited the planet on private SpaceX flights including a September mission that saw him perform the first spacewalk by a private citizen. The company recently completed a tender offer that made it the world’s most valuable private start-up, Bloomberg reported, adding roughly $50 billion to Musk’s net worth.
The performance of Musk’s social media platform has been less robust. Fidelity recently put the value of one of its stakes in X around 70 percent lower than when it was purchased, highlighting the challenges the social network faced before the election. After Musk purchased the platform, then known as Twitter, some advertising clients fled following his loosening of content moderation.
Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the second-largest investor in X after Musk, previously told The Washington Post that he didn’t believe the company had lost any value. He cited X’s investment in artificial intelligence development through xAI, which Musk launched as a rival to ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.
The Trump transition has said it will ensure those involved with the DOGE group Musk was picked to co-chair are compliant with legal guidelines on conflicts of interest.
Democrats in Congress said the combination of Musk’s election spending, expectations that Trump will create policies favorable to the tech mogul and the recent increase in Musk’s net worth could ethically compromise the incoming administration.
“There is an outrageous and urgent conflict of interest for Elon Musk, a billionaire with business interests like Tesla, but also covering a wide range of industries, to be given any responsibility for corporate welfare disguised as government efficiency,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) said.
“Dismantling safety rules and oversight concerning self-driving vehicles simply drives up the stock price and undermines safety — with benefits to him and shareholders but not to drivers and others on the road.”
Blumenthal said Musk recently lobbied Republicans on Capitol Hill to clear a regulatory pathway for autonomy, the issue that later sent Tesla’s stock price soaring.
Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts), a longtime critic of Tesla’s approach to advanced driver-assistance features, said on X earlier this month that Musk is “already getting a return on his investment in Trump.”
In a statement to The Post, Markey said that relaxing rules for self-driving cars would “turn our public roads into one big testing facility for a company owned by the world’s richest man.”
“I will do everything in my power to make sure Elon Musk doesn’t get to recklessly bend the rules to line his pockets,” Markey said.
Clara Ence Morse contributed to this report."
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