Dubbed by the press as the "real-life Tony Stark", Elon Musk has spent decades building companies designed to disrupt established industries. More than once, those ventures came close to financial collapse before emerging as some of the world's most valuable businesses.
Electric vehicles. Brain implants. Underground tunnels. A social media platform once known as Twitter. And a rocket maker that began trading on Wall Street this week.
Over time, more and more of these ventures have come under the same umbrella.
Today, Musk, the world's richest man and the first person to amass a trillion-dollar fortune, controls a sprawling network of businesses.
According to Forbes, Musk became the first person to surpass a net worth of $500bn in October 2025. His first commercial success earned him $500. His first company brought him a payout of $22m, and his second roughly $176m.
