Musk Eyes Trillionaire Milestone

Ian D’Amato 

Staff Writer 

In the next two years, by 2027, famous tech CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk could become the world’s first trillionaire. Musk is currently the world’s richest man, with Forbes estimating his net worth to be $500 billion. 

Musk co-founded “X” in 1999, which merged with another online banking company and became PayPal in 2000. In 2002, he founded SpaceX, and in 2004, he joined Tesla. 

His prominence kept growing as in 2008 he became Tesla’s CEO and Product Architect. 

His accomplishments did not stop there, as SpaceX and Tesla continued to grow with massive government contracts. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI. 

Now that Musk has a net worth of roughly $500 billion, he looks to become the world’s first trillionaire, but it will not be an easy feat. Musk’s path to becoming a trillionaire relies on Tesla’s performance and its new pay package. 

As a shareholder and CEO, Musk voted on a package that will reward him with massive incentives if Tesla hits certain financial benchmarks. 

The incentives include offering him 12% of Tesla’s available stock and also paying him a large sum of money. 

Looking at their benchmarks from the past year, since Sept. 2024, Tesla’s market capitalization grew from $839.05 billion to $1.3 trillion after taking a sharp drop in April 2025 due to the tariffs.

Tesla’s market capitalization grew due to new investors and a higher price per share. 

Despite a rising market capitalization, Yahoo Finance found that since December of 2024, Tesla’s revenue and profits have decreased in the past year, as operating expenses have increased. 

With this said, for Musk to receive the incentive package, which would put him above the $1 trillion mark, Tesla’s market capitalization has to grow to 8.5 trillion, its revenue has to increase, and its production has to increase. 

Musk claims his desire to be a trillionaire is not greed for more money, but rooted in how he wants to maintain influence over Tesla amid the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). 

Musk wants to ensure that AI does not replace him in his company. He is also upset with the number of “activist shareholders” who seek to oust him. 

Musk is currently the richest person in the world, with Larry Ellison and Jeff Bezos trailing him, according to Forbes’ Real Time Billionaires List. 

Despite being ranked two and three, both of these men have approximately $250 billion less than Musk, giving him a massive advantage. Only time will tell if Musk becomes the world’s first trillionaire.