South Africa-born billionaire Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, is nearly halfway to becoming the planet’s first trillionaire, Forbes magazine reported on Wednesday.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO became the first person to achieve a net worth of $500 billion, briefly, as the shares in his electric vehicle company rebound from his clumsy stint in politics, amid other gains.
‘Real-Time Billionaires list’
The 54-year-old’s net worth hit $500.1 billion on Wednesday before dipping back to $499.1 billion, the publication’s “Real-Time Billionaires” tracker reported.
Ranked after him are Oracle CEO Larry Ellison with a net worth of $350.7 billion, followed by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg with a net worth of $245.8 billion on the Forbes list.
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania and dropping out of Stanford University, Musk banked his first millions when he sold an online publishing software company to US computer maker Compaq for more than $300 million in 1999.
His next company eventually merged with PayPal, and after leaving that venture, the tech entrepreneur founded space rocket company SpaceX in 2002 and became the chairman of electric carmaker Tesla in 2004.
Top 10 richest people in the world
| Rank | Name | Net worth | Source |
| 1 | Elon Musk | $499.1 B | Tesla, SpaceX |
| 2 | Larry Ellison | $350.7 B | Oracle |
| 3 | Mark Zuckerberg | $245.8 B | |
| 4 | Jeff Bezos | $233.5 B | Amazon |
| 5 | Larry Page | $203.7 B | |
| 6 | Sergey Brin | $189.0 B | |
| 7 | Jensen Huang | $162.6 B | Semiconductors |
| 8 | Bernard Arnault & family | $160.6 B | LVMH |
| 9 | Steve Ballmer | $156.4 B | Microsoft |
| 10 | Warren Buffett | $148.5 B | Berkshire Hathaway |
Correct as at 09:20 on Thursday, 2 October 2025
