At the age of 53, Elon Musk is not only the CEO of a host of groundbreaking ventures like Tesla and SpaceX, but has emerged as a significant political force in the incoming Donald Trump administration.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk

Last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang labelled tech titan Elon Musk “superhuman” after his company, xAI, built one of the fastest AI-training supercomputers. The tag, however, is not completely unfounded. At the age of 53, Musk is not only the CEO of a host of groundbreaking ventures like Tesla and SpaceX, but has emerged as a significant political force in the incoming Donald Trump administration.

On Wednesday, as anticipated, Trump announced that Musk would work with another tech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in a “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) tasked with cutting down wasteful expenditures. However, the department will not be a part of the government.

The development marks the meteoric rise of Musk — from growing up in violence-ridden, apartheid-torn South Africa to becoming the world’s richest man and now as an influential figure in the US government. He is also close to setting a new wealth record, boosting his net worth to $335 billion.

However, the mercurial entrepreneur had humble origins before bursting on to the Silicon Valley scene more than 20 years ago. Born in Pretoria, South Africa, Musk came from a broken family, with his parents divorcing when he was barely eight.

From a very early age, Musk showed entrepreneurship skills, selling homemade chocolate Easter eggs and developing his first computer game at the age of 12. However, Musk’s childhood was difficult, and he has recounted how he was bullied at school and his struggles picking up on social cues because of Asperger’s Syndrome.

“From the very start, he knew pain, but also knew how to survive it,” writes Walter Isaacson in his biography of Elon Musk.

However, life took a turn for Musk after he moved to Canada and then to the United States for higher studies. Musk studied economics and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. Musk then travelled to California to attend Stanford University but dropped out and decided to test the entrepreneurship waters during the “dotcom boom” of the 1990s.

BURSTING ONTO THE SILICON VALLEY SCENE

He founded two start-ups, including a web software firm (Zip2) and an online banking company that eventually became PayPal. It was later sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. Even before selling PayPal, Musk had already thought of his next move and his goal — to make spaceflight cheaper.

In early 2002, Musk founded a company known as Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, with $100 million from the PayPal sale. Six years later, he ploughed his fortune into a new electric car company, Tesla. He became the chief executive in 2008.

The same year, Musk nearly went broke. A turnaround came in 2009 when SpaceX landed a $1.5 billion contract with NASA and Tesla found more investors. After that, there was no looking back, as Musk founded and bought several ventures, such as OpenAI, SolarCity and The Boring Company.

In 2017, Musk founded Neuralink, which is building devices that can be implanted inside the human brain. It was the same year that his association with Trump started, albeit briefly. Musk joined President Trump’s business advisory council but quit after severe backlash.

However, the most significant of his takeovers came in October 2022, when, after months of back and forth, he bought social media platform Twitter for $44 billion.

The year 2024 has been unforgettable for the 53-year-old, who has fathered 11 children from three partners.

In a crucial step towards making rockets fully reusable, SpaceX successfully caught a rocket booster in chopstick-like arms. The mechanical arms are designed to catch descending rockets using pincer-like grips at the launch pad.

SpaceX has also been tasked with bringing back NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have been stuck on the International Space Station (ISS) for over 100 days longer than initially planned.
While Musk has cemented his role as a tech visionary, it remains to be seen what impact he creates in the Trump administration.

Elon Musk is $70 billion richer since Trump victory due to Tesla stock surge

Elon Musk on stage before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, NY on Sunday, October 27, 2024.
The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Elon Musk spent $44 billion to buy Twitter, now known as X, and at least $130 million to help get Donald Trump elected president.

It’s a combination that’s paid off handsomely. Since Trump’s victory last week, Musk is about $70 billion richer on paper.

Most of Musk’s wealth is wrapped up in his holdings of , and in the four trading days since the election, the electric vehicle maker’s stock has soared by about 39%. That’s lifted the company’s market cap well past $1 trillion.

Musk’s net worth has swelled to $320 billion, according to Forbes, putting him close to $90 billion ahead of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, the world’s second-richest person. Ellison, a close friend of Musk’s and a former Tesla board member, is a longtime Republican donor who’s seen his own Trump bump, with Oracle’s 10% increase lifting his net worth by about $20 billion.

For Musk, getting Trump back into the White House became another full-time job. He funded a swing-state operation to register right-leaning voters, and he led rallies as a surrogate for his favored candidate. He started $1 million giveaways to registered voters who signed one of his America PAC petitions, and he faced a lawsuit over running an illegal lottery in Pennsylvania.

Musk also used X, the social media platform he acquired in 2022, to constantly tout his support for Trump while frequently spreading misinformation about his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as topics like immigration and voter fraud.

Now, Musk is trying to make sure he cashes in on his investments.

After the election last week, Musk briefly joined Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, NBC News reported. Other outlets, including The New York Times and ABC, have reported that Musk has been weighing in on staffing decisions for the next administration, and he’s spent a lot of time since the election at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Brendan Carr, who is likely to be Trump’s choice to run the Federal Communications Commission, is seen as a longstanding Musk ally.

Musk ran a straw poll on X for his 200-million plus followers asking who should be Senate majority leader, and he’s personally endorsed Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott for the position. He also reposted a comment from Trump about the need for the majority leader to support recess appointments for his nominees so they don’t need Senate confirmation.

“Without recess appointments, it will take two years or more to confirm the new administration!” Musk wrote.Benefiting Musk’s empire

Musk has long sought to reduce regulatory authority so that he can eliminate impediments to his sprawling business empire, which includes Tesla and X, as well as defense contractor SpaceX, artificial intelligence startup xAI, brain computer interface company Neuralink and tunneling venture Boring Co.

Those companies are currently embroiled in a range of probes and lawsuits from federal agencies pertaining to matters including alleged securities law violations, workplace safety, labor and civil rights violations, violations of federal environmental laws, consumer fraud and vehicle safety defects.

Given the executive branch’s outsized control over federal regulatory bodies, Musk can look forward to regulators and intelligence agencies winding down some or all of the 19 known ongoing federal investigations and lawsuits against Tesla, SpaceX and X.

Tesla’s stock climb starting to price in robotaxi opportunity, says Deepwater’s Gene Munster

“He’s got the golden touch right now and has the ear,” said Deepwater Asset Management’s Gene Munster, a longtime Tesla bull, in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday.

In addition to Tesla, SpaceX is also a “clear beneficiary” of a Trump presidency, Munster said. He added that xAI could be rewarded as the new administration considers AI regulations.

“I’m stretched to try to find out how this could play out negative for Elon,” Munster said.

Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk owns 411.06 million Tesla shares, as of the latest filings, and about 304 million performance-based options. In January, Judge Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Chancery Court voided Musk’s historic pay package from 2018 that included the options, calling it “unfathomable” in part because Musk controlled the board. Shareholders then voted in June to retroactively ratify the package. McCormick has said a final ruling on whether to restore Musk’s compensation will come soon.

Musk and Ellison aren’t the only two billionaire tech executives to see a post-election windfall.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has added about $4.5 billion to his net worth since Trump’s victory. Coinbase shares soared 20% on Monday, bringing their gains since Tuesday to 67%.

The crypto exchange was a major contributor to pro-crypto candidates up and down the ballot, largely through a PAC called Fairshake. Most of its preferred candidates were victorious, setting the stage for the likelihood of a more favorable regulatory environment for the industry.

That’s a win for Tesla as well. At the end of the third quarter, the company reported “digital assets” with a fair value of $729 million. Cryptocurrencies have rallied since the election, with bitcoin jumping about 29% to a record of over $88,000 on Monday.