Elon Musk has become the first person to reach a net worth of $500bn, bringing the Tesla chief executive halfway to trillionaire status.

Musk’s wealth temporarily crossed the half-trillion mark on Wednesday before retreating to $499bn, according to the Forbes billionaires list.

Musk owns 12% of Tesla, which is worth more than $1.5tn, and his wealth has been boosted this year by surge in the electric carmaker’s share price.

  • Juice@midwest.social
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    2 hours ago

    Why are ppl still buying teslas. How does he make so much money if everybody fucking hates him? Whyyyyyy

      • lemmy_outta_here@lemmy.world
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        22 minutes ago

        It has started to make me question my sanity. Every week there is a headline like “Tesla sales collapse in Europe and Asia” or “Huge class action suit filed against Tesla” and the result is always the same: TSLA stock goes up.

    • bfg9k@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      The general public has forgotten about him already, he’s retreated from the news because the bad press was hurting sales

      I see brand new Tesla’s everywhere, the company will not be going away anytime soon

      • Juice@midwest.social
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        1 hour ago

        I saw a Tesla truck this am with a license plate something like “S3XY B3AST” and it did not belong to Ben Kingsley.

        • P1nkman@lemmy.world
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          1 hour ago

          New car sales in Norway in September 2025: 98% electric. 1/3 of them were Teslas. Sales are also up in Denmark.

    • JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz
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      4 hours ago

      But he continues paying random women to have his kids because they all start hating him after a while, and apparently 13 tries hasn’t been enough for him to notice the one thing in common with all of them.

      • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        I don’t think he cares all that much if they like him as long as they disseminate his precious genes and tolerate the idiotic names.

  • Ethalis@jlai.lu
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    9 hours ago

    How is that asshole STILL getting richer? If there ever needed a proof that the system is broken, there it is

    • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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      9 hours ago

      the system is worse than broken, it’s working exactly as intended. the best solution? get out and meet your neighbors. talk to them about how they hate their bosses. tell them about things people are doing to undo this rigged game. don’t at any point claim yourself to be a leftist. just offer to help them out of their nightmarish material conditions

    • redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 hours ago

      He’s not. This article is bullshit by a poor person. Elon, unlike someone like Bill Gates, still has most of his “worth” in TSLA. TSLA is held up purely by hype and the sunken cost fallacy. The hype is gone and now investor with brains are liquidating but Elon can’t, he’d crash the stock selling more than a couple billion. So we get to watch the market desperately try to keep TSLA( that people put pension money in) afloat as the market burns around them and Elon’s imaginary money dwindles. In reality he has something like 10B liquid and probably something similar in assets that aren’t a dead car company.

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        Thank you! Someone around here gets it. Look at these comments. People seem to think he’s actually holding that much cash.

        People are only buying Tesla stock because it keeps going up, nothing to do with their perceived value of future earnings. It’s fucking insane, reminds me of Wall Street, 1929. Fittingly enough, the world is making the same mistakes of 100 years ago because all the people who learned from those mistakes are dead.

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      You can’t buy respect or admiration… Well he did for like 10-15 years, then he got high on his own narcissism and dropped the filter; plus a team of marketers manufacturing his image and curating his social media posts.

  • zib@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    Imagine if 99% of his net worth were redistributed to the people who need it most and reivested in the economy. And even then, that asshole would still have $5 billion left over.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Almost all of that money is imaginary. Look at Tesla’s $1.5T “worth”. If you liquidated the company down to the staplers and pens, you’re probably only going to get a few billion.

      If we’re saying that $1.5T represents current assets and future growth, yikes. Tesla ain’t doing so hot and I hardly expect them to turn it around with this genius at the top. The stock price merely reflects people buying because people are buying. Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd! Someday that stock is going to crater.

      Anyway, same goes for Musk. He can turn but a fraction of that net worth into cash. Imagine if he started selling Tesla stock. First off, the market would panic seeing the CEO dumping his own stock, the price would plummet, instantly. Even if word didn’t get out, the market would still be flooded, driving the price into the ground.

      CAVEAT: None of this considers the value of SpaceX. 🤷🏻

  • Adulated_Aspersion@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    K. Then can he go ahead and fix universal healthcare and fix world hunger?

    It would make him a superhero. And people wouldn’t think he was such a raging douche nozzle.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      With what money? The vast majority of his “wealth” is imaginary. When Tesla investors, who know damned well they’re riding a bubble, finally decide they’ve made enough money, risked it long enough and it’s time to bail, the bubble pops.

      Not saying that because the man is a raging douche nozzle, it’s simply reality.