Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO and already the richest person in the world, increased his wealth by an additional $26 billion on Thursday, following the largest jump in his company’s stock since 2013.
Forbes estimates that Musk’s current net worth is $269 billion, more than $50 billion more than that of his close friend and former Tesla board member Larry Ellison, who is still Oracle’s largest shareholder.
Although Musk owns a sizable portion of SpaceX, valued at over $200 billion in private markets, he also holds almost 13% of Tesla’s outstanding shares, making up the majority of his net worth. He is also the controlling owner of the artificial intelligence companies xAI and X, once Twitter.
Depending on the outcome of a shareholder lawsuit against Musk’s 2018 compensation package, his wealth could increase even further.
Following Tesla’s better-than-expected earnings announcement late Wednesday and Musk’s remarks during the call indicating that “vehicle growth” would be 20% to 30% next year, the stock surged on Thursday. The closing 22% increase in Tesla shares was the company’s second-largest gain since its 2010 initial public offering.
Tesla’s stock had been falling before the earnings report, and it was on track to have its worst month since January. However, the company recovered its year-end loss and is currently up 5% in 2024, while the Nasdaq gained 23%.
Tesla exceeded the average analyst forecast of 58 cents per share with its announced earnings of 72 cents. Profit was increased by $326 million from the company’s Full Self-Driving Supervised system (FSD) and $739 million from environmental regulatory credits.
Most of Musk’s earnings calls were devoted to promoting what he claimed would be Tesla’s autonomous future, including a ride-hailing service that could launch in Texas and California as early as next year. Two weeks prior, Tesla unveiled the Cybercab concept at its eagerly anticipated Robotaxi event.
But although Waymo, a commercial driverless service owned by Alphabet, has been offering its services to the general public since June, Tesla has continuously fallen short of its launch schedule. The business still doesn’t manufacture or market safe vehicles without a human driver constantly present to steer or brake.
Even though Musk debuted a new Roadster and a heavy-duty Semi truck in 2017, the Roadster’s design is still unfinished, and the business only uses “pilot production” for the Semi.
Musk’s campaigning and significant expenditures in support of Donald Trump were some subjects he avoided discussing during the call on Wednesday.
Musk has increased his rhetoric, particularly on X, since formally embracing Trump soon after the first attempt on the former president’s life in July. He has also donated tens of millions to a political action group supporting the Republican nominee.
Musk has been running his campaign in Pennsylvania, which he called the “linchpin” of this election. To encourage his supporters in battleground states to cast ballots, he announced over the weekend that he will randomly distribute $1 million daily to registered voters who sign a petition for his pro-Trump PAC.
A source with knowledge of the situation told NBC News on Wednesday that the PAC has received a warning from the U.S. Department of Justice that Musk’s voter sweepstakes might be illegal under federal election law.
Many investors were concerned about Musk’s political actions before the earnings call.
On a forum used by Tesla to ask questions of its investors, an anonymous retail investor stated, “Elon Musk has the right to express his political views, but his public activism seems at odds with his responsibility as CEO to protect shareholder value. How does Tesla address this, and can it confirm Musk’s actions are not harming sales or growth?”
Before the call, the remark got 168 upvotes. What steps is the board of Tesla taking to make sure Musk’s “political engagement doesn’t detract from Tesla’s core mission and protects shareholder value and brand integrity?” was the subject of another question that gained 527 upvotes.
“I think this election is existential to the United States,” Musk wrote in an X post earlier this week.
