Tesla boss Elon Musk, who supported Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy and donated nearly $119 million, last week was apparently duly rewarded. After winning the November 5 polls, Trump proposed to create a new department — the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, and announced his intention to give its charge to Musk to lead jointly with fellow Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran for the presidential candidacy in the party before bowing out to the ultimate winner.
Interestingly, the role given to Musk, to “dismantle Government bureaucracy, is the one that he has arguably prepared for through his business leadership, and something that he has spent months pushing for.
As Musk, the world’s richest man, prepares for the efficiency department and to strengthen his equation with Trump, here’s a look at his expansive business empire.
Musk-owned companies & their valuations: 6 existing, 4 past firms
Tesla
Musk is often synonymised as Tesla CEO, the electric vehicle manufacturing company that he co-founded. The Tesla market capitilisation as of November 2024 has been approximately $860 billion.
Shares of Tesla have hit a rare $1 trillion market cap, bolstering Musk’s net worth after Trump’s win in the US election.
As per Forbes, Musk’s net worth stood at $303.7 billion, making him seal his spot as the world’s richest person.
Founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, Musk joined Tesla in 2004 as an early investor and soon became the CEO of the company that revolutionalised the EV industry.
Tesla, which has now grown to be the most valuable car company, has a mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. The EV manufacturer continues to lead the market with its innovative vehicles and energy storage solutions.
SpaceX
Musk’s rocket and satellite company SpaceX was founded in 2002 with an aim to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars by 2050. It was found with the intention of minimising the cost and increasing the accessibility of space travel.
SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp, is currently valued nearly $210 billion.
SpaceX is already dominating the market for commercial space launch services and it is speeding development of its colossal Starship moon and Mars rocket.
SpaceX’s rockets are already launching regularly for NASA and also the company operates its internet-from-space Starlink service, anchored by a growing constellation of satellites in low-Earth orbit.
In the latest development, SpaceX is in early discussions to sell insider shares that will help boost the value of the company to around $255 billion.
X (formerly Twitter)
Back in October 2022, Musk paid $44 billion to buy social media platform Twitter, which he branded as X. It is over two years after the purchase its worth fell 80 per cent and is now at just $9.4 billion, as per estimates from investment giant Fidelity.
After taking over Twitter, Musk reinstated banned accounts including that of Trump’s.
X is also planning to broaden beyond traditional social media, incorporating features such as instant messaging and even mobile payments.
Neuralink
Musk founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup in 2016, that has captured the interest of people because of its futuristic vision of connecting the human brain to computers.
Neuralink was granted clearance in May 2023 by the US Food and Drug Administration to run the first human trials of its brain implant. Two human clinical trial participants received the Neuralink implant as of August 2024.
Neuralink is privately held and its stock isn’t accessible to everyone as it is yet to go public.
As a privately held business, Neuralink’s financial information is kept under wraps. However, it was reportedly valued at around $8 billion in July 2024.
In August, Musk shared that Neuralink had implanted a brain chip into its second clinical trial patient, who is paralyzed following a spinal cord injury from a diving accident.
The Boring Company
Musk founded The Boring Company in 2016 with a mission to solve traffic, enable rapid point-to-point transportation, and transform cities.
The Boring Company was valued approximately $5.7 billion.
The big proposition of this company is that it can make tunneling cheap and fast through the latest and advanced technologies.
The Boring company’s first project was in February 2017. It has so far completed several projects, including the R&D Tunnel, the Hyperloop Test Track and the Las Vegas Convention Center. It was also working on a 68-mile Vegas Loop station which will connect Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
xAI
In 2023, Musk announced a new artificial intelligence company, xAI, possibly to compete with companies like OpenAI (which Musk co-founded but left in 2018), Google and Anthropic, which are behind leading chatbots like ChatGPT, Bard and Claude.
Musk’s goal with the xAI announcement was to “understand the true nature of the universe.”
As per CNBC TV18, Generative AI startup xAI is raising up to $6 billion at a $50 billion valuation.
In November last year, xAI released an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot – Grok, which, as per the company, was modelled after “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. The chatbot debuted with two months of training and had real-time knowledge of the internet.
According to a report by US publication TechCrunch, xAI is piloting a free trial of Grok with some users in specific regions discovering the access to free version on X.
Currently, Grok AI is exclusive to X Premium and Premium Plus subscribers.
Not just these, Musk was founder or a co-founder of a few other companies.
Musk’s past companies
Zip2
When Musk was just 24 years old, he along with his brother Kimbal started Zip2 Corp, using $28,000 from their father.
Founded in 1955, Zip2 was an online business directory which was sold to Compaq in 1999 for $307 million. Musk earned about $22 million out of the deal.
X.com
In March 1999, Musk started the online banking and financial services company X.com, using $10 million from what he got from the Zip2 sale.
In 2000, this merged with Confinity which was co-founded by Peter Thiel and Max Levchin. Soon Thiel was named the new CEO and the company was rebranded the next year as PayPal.
Also, in 2002 Musk finally sold it to eBay for $1.5 billion.
Musk then shifted focus to other ventures, but did not let the name go. In 2017, he purchased the domain X.com from PayPal for an undisclosed amount.
After eight years from then, Musk purchased Twitter and merged into a Nevada-incorporated entity called X Corp.
OpenAI
In December 2015, Musk with other tech influencers Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, Jessica Livingston and Reid Hoffman invested $ 1 billion in the artificial intelligence non-profit.
However, three years after co-founding the company, Musk left OpenAI in 2018, but the reason behind him leaving remains debatable.
However, in a lawsuit, Musk accused OpenAI of unfair business practices and said that the company, along with its president Gregory Brockman, CEO Altman, and partner Microsoft should be barred from benefiting from its AI technology.
In 2023, Musk has started xAI.
Solar City
Considered to be the biggest installer of residential solar panels in the US, Solar City was founded by Musk’s cousin at his suggestion.
Musk was the first investor who pumped in $10 million into the project.
Months after Solar City faced a cash crisis in September 2015, Musk made an all-stock offer. In November 2016, Tesla acquired Solar City for $2.6 billion.
Musk owned 22 per cent stake in Solar City at the time of the acquisition.
The company, when acquired by Tesla, had $3.2 billion in debt with its market cap fell by 50 per cent in the year leading up to the acquisition, a report by Business Insider said.
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