The stock market is up modestly since Donald Trump’s election victory on November 5th but it has been a particularly profitable period for Elon Musk, whose net worth has grown by an astounding $276 billion during that period, to $479 billion. That makes him the wealthiest American by a wide margin and probably the wealthiest individual in the world.
The two main sources of his wealth are his stakes in Tesla and in SpaceX. After little change earlier in the year, Tesla stock has nearly doubled since the election on the hope that Musk will be able to influence the new administration to use its regulatory powers to help the electric car maker to continue to grow its share of the automobile pie. (At $1.4 trillion, Tesla now has a market value 25 times that of General Motors.) Meanwhile, SpaceX just raised fresh capital at a valuation of $350 billion, up from $210 billion just six months ago. The most valuable private company on the planet has become the first successful provider of satellite-based internet services that can compete effectively with cable broadband.
In addition to those two companies, Musk has a variety of smaller holdings in companies involved in artificial intelligence and other frontier technologies.
