History made as Elon Musk becomes the first person in the world worth $500 billion.

He hit the half-trillion mark following Tesla's strong market rebound.

The Tesla and SpaceX boss, who also owns the social platform X and AI startup xAI, saw his fortune surge as Tesla’s stock value jumped roughly 14% this year, pushing his wealth to $499.1 billion after a brief peak at $500 billion.

The rise in Musk’s net worth is largely tied to Tesla’s strong market rebound. The company’s shares, which began the year at $427.90 before dipping to $220.67 amid controversy over Musk’s brief role in Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have since recovered sharply. After resigning from the government post in May, Musk returned full-time to leading Tesla, helping drive investor confidence.

Musk’s vast wealth is spread across multiple ventures including SpaceX, xAI, and Neuralink, all valued in the billions. On his current financial trajectory, experts suggest Musk could become the world’s first trillionaire within a few years.

To put his fortune in viewpoint, Musk’s $500 billion fortune would rank as the 31st largest economy in the world if it were a country, just below Austria and ahead of Norway, Malaysia, and his native South Africa. His net worth is 125 times greater than the estimated $4 billion value of Britain’s Crown Jewels, 20 times the cost of London’s Elizabeth Line, and ten times the estimated $45.5 billion value of the Louvre Museum and its contents.

Musk’s wealth is also 35 times greater than the combined market value of all Premier League football clubs, which stands at about $14 billion. With such immense wealth, analysts note he could theoretically buy the White House 1,250 times over, based on Zillow’s valuation of $398 million.

Meanwhile, the tech world continues to advance around him. A rival firm, Science Corporation, recently announced a breakthrough in neurotechnology, developing an eye chip that can restore vision using a brain-computer interface called PRIMA. The technology, tested in a clinical trial involving 38 participants across 17 sites globally, including London’s Moorfields Eye Hospital, enabled 84% of patients to experience a significant improvement in visual function after 12 months.

As Musk’s financial empire grows through Tesla, SpaceX, and his AI ventures, the competition in technology and innovation continues to intensify; but for now, he stands alone at the top of the world’s wealth rankings.