Elon Musk’s net worth rocketed to the $500-billion mark on Wednesday, according to Forbes.
The tech titan reached the milestone as Tesla stocks have been climbing in recent months, the financial publication noted.
Musk’s fortune went up about $10 billion from Tuesday, Forbes found — the latest step on his march to becoming potentially the world’s first trillionaire. The number underwent slight fluctuations on Forbes’ “Real-Time Billionaires” rankings throughout the afternoon.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which uses a different method to track the world’s richest people, placed Musk’s net worth at $459 billion.
Forbes uses interviews and annual research to come up with its list, while Bloomberg updates its data every day using stock prices and financial ratios.
Because Forbes applies bigger discounts and Bloomberg adjusts for taxes and market swings, their numbers often don’t match.
Both publications had Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison as the second-wealthiest person in the world. Oracle’s stock has surged in the wake of a recent earnings report showing explosive demand for its cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence services.
While Forbes placed Ellison’s wealth at $349.1 billion, Bloomberg pegged his fortune at $340 billion.
Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder who heads Meta, is worth an estimated $246.7 billion, according to Forbes. Bloomberg valued his net worth at $258 billion.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is considered the fourth wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of $233.6 billion, Forbes found. It’s actually $243 billion, according to Bloomberg.
While Musk is arguably most famous for running Tesla, he derives most of his wealth from his ownership stakes in privately held firms including SpaceX and xAI, along with earlier investments in PayPal.
Musk made headlines earlier this year when President Trump put him in charge of hunting down wasteful spending through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
He left the White House and returned full-time to his many business activities in May.
Tesla stock has surged 35% since the start of September, coming to about $460 per share as of Wednesday.
Tesla’s board of directors, which approved an annual pay package for Musk worth tens of billions of dollars, has dangled an incentive-laden compensation structure that could make him the world’s first trillionaire — a move that was criticized by Pope Leo XIV.
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