NET WORTH: $75 billionAGE: 49RESIDENCE: Bel AirSOURCE OF WEALTH: Technology, electric vehicles, aerospaceLAST YEAR: $22.6 billionCHANGE: +232%THE MONEY: Musk draws his wealth from several lucrative honeypots. He owns 54% of Hawthorne-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp., which the South Africa native founded in 2002 to develop a commercial space travel business. Musk also has a 21% stake in Tesla Inc., which has become the largest seller of electric cars in the United States. Tesla, whose stock was trading at about $225 on Aug. 1, 2019, surpassed the $1,500 mark some 12 months later. The electric carmaker posted $104 million in net income for the second quarter of 2020, and its market cap reached about $262 billion on July 25. Musk also founded the Boring Co. in 2016 to build out large-scale tunneling projects. While an ambitious effort to transport baseball fans and concertgoers directly to Dodger Stadium from the Los Feliz, East Hollywood or Rampart Village neighborhoods is in the permitting stage, Boring completed the second of two 0.8-mile tunnels around the Las Vegas Convention Center.THE BUZZ: A lot happened for Musk in 2020. In May alone, he became father to his sixth son, the uniquely named X Æ A-Xii, with musician Grimes. That same month, SpaceX successfully completed its first manned mission, carrying NASA astronauts to the International Space Station. SpaceX also embarked on an effort to raise up to $1 billion in Series N funding at a valuation of $44 billion. And the company continued to make steady progress on its Starlink project, which plans to launch 40,000 satellites into orbit to provide worldwide internet coverage. Musk’s initial fortune came from the sale of two software companies he helped found — Zip2, which he sold to Compaq in 1999 for $307 million, and PayPal, which eBay picked up in 2002 for $1.5 billion. Forbes recently named Musk the fifth-richest person in the world.
