Richest person (male)

The richest person in the world, according to Forbes, is Elon Musk (USA, b. South Africa). As of 8 October 2024, Musk's estimated net worth stands at $260.4 billion (£198.8 bn). Musk's wealth is derived from his stakes in Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter).

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1971. He attended the University of Pennsylvania before moving to California to go to grad school. After dropping out of Stanford, his first notable business venture was a website called "Zip2", which marketed itself as an all-purpose city guide service that could be marketed to local newspapers. The company was acquired by tech giant Compaq in February 1999, and Musk was paid $22 million for his seven percent stake.

Following this initial success, Musk ploughed his time and resources into a venture called X.com in March 1999, which was one of the first online banking services. The company merged with online bank Confinity in 2000, and the combined company was renamed PayPal in 2001. When PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002, Musk's 11.7% stake was purchased for $176 million.

In the years that followed this windfall, Musk involved himself in the two ventures he is most associated with today – rocket launch company SpaceX and electric car maker Tesla. With both investments, Musk was trying to break into an industry dominated by a small number of extremely large and powerful companies with close ties to the US government.

After many years of financial struggles, the two firms have managed to firmly establish themselves in their respective fields, with SpaceX in particular coming to completely dominate the global commercial launch market, thanks to their technologically revolutionary Falcon 9 rocket. As of 8 October 2024, Tesla has a market capitalization of $763.3 bn (£582 bn), while the privately held SpaceX is estimated to be worth around $210 bn (£160 bn).