Elon Musk becomes the richest man in history

Boosted by Donald Trump's victory in the recent American presidential election, the fortune of the Tesla boss has exceeded its highest level that it reached three years ago. With assets of $348 billion, he becomes the richest man in history.

Elon Musk is more than ever the richest man in the world. Barely a week after Donald Trump's victory in the race for the White House, the South African billionaire's fortune broke its record of $338 billion dating from November 2021: it now stands at $348 billion. 'after the Bloomberg index.

The boss of Tesla and SpaceX has raked in nearly $130 billion in just one year. He holds by far the largest assets on the planet ahead of Jeff Bezos ($219 billion), Larry Ellison of Oracle ($206 billion) and Mark Zuckerberg ($198 billion). He is even more than twice as rich as Bernard Arnault whose assets have melted over the past year ($163 billion).

Above all, such a concentration of fortune is unprecedented in modern history. Estimates of the assets of the great fortunes of the 20th and 19th centuries had never reached such a level. Thus John Rockefeller, the oil magnate who created Standard Oil (Exxon, Mobil, Chevron and Esso) had assets estimated at more than $1 billion at the start of the 20th century, the equivalent of $336 billion today. . But unlike Musk, these immense fortunes of yesteryear held monopolies whether in energy (Rockefeller), steel (Andrew Carnegie), automobiles (Henry Ford) or railways (Cornelius Vanderbilt ). For comparison, Tesla certainly holds 48% of the electric vehicle market share in the United States, but this segment only represents 10% of total car sales.

Elon Musk took a risky gamble by showing himself as a leading supporter of the Republican candidate, but it immediately bore fruit. Just hours after Donald Trump's success in the presidential election was made official, the rise in shares of his company Tesla brought him $15 billion, according to Forbes. Just on the first day following the Republican's victory, Elon Musk's fortune jumped by some 26 billion dollars.

More than $100 million invested in Trump campaign

If Donald Trump largely won the American presidential election, billionaire Elon Musk, who had bet everything on him, appears to be the other big winner of the vote. The richest man in the world threw himself headlong into the ex-president's campaign in the last few weeks, accompanying him to rallies and even going on stage to defend him, notably in Pennsylvania.

He also invested more than 100 million dollars in the campaign of the new president-elect, and did not hesitate to use his social network, X (formerly Twitter), as a sounding board for Donald Trump's messages, on the immigration in particular. His support committee even organized a lottery offering a million dollars daily to registered voters in key states who agreed to sign a conservative petition in favor of free speech and the right to bear arms.

At the head of a new ministry of “Government Effectiveness”?

The boss of the electric car manufacturer should be rewarded with a position in the future government. The president-elect could charge him with profoundly reorganizing the federal administration, using his aggressive approach to his affairs. Elon Musk should notably take the head of a new ministry of “Government Effectiveness”, whose primary objective will be to reduce the federal budget by 2,000 billion dollars, currently 7,000 billion dollars.

He assured that he wanted to import to Washington the same “hard-line” approach as in his companies, while promising “humane and fair” treatment to the federal employees who would be affected, including severance pay amounting to two years of salary.

“We need to make significant reductions in public spending and we need to get people to work in more productive positions in the private sector,” justified Elon Musk, still on X, a few hours before Donald Trump's victory.