Elon Musk’s Trillon dollars proves Technology is the undisputed hustle of our times

Elon Musk, the South African-born nerd who prefers to call himself an engineer instead of a businessman, is now worth a trillion dollars.

To understand the gravity of this new net worth, you need to compare Elon Musk with his billionaire peers. Elon Musk is $700 billion richer than Larry Page, the second-richest man in the world. At a net worth of $1.11 trillion, if Musk lost $700 billion worth of his net worth, he would still be the richest man on the planet.

Another way to grasp the sheer depth of Elon Musk’s finances is to compare him to countries. Elon Musk’s net worth exceeds the combined Nominal GDP of the three largest economies in Africa (South Africa, Egypt, and Algeria). The three countries combined are at $1.026 trillion. Musk is at $1.11 trillion.

Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar status has proved that technology is the dominant hustle of our time. The technology industry minted the first seven richest people on the planet with a collective net worth of $2.614 trillion

Name	Total Networth	Country	Industry
Elon Musk	$1.11bn	United States	Technology
Larry Page	$306bn	United States	Technology
Sergey Brin	$285bn	United States	Technology
Jeff Bezos	$260bn	United States	Technology
Larry Elison	$238bn	United States	Technology
Michael Dell	$213bn	United States	Technology
Mark Zuckerberg	$202bn	United States	Technology

Elon Musk never diversified away from technology. Of his nine publicly recorded companies, only one was a pivot away from tech and into major infrastructure.

All Hits, Few Misses

Elon Musk is a serial winner who got into the business of winning quite early in life. Musk, at 31, netted $180 million after PayPal, a payment platform he was instrumental in building, was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion. That was the first of many wins to come as he went on to win in the world of Automobiles with Tesla, Space Technology with SpaceX, Social media with X, ISPs with Starlink, AI with XAI, Chips with Neuralink, Public Infrastructure with the Boring Company, and finally Payments with X.com, an early startup which he hopes to merge with Twitter.

The Boring Company and Neuralink are some of his not-so pronunced ventures. Yet this pales in comparison to the sheer number of his startups that were hits. Of all his ventures, SpaceX and Tesla carry the most credit for his trillion-dollar status, as both have seen recent surges in their stock prices.

SpaceX’s share price peaked at $176 before falling back. However, the valuation of the space technology company has exceeded the $2 trillion, making Musk the world’s first Trillionaire.

Is the Information Age the Greatest?

Elon Musk is the first Trillionaire in recorded history. The net worth of Mansa Musa, the 14th-century emperor of the Mali Empire, remains shrouded in historical controversy. Estimates put his net worth at around $400 to $500 billion in Today’s money. Other heavyweights like John D Rockefeller were worth roughly $600 billion in today’s money. All still pales in comparison to Elon Musk’s net worth.

The information age has produced the most billionaires both in terms of net worth and number. The only representative of the old order, the industrial age, is India’s Gautam Adani, who ranks 17th on the list with a net worth of $115 billion.

The age of information, characterised by computers, the internet, and Artificial intelligence, requires less manpower, less space, and less funding to scale than the industrial era of mega factories, steam engines, and labour unions.

Elon Musk, hitting 13 digits as the flagbearer of the technology industry today, is making history. It will go down in the history books as the strongest argument that the information age is the best of times since the dawn of human existence.

Last updated: June 13, 2026