By Alice Giddings
Copyright metro
Elon Musk has some big expenses (Picture: Getty / EPA / Reuters)
In a world where famine has been declared in Gaza and British families are set to be £1,400-a-year poorer by 2030, we have history’s first ever half-trillionaire.
Business titan Elon Musk is officially worth $500,000,000,000 (£370.900,000,000), after his companies increased in value this week.
To put that in perspective, Musk could now cover the entire cost of our NHS for a year at £226 billion, and still have £144.9 billion to play with.
He’s also worth more than Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos’ combined, giving him the funds to pay nearly 10 million people the average UK salary of £37,000.
It’s a bleak contrast to the fact 354,000 people in England are homeless and British food bank use has surged by 46% in the last five years amid a cost of living crisis.
So what is notoriously frugal Musk spending his dollars on?
Pennies for politics
It’s no secret Musk backed Donald Trump in his 2024 run for presidency, proudly attending his inauguration.
He made a handsome contribution of $288 million (£213 million) towards Trump’s Republican campaign, making him the largest donor overall.
Trump’s presidential campaign received plenty of help from Elon Musk (Picture: REUTERS)
Alongside his donation, Elon also founded America PAC to campaign for Trump through canvassing operations, making an $11.2 million (£8.36 million) contribution to it on December 31, 2024.
The organisation reportedly had 5,500 canvassers knocking on doors in the seven battleground states, and in its targeted congressional districts just prior to the election.
This helped secure the President’s second term in the White House, which has so far seen him withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, introduce major tariffs on global trade, implement tough immigration policies and officially recognise just two genders.
With the election won, Musk then caused further upset in Wisconsin this March, when he gave away two $1 million (£770,000) cheques to voters who had signed a petition to stop ‘activist’ judges.
This stunt came just prior to the state’s Supreme Court election which had the potential to flip control of its judiciary to the Republican party, but it ultimately failed, and Wisconsin voters elected a Democrat-backed judge.
It didn’t stop the backlash though, with Attorney General Josh Kaul claiming Musk violated a state law which prevents gifts being given in exchange for votes.
‘Charity’ cheques
Alongside Trump, Elon Musk has also been known for making donations to charity — his own charitable foundation that is, where cash contributions are tax deductible.
Last year, The New York Times reported that the tech billionaire had seemingly never felt the need to donate to the impoverished Cameron County, where his SpaceX launch site is.
This was until one of his rockets blew up and covered the area in metal.
Elon Musk’s foundation has been questioned (Picture: Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Following the 8.05am incident, the Musk Foundation announced it would be donating $20 million to Cameron County schools and $10 million to the City of Brownsville, that same day.
The news outlet branded Musk’s charitable efforts as ‘haphazard and largely self-serving’, citing his tax breaks as motivation for his philanthropy.
It also claimed the foundation had failed to give away the minimum 5% of the fair market value of his endowment required by law – donating $160 million in 2022, $234 million less than required.
RIP Twitter
It was a sad day when the iconic little blue bird was replaced by a black and white X, but it was Musk’s design choice after buying Twitter for $44 billion (roughly £32 billion) in October 2022.
A self-proclaimed free speech advocate, he took issue with the platform’s moderation policy, and didn’t believe in banning users.
In fact, he reversed President Trump’s ban from the social media site, after he was suspended following the Capitol riot in January 2021.
Musk bought Twitter and it became X (Picture: Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Having signed on the dotted line, Musk renamed Twitter, dubbing the app X, and has since introduced xAI (known as Grok) – an AI startup, which operates in part on the social media platform.
It’s also an AI platform in its own right, similar to ChatGPT, that allows users to ask questions about tweets in real time. And according to Pitchbook, it’s worth an estimated £55 billion.
What is $500,000,000,000 actually worth?
Musk’s global standing
If Musk’s net worth were a country’s GDP, he would rank 31st worldwide. That’s just below Austria and above Norway, Malaysia and the tech tycoon’s home country of South Africa.
For all the tea in China
If you would not do something for all the tea in China, maybe things would change for $500billion – a mere four times the People’s Republic’s projected tea revenues of $115billion for 2025.
South American coffee
If coffee is more to a billionaire’s taste than tea, Musk is in luck as his net worth is 11 times more than the $45billion revenue of the coffee market in South America this year.
Britain’s Crown Jewels
Musk is worth 125 times the value of the Crown Jewels. Though they’re generally considered priceless, royal historians estimate the artefacts are worth nearly $4billion.
What could Elon Musk’s worth buy? (Picture: Metro)
Riches in the Louvre
There’s little Musk couldn’t afford to hang in the Louvre. His wealth is at least ten times more than the value of the museum and its entire contents, estimated at around $45.5billion by French historian Patrice de Moncan.
The Lizzie line
For $500billion all the royals could have a Tube line named after them. The figure is 20 times the cost of building the Elizabeth Line – $25billion.
Vodka in Russia
Though the drink is a Russian staple, Musk’s riches dwarf the nation’s vodka market and come in at 540 times its total revenue of $924million this year.
The White House
Former Trump adviser Musk said farewell to his short-term workplace in May but has the wealth to buy out the entire building 1,250 times over. Real estate firm Zillow calculates the value of the White House as $398million.
Footballing finances
If Musk wanted to invest in football, his net worth is now 35 times the market value of all the Premier League football clubs combined, which comes to a sizeable $14billion.
The private jet
Musk isn’t the only rich person to have a private plane. He’s in star-studded company with the likes of Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, Donald Trump, Drake and Jay-Z.
But the half-trillionaire doesn’t have any old jet – he’s got a Gulfstream G650ER, or as we might know it, a G6. Actually, he reportedly owns two of these, setting him back at around $70 million each (£52 million).
This ultra-long-range jet can host up to 19 passengers on board, sleeping up to 10 and capable of up to 16 hour flights – meaning Musk can get pretty much anywhere in the world he wants.
He’s not shy about using it either, taking a whopping 355 flights in 2024, according to JetSpy. Many of his trips were to or from the Palm Beach area, near Mar-a-Lago, where a certain orange presidential candidate resided at the time.
A Gulfstream G650 (G650ER) corporate jet, just like Elon’s (Picture: Associated Press)
In total, he spent about 881 hours in his plane globe-trotting. According to Liberty Jet, the cost of flying 400 hours a year in this specific jet is around $2.95 million (£2.29 million), so estimated running costs could be in the region of $4.5 million (£4.58 million).
If you’ve got some serious money under your belt, you can be forgiven for getting yourself a swanky car.
In 2013, the tech billionaire paid £616,000 (nearly $1 million) for James Bond’s Lotus Esprit submarine car from The Spy Who Loved Me.
‘I was disappointed to learn that it can’t actually transform,’ Musk said in a statement at the time. ‘What I’m going to do is upgrade it with a Tesla electric powertrain and try to make it transform for real,’
The submersible Lotus vehicle nicknamed “Wet Nellie” that Elon purchased in 2013 (Picture: Reuters)
The car had been misplaced after the Bond film, but was found in 1989 after a lucky local paid $100 (£74) for a storage container in Long Island, only to find it sitting inside.
While it functions as a submarine, Musk can’t drive the vehicle to his California SpaceX headquarters, as it doesn’t work on the road.
He also owns a retro 1967 Series 1 Jaguar E-Type, which he purchased for around $37,000 (£27,528), after getting $40,000 (£29,760) from his Zip2 software start up in 1995.
More impressively, he bought one of the only 106 McLaren F1 cars ever made, which are now estimated to be worth around £14 million (£10,416,490), although Musk sold his in 2007.
On occasion, Musk has lent a helping hand though.
In Flint, Michigan, after its water was poisoned with lead, Musk stepped in.
Mari Copeny, an activist who raised awareness for what was happening in Michigan, tweeted: ‘$44 billion to buy Twitter… but I can’t even hit $1 million to help those around the nation get clean water with my filter.’
Musk then sent $500,000 (£371,982) to help install clean water fountains in 12 schools in Flint.
In another effort to help those in need, the billionaire sent a miniature submarine he manufactured to rescue the Thai soccer team that became stuck in the Tham Luang cave system after a flash flood.
However, officials said it wasn’t ‘practical for this mission’, with one British diver branding it a ‘PR stunt’, and a team of divers rescuing the children instead.
Lastly, the business titan also promised to deliver more than 1,000 ventilators to hospitals during Covid, but CNN revealed, Musk sent airway machines that are typically used for sleep apnea patients, and weren’t the ventilators needed.
The hospitals were still grateful for the shipments, though.
