What a bizarre time to be Elon Musk.
This 12 months opened with the businessman turned political operator throwing what appeared, to Nazis at the least, to be a Sieg heil.
This spring, activists regularly congregated outdoors the showrooms of his automaker, Tesla, to protest his foray into the US federal authorities and comfortable relationship with President Trump. They argued that his so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity, a cost-slashing operation named after a greater than decade-old web meme, didn’t slash a lot past overseas support. They cheered as Tesla missed Wall Avenue’s monetary expectations.
In Could, Musk blew up his relationship with essentially the most highly effective man on Earth with a couple of vicious posts on X; essentially the most highly effective man on Earth known as him a “TRAIN WRECK.” Tesla saved leaking cash. DOGE fell sufferer to Washington infighting; it’s now reportedly decentralized and a shadow of the Musk private fiefdom it as soon as was.
And but: It appears Elon Musk is getting out of 2025 OK? Or, to place it succinctly: Elon Musk might not be the king of the world, however Elon Musk remains to be very, very highly effective.
Cash isn’t all the pieces, however on the subject of the richest human within the identified universe, it’s price wanting on the numbers. Tesla did a little bit of flailing this 12 months (extra on that in a sec), and traditionally, a lot of Musk’s wealth has been derived from the world’s most respected automaker. That needs to be dangerous information for Musk. But it surely’s turn into more and more clear that the Tesla CEO’s different, non-public firms—SpaceX, xAI, Neuralink—have saved his portfolio diversified, shielding the aspiring trillionaire from a number of the whipsaws of the general public market.
Musk is price some $462 billion in response to Bloomberg, and his stake in Tesla is valued at $140 billion, in response to monetary filings—lower than half of his fortune. Total, Musk’s wealth is up $29 billion since final 12 months.
So how did a man who started the 12 months because the president’s “First Buddy” and ended it as a political pariah pull it off? It was, largely, a story of two firms: Tesla hitting some white water whereas SpaceX shot satellites into orbit and snapped up authorities contracts. Musk, in the meantime, cheered on from X, an internet site that he seems to have massively overpaid for in 2022. However the funding labored; the platform set the tempo for political and social commentary amongst the worldwide proper wing for a lot of 2025.
By all accounts, Tesla had a less-than-stellar 12 months. The US electrical car market foundered as Trump’s authorities reduce tax subsidies and help for battery and car manufacturing crops. It levied, then pulled again, after which levied once more world tariffs which have strained your complete US auto trade. Musk’s firm wasn’t immune from the consequences.
