Elon Musk has become the first person in history to amass a personal fortune of nearly $450 billion, thanks to strong rally in Tesla Inc.’s shares post U.S. elections results and share sale in his company SpaceX. The SpaceX and Tesla chief’s has added more than $100 billion in his wealth in the last one month after Donald Trump registered a thumping victory in the U.S. presidential elections 2024, while his net worth more than doubled in the last two years from $200 billion by the ends of 2022.

As per Bloomberg’ real-time billionaires list, Musk currently has a net worth of $447 billion, the only member of the $400 billion club. Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos is far second on the chart with net worth of $249 billion, followed by Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg ($224 billion). The list is dominated by Americans, and Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani ($97.1 billion) and Adani group’s Gautam Adani ($79.3 billion) are the only Indian billionaires among the 20 richest people worldwide.

The unprecedented increase in Elon Musk’s wealth is primarily driven by sustained rally in the shares of electric car maker Tesla stock, which surged over 21% in the last one month after Trump won the U.S. elections. On Wednesday, Tesla shares touched a fresh all-time high of $424.88, while its market capitalisation crossed $1.3 trillion. The other major catalyst were share sale in his rocket producer company SpaceX, which boosted the business mogul's net worth by approximately $50 billion. As per report, SpaceX and its investors have agreed to buy insider shares worth $1.25 billion at valuation of around $350 billion. At this valuation, the per-share price of SpaceX, in which Musk owns a 42% stake, is pegged at around $185, much higher than $112 set in a previous valuation less than three months ago.

Among others, the rise in valuation of Musk’s cofounded companies such as artificial intelligence startup xAI and recently acquired Twitter (renamed as X) also propelled his net worth. Musk owns around 54% stake in xAI, which he founded in 2023, while he acquired Twitter in a $44 billion (enterprise value) deal during 2022.

In May this year, xAI secured $6 billion in Series B funding, whch featured investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, along with Valor Equity Partners. The company plans to utilise this capital to launch its inaugural products, enhance infrastructure, and expedite the research and development of future technologies.

Investors are betting high on Elon Musk’s businesses amid hopes of possible benefit from his closeness to newly elected president Trump. The U.S. president has chosen Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ under his second administration.