Elon Musk invested at least $130 million to assist Donald Trump win the presidency and $44 billion to purchase Twitter, now known as X.
This combination has yielded significant benefits. On paper, Musk’s wealth has increased by almost $70 billion since Trump’s election last week.
The majority of Musk’s wealth is concentrated in his Tesla assets, whose stock has increased by almost 39% in the four trading days since the election. As a result, the company’s market capitalization has surpassed $1 trillion.
According to Forbes, Musk’s net worth has increased to $320 billion, over $90 billion more than the second-richest person in the world, Larry Ellison, the creator of Oracle.
Longtime Republican contributor Ellison, a personal friend of Musk’s and a former board member of Tesla, has witnessed his own Trump spike, with Oracle’s 10% gain increasing his net worth by almost $20 billion.
Restoring Trump to the White House became Musk’s second full-time job. As a stand-in for his preferred candidate, he organized rallies and provided funding for a swing-state effort to register right-leaning voters. He was sued for operating an unlawful lottery in Pennsylvania and began giving away $1 million to registered voters who signed one of his America PAC petitions.
Musk also regularly promoted his support for Trump on X, the social media network he purchased in 2022, while disseminating false information about his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and issues including voter fraud and immigration.
Musk is currently working to ensure that he makes money from his investments.
Musk briefly joined Trump on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy following last week’s election, according to NBC News. According to other media, such as ABC and The New York Times, Musk has been influencing hiring choices for the incoming government and has been spending a lot of time at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida since the election. Trump is expected to appoint Brendan Carr, a longtime Musk supporter, to lead the Federal Communications Commission.
Musk personally backed Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott for Senate majority leader after conducting a straw poll on X for his 200 million+ followers. Additionally, he shared a Trump remark that the majority leader must back recess appointments for his candidates in order to avoid Senate confirmation.
“It will take at least two years to confirm the new administration without recess appointments!” Musk wrote.
Helping Musk’s business
In order to remove barriers to his vast business empire—which consists of Tesla, X, the defense contractor SpaceX, the artificial intelligence startup xAI, the brain computer interface company Neuralink, and the tunneling company Boring Co.—Elon Musk has long aimed to reduce regulatory authority.
Federal agencies are presently investigating and suing such corporations on a variety of issues, including alleged breaches of securities laws, workplace safety, labor and civil rights, federal environmental laws, consumer fraud, and automobile safety problems.
Musk may anticipate that regulators and intelligence agencies will conclude some or all of the 19 known active government investigations and lawsuits against Tesla, SpaceX, and X, given the executive branch’s disproportionate authority over federal regulatory organizations.
In a Wednesday interview with CNBC, Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management, a longtime Tesla supporter, stated, “He has the ear and the golden touch right now.”
Munster said that SpaceX is another company that would “clearly benefit” from a Trump presidency, in addition to Tesla. “As the new administration considers AI regulations, xAI may be rewarded,” he continued.
Munster remarked, “I’m stretched to try to find out how this could play out negatively for Elon.” An inquiry for response from Musk was not immediately answered.
According to the most recent filings, Musk possesses around 304 million performance-based options and 411.06 million Tesla shares. The Delaware Chancery Court’s Judge Kathaleen McCormick declared Musk’s unprecedented 2018 compensation package, which included the options, to be “unfathomable” in January, partly due to Musk’s dominance over the board.
The deal was subsequently ratified retroactively by shareholders in June. According to McCormick, a definitive decision about the restoration of Musk’s pay is imminent.There are other wealthy tech leaders who have received windfalls after elections besides Musk and Ellison.
Since Trump’s election, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong’s net worth has increased by almost $4.5 billion. Monday’s 20% increase in Coinbase shares increased their gains since Tuesday to 67%.
Through a PAC named Fairshake, the cryptocurrency exchange made significant contributions to pro-crypto politicians all the way down the ballot. Since the majority of its favored candidates won, there is a chance that the industry will have a more advantageous regulatory environment.
That is also a victory for Tesla. The corporation recorded $729 million in “digital assets” at the end of the third quarter. Since the election, cryptocurrencies have surged, and on Monday, bitcoin reached a new high of nearly $88,000, up almost 29%.
