How much does Elon Musk make a second, minute, and hour?
Elon Musk is one of the most famous men in the world today. He is the founder and CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company, and several other businesses.
He is also the 2nd richest man in the world with a net worth of $164 billion dollars, and the new owner and CEO of Twitter
Elon Musk makes $485.50 per second, $29,200 per minute, and an unbelievable $1.75 million per hour! Unlike most CEO’s, Elon Musk does NOT have a fixed salary. Instead, he makes all of his money as a stockholder for Tesla, SpaceX, and other companies.
In this comprehensive guide we will tell you everything you need to know about Elon Musk’s salary, including how he is able to make more than $485.50 per second.
We also answer your most important Elon Musk questions, including:
- Why doesn’t Elon Musk take a salary?
- How much does Elon Musk pay in taxes?
- What is Elon Musk’s most profitable company?
…And much more!
Our team of experts has analyzed the latest data on Elon Musk to give you up-to-date answers for 2023. We also cover Elon Musk’s best advice for starting your own billion dollar business…
Table of Contents
Elon Musk 2023 Complete Profile
- Net Worth: $164 billion dollars
- Profession: Entrepreneur
- Monthly Income: $1.3 billion
- Yearly Income: $15.3 billion
- Born: June 28, 1971
- Age: 51 years old
- Nationality: South African
- Citizenship: United States
- Zodiac Sign: Cancer
- Partner: Grimes (2018 – present)
How Much Does Elon Musk Make A Second, Minute, And Hour?
Elon Musk is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world today.
He started almost a dozen successful companies including PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. He also purchased the social media platform Twitter in August 2022, making him the 2nd richest man in the world.
Unlike most CEOs and business owners, Elon Musk does NOT have a fixed salary. In fact, he doesn’t directly make any money from his companies!
Instead of relying on a salary to get rich, Elon Musk owns stock in his companies, and as his companies increase in value, so does his stocks.
“I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don’t believe in the whole thing of just using other people’s money.
I don’t think that’s right. I’m not going to ask other people to invest in something if I’m not prepared to do so myself.”
Elon Musk’s strategy has paid off, and in the past 10 years his net worth has increased by more than $150 billion dollars!
Actually, we can use this data to calculate how much money Elon Musk makes per day, hour, and second:
Elon Musk Income (Yearly, Monthly, Daily):
- Per Year: $15.3 Billion
- Per Month: $1.3 Billion
- Per Week: $294.2 Million
- Per Day: $42 Million
- Per Hour: $1.75 Million
- Per Minute: $29,200
- Per Second: $486.50
As you can see, Elon Musk makes an unbelievable amount of money every year.
Elon makes $15.3 billion dollars per year, $1.3 billion per month, $294.2 million per week, $42 million per day, $1.75 million per hour, $29,200 per minute, and $486.50 per second!
In other words, Elon Musk makes more in 1 second than most of us make in an entire day! This is truly incredible.
Despite his financial success, Elon Musk insists that he is not overly motivated by money.
Instead, he believes life should be about waking up and solving difficult and exciting problems for humanity.
“And we need things in life that are exciting and inspiring.
It can’t just be about solving some awful problem.
There have to be reasons to get up in the morning.”
Of course, Elon Musk is also a big family man. He currently has 10 kids, and it looks like he may be having more on the way!
However, when he is not spending time with his family, he focuses on building and scaling his many businesses.
What Is Elon Musk’s Net Worth?
Elon Musk has an estimated net worth of $164 billion dollars in 2023.
His net worth actually peaked in November 2021 at an astonishing $340 billion dollars. However, he lost more than half of his net worth in 2022 when Tesla and SpaceX decreased in value, and today he is only the 2nd richest man in the world.
Of course, Elon Musk claims that he is more motivated by building useful companies for humanity than he is making lots of money.
But he is still very motivated by increasing his net worth, and beating out other entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos!
“I just want to retire before I go senile because if I don’t retire before I go senile, then I’ll do more damage than good at that point.”
Elon Musk may be the 2nd richest man in the world, but this wasn’t always the case.
The truth is he graduated from college with more than $100,000 dollars in debt! Elon Musk made his first $20 million dollars by building and selling an internet business called Zip2.
From there, he built and sold PayPal for another $180 million dollars!
How Did Elon Musk Get Rich?
- Sold Zip2 in 1999 for $22 million
- Sold PayPal in 2001 for $180 million
- Founded SpaceX in 2002, now worth $62 billion
- Founded Tesla in 2004, now worth $64 billion
- Purchased Twitter in 2022, now worth $42 billion
Elon Musk took his proceeds from Zip2 and PayPal and used them to fund his future business projects, including SpaceX, Tesla, Solar City, The Boring Company, and Neuralink.
Elon says the key to building any successful business is to work extremely hard.
He says he has been working 80-100 hour work weeks for the past decade to build his companies!
“Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. This improves the odds of success.
If other people are putting in 40 hour workweeks and you’re putting in 100 hour workweeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing…
You know that you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve.”
Today Elon Musk is the 2nd richest man in the world with an estimated net worth of $164 billion dollars.
If the stock market bounces back in 2023, then he looks poised to reclaim his title as the richest man in the world!
Elon Musk Net Worth By Year
- January 2013: $2.7 Billion
- January 2014: $8.0 Billion
- January 2015: $10.5 Billion
- January 2016: $11.8 Billion
- January 2017: $10.7 Billion
- January 2018: $20.4 Billion
- January 2019: $22.3 Billion
- January 2020: $28.5 Billion
- January 2021: $170 Billion
- January 2022: $270 Billion
- January 2023: $156 Billion
How Did Elon Musk Make His Money?
Elon Musk first became a millionaire by building and selling profitable internet companies like Zip2 and PayPal.
From there, he invested all of his money into other companies like SpaceX, Tesla, and Solar City. Elon Musk makes his money through stock appreciation in his companies.
As Tesla and SpaceX become more profitable, their stock price goes up, which in turn makes Elon Musk money.
Tesla and SpaceX may be Elon’s most profitable companies. However, he has started or owned 9 different companies during his business career:
List Of Elon Musk Businesses
- Business #1: Zip2
- Business #2: PayPal
- Business #3: SpaceX
- Business #4: Tesla
- Business #5: SolarCity
- Business #6: OpenAI
- Business #7: Neuralink
- Business #8: The Boring Company
- Business #9: Twitter
Let’s take a closer look at 3 of Elon Musks’ biggest and most important companies PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla.
Elon Musk Makes Money With PayPal
Elon Musk started working on PayPal in 1999, right after he sold Zip2 for $20 million dollars.
Elon says his goal for PayPal was to create a fully integrated online bank where you could perform all of your online banking functions in one centralized place.
PayPal was a huge success, and in 2002 Elon Musk sold the company for an incredible $180 million dollars!
“My proceeds from the PayPal acquisition were $180 million.
I put $100 million in SpaceX, $70m in Tesla, and $10m in Solar City.
I had to borrow money for rent.”
Elon Musk says PayPal was such an important company for him because it gave him the capital he needed to launch his other business projects including SpaceX and Tesla.
Elon Musk Makes Money With SpaceX
Elon Musk launched SpaceX in 2002, right after he sold PayPal for $180 million dollars.
Elon was disappointed that NASA wasn’t sending humans to Mars, so he took matters into his own hands and started a rocket / space exploration company!
Elon Musk’s big breakthrough was developing rockets that landed themselves after taking off, and could therefore be re-used over and over.
“The revolutionary breakthrough will come with rockets that are fully and rapidly reusable.
We will never conquer Mars unless we do that. It’ll be too expensive.”
Elon Musk says this breakthrough reduces the costs for space travel, as you no longer need to make a new rocket from scratch every time you want to travel into space!
Elon Musk says he wants to colonize Mars, and plans on sending the first humans to Mars in 2030.
Elon Musk Makes Money With Tesla
Tesla is Elon Musks’ biggest and most profitable company, with a peak market cap of over $1 trillion dollars!
Tesla’s mission is to speed up the development of sustainable energy technologies by building and selling luxury electric cars.
“If you don’t have sustainable energy, you have unsustainable energy.
The fundamental value of a company like Tesla is the degree to which it accelerates the advent of sustainable energy faster than it would otherwise occur.”
Elon says Tesla has been a huge success, and it is now the biggest car manufacturer in the world by market cap.
Is Elon Musk The Richest Man In The World?
Elon Musk was the richest man in the world in November 2021, with an estimated net worth of $340 billion dollars.
However, he lost more than half of his net worth in 2022, and today his net worth is only $164 billion dollars.
Elon Musk is currently the 2nd richest man in the world, with Bernard Arnault taking the #1 spot.
The 10 Richest People In The World (Updated 2023)
- Bernard Arnault – $180 billion
- Elon Musk – $164 billion
- Gautam Adani – $134 billion
- Bill Gates – $108 billion
- Jeff Bezos – $108 billion
- Warren Buffett – $105 billion
- Larry Ellison – $103 billion
- Mukesh Ambani – $102 billion
- Steve Ballmer – $91 billion
- Larry Page – $81 billion
Was Elon Musk Born Rich?
Believe it or not, Elon Musk was NOT born rich.
He also did not inherit any money from his parents. Elon’s parents were relatively poor, and had just enough money to provide him a lower middle class lifestyle as a child.
So how did Elon get ahead in life if he came from a poor background?
The truth is Elon had one major advantage that other kids his age did not have: he was incredibly smart, and loved to learn.
Elon says he read every book in his library by the time he was 10, including the encyclopedias!
“I thought I was insane. It was clear that other people… their minds weren’t exploding with ideas.
I hoped they wouldn’t find out, because they might put me away or something!”
Elon Musk says he learned to code by the time he was 10, and when he was 12 he built and sold his first video game called Blastar.
Elon Musk continued to be successful in grade school, and by the time he was 17 years old he was off to college in Ontario, Canada.
Despite going to college and graduating with good grades, Elon Musk says college is a complete waste of time.
He believes you don’t learn anything useful in college, and are better off learning skills in the real-world.
“You don’t need college to learn stuff. Everything is available basically for free. You can learn anything you want for free.
Bill Gates is a pretty smart guy, he dropped out of college. Steve Jobs dropped out of college, he’s pretty smart too. Obviously college is not needed.”
Elon Musk graduated college with over $100,000 in debt, but he quickly changed that by building and selling Zip2 for $20 million dollars in 1999!
Why Did Elon Musk Buy Twitter?
Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world.
It is often called the “digital town square,” as it allows groups of people to get together and exchange and debate ideas in real time.
Elon Musk says he was concerned about Twitter’s pro-censorship policies, so he bought the company in August 2022 for an unbelievable $44 billion dollars!
Elon Musk believes the only way Twitter can succeed is by operating as a free-speech platform, where anyone with any political affiliation can voice their opinions.
“For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.”
Many people believe that Elon Musk acquired Twitter for nefarious reasons, such as undermining democracy or negatively influencing US elections.
Elon Musk argues the exact opposite, saying it is essential for the future of democracy that Twitter remains a free speech platform.
Elon has big plans for Twitter, and he already made massive changes to the platform including firing over half of his employees, eliminating much of the pro-censorship code in the Twitter algorithm, and offering a blue checkmark to all users for an $8 dollar fee.
Elon says these changes are all about making Twitter better and more competitive in the 2020s, rather than just making changes for the sake of it.
“A lot of people think I’m a fan of disruption, but I’m not really a fan of disruption. I am just a fan of things being better.”
It remains to be seen if Elon Musk’s takeover has a positive or negative impact on the share price of Twitter.
Elon Musk Frequently Asked Questions
- FAQ #1: How Tall Is Elon Musk?
- FAQ #2: Where Does Elon Musk Live?
- FAQ #3: Is Elon Musk going to nuke Mars?
- FAQ #4: What is Elon Musk’s favorite interview question?
- FAQ #5: Who is Elon Musk dating?
- FAQ #6: How many children does Elon Musk have?
- FAQ #7: Who’s richer: Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos?
Let’s take a closer look at each of these questions.
How Tall Is Elon Musk?
Elon Musk is 6 feet 2 inches tall, and weighs about 200 pounds.
Where Does Elon Musk Live?
Elon Musk lives in a small $50,000 dollar home in Austin, Texas.
Is Elon Musk Going To Mars?
Elon Musk plans to send humans to Mars by 2030, and he has future plans for colonizing the red planet.
He believes the fastest way to warm up Mars is to nuke the polar ice caps, thereby releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
What Is Elon Musk’s Favorite Interview Question?
Elon Musk’s favorite interview question is the following:
“Tell me about a time you really screwed something up. How did you handle it, and how did you address the mistake?”
Who Is Elon Musk Dating?
Elon Musk is currently dating the Hollywood musician Grimes. Elon Musk and Grimes have one child together, called X AE A-XII.
How Many Children Does Elon Musk Have?
Elon Musk currently has 10 children with 3 different women.
Who’s Richer: Elon Musk Or Jeff Bezos?
Elon Musk is richer than Jeff Bezos. Elon is the 2nd richest man in the world with $164 billion, while Jeff Bezos is the 5th richest man in the world with $108 billion.
Verdict | How Much Does Elon Musk Make?
So what’s the verdict… how much does Elon Musk make a second, minute, and hour?
Elon Musk makes $485.50 per second, $29,200 per minute, and $1.75 million per hour.
This means Elon Musk makes more money in one second than most people reading this article make in an entire day!
Elon Musk may be rich, but he wasn’t born that way.
He moved to the United States from South Africa with almost no money, and by the time he graduated he had more than $100,000 dollars in student loan debt!
Elon made up for this by building and selling multiple successful companies, including PayPal and Zip2.
Today Elon Musk is one of the richest men in the world, with an estimated net worth of $164 billion dollars.
