Billionaire Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and currently the world’s richest person, is now nearly halfway to becoming the planet’s first trillionaire, Forbes reported Wednesday.

Musk briefly became the first individual to reach a net worth of $500 billion, as Tesla shares rebounded following his high-profile political ventures, among other gains. 

His net worth peaked at $500.1 billion before dipping slightly to $499.1 billion, according to Forbes’ “Real-Time Billionaires” tracker.

Following Musk on the Forbes list are Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, with a net worth of $350.7 billion, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, at $245.8 billion.

Born in South Africa, Musk earned his first millions after selling an online publishing software company to US computer maker Compaq for over $300 million in 1999, shortly after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania and leaving Stanford University.

He went on to co-found a venture that eventually merged with PayPal, before establishing SpaceX in 2002 and joining Tesla as chairman in 2004, setting the stage for his rise as one of the world’s most influential entrepreneurs.

Source: Agencies 

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