Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, and the other billionaires who made bank in 2024

Elon Musk is — by far — the wealthiest man alive. While that was also true at the start of 2024, he, Bezos, and Zuckerberg played a few games of leapfrog. Toward the end of the year, Musk’s lead solidified.

The value of his aerospace company, SpaceX, grew to $350 billion this month, while his artificial intelligence start-up xAI has raised $6 billion at a $50 billion valuation less than two years after he founded it. Although some of its gains have been lost, Tesla stock is still up by more than 70% year-to-date, mostly thanks to a post-election surge tied to Musk’s relationship with the next presidential administration. Musk owns about 13% of the electric vehicle company, which is his biggest asset.

He also owns 42% of SpaceX and 79% of X Corp, the social media platform he purchased for $44 billion in 2022; X’s value has gone down drastically since he bought the company, formerly called Twitter. Plus, he has stakes in xAI, tunneling firm The Boring Company, and brain chip startup Neuralink, his other startups.

As of Dec. 29, Musk is worth some $452 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Year-to-date, his net worth has shot up by $223 billion, or 97%.

—Britney Nguyen, Francisco Velasquez, and Rocio Fabbro, contributed to this article