Elon Musk reaches a first-ever wealth milestone as Tesla stock surges

Elon Musk, CEO of companies including Tesla Inc., SpaceX and X — and the planet’s richest human — has hit a new wealth milestone. 

On Wednesday afternoon, he became the first person worth $500 billion according to Forbes, which keeps running tabs on the ultra-wealthy via its Real-Time Billionaires tracker. 

The company’s shares dropped slightly to close at $459.46, though. So, too, did Musk’s fortunes suffer ever so slightly: As of Wednesday evening, he was worth a mere $499.1 billion. 

Still, he ended the day up $8.3 billion, according to the Forbes real-time tracker, as the richest person in the world and now the first member of the $500 billion club. 

Just last month, he briefly relinquished the title of world’s richest person to Oracle Corp. co-founder Larry Ellison after the latter company’s stock surged. As of Oct. 1, Ellison had again been relegated to second-wealthiest person, with a real-time net worth of about $350 billion.  

Musk is also the wealthiest person in Texas, of course. Many of his companies are headquartered here and his business portfolio in the state includes more than 500 properties sprawling across some 6,000 acres, according to a September Hearst Newspapers analysis.