Elon Musk's record $447 billion fortune means he's nearly $200 billion ahead of Jeff Bezos — and worth more than Costco

• Elon Musk is almost $200 billion richer than Jeff Bezos and worth more than Costco.
• His net worth hit $447 billion after Tesla stock jumped and SpaceX's valuation rose to $350 billion.
• Just five years ago, Musk was worth about $25 billion, and Tesla was valued below $100 billion.

Elon Musk is nearly $200 billion richer than Jeff Bezos, and personally worth more than Costco, after adding $63 billion to his fortune in a single day.

His net worth surged to $447 billion on Wednesday, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, after Tesla stock jumped 6% and SpaceX's valuation leaped to $350 billion based on employee share sales.

Musk's fortune has ballooned by $218 billion this year — a sum that exceeds the net worth of every other person on the rich list except Amazon's Bezos ($249 billion) and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg ($224 billion).

Musk is now more than twice as wealthy as Oracle's Larry Ellison ($198 billion), and more than three times as rich as Warren Buffett ($144 billion).

His one-day gain — the largest in the index's history — rivals the total wealth of Binance cofounder Changpeng Zhao, ranked 23rd with a $63.2 billion fortune. It also helped to lift the combined wealth of the 500 richest people on the planet to above $10 trillion for the first time, Bloomberg said.

Musk is now worth more on paper than the vast majority of US public companies, including Costco ($442 billion), Home Depot ($419 billion), and Netflix ($400 billion).

His wealth is largely made up of his roughly 13% stake and some contested stock options in Tesla, and his 42% slice of SpaceX. Musk's other businesses include xAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and X Corp, formerly Twitter.

Tesla shares have surged more than 70% this year to $425 at Wednesday's close, valuing the company at nearly $1.4 trillion. That figure comfortably exceeds the roughly $1 trillion market value of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and approaches the $1.6 trillion value of Zuckerberg's Meta.

The electric vehicle maker's shares have soared as investors bet it will harness artificial intelligence in revolutionary products such as self-driving cars and humanoid robots.

Musk's prominent role in Donald Trump's campaign, and his emergence as a close advisor to the president-elect who's tasked him with streamlining the US government, have also fueled optimism around his companies.

SpaceX is now valued at $350 billion based on the latest price paid by the company and its backers to buy shares from employees, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The Starlink owner's valuation was previously $210 billion after a secondary share sale in June.

It's worth underscoring how dramatic Musk's wealth jump has been. He was worth less than $170 billion as recently as April, and only about $25 billion five years ago — around 1/18 of his net worth now.

Tesla was worth less than $100 billion during the Covid crash of 2020, or about 1/14 of its valuation today.