Elon Musk’s 6 biggest moneymakers, ranked: the billionaire may be in trouble with Twitter, but he’s got successful companies SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink and The Boring Company bringing in over a trillion

Jul 19 , 2022

Elon Musk has either invested in or built some of the world’s most profitable companies from scratch, so how do they rank against each other? Photos: @boringcompany, @tesla_hk, @spacex, @neura.link/Instagram; AFP

The serial entrepreneur is in hot water for trying to ditch Twitter, but he’s still worth US$230 billion, not least thanks to the sale of PayPal in 2002, and Deepmind to Google in 2014

Aside from his trillion-dollar company Tesla, the South African also owns SpaceX, Starlink, The Boring Company, Neuralink and OpenAI – but which earns him the most?

There’s no such thing as a dull day in Elon Musk’s life, it seems – he is the wealthiest man on the planet, after all. But more recently the entrepreneur has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons – from fathering secret twins with a Neuralink employee, to dropping out of his US$44 billion Twitter bid. Backtracking on the social media platform’s buyout in particular has landed him in a whole lot of financial trouble too.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is no stranger to controversy – or court cases for that matter – and has found himself in hot water again over his Twitter takeover. Photo: Reuters

The 51-year-old shocked the world in April when he confirmed his intention to buy the social media giant, and stunned everyone again after backing out of the acquisition deal in July. Twitter has since clapped back by filing a lawsuit against the billionaire.

“Having mounted a public spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a seller-friendly merger agreement, [Mr] Musk apparently believes that he – unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law – is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value and walk away,” said the lawsuit, per BBC.

The original merger apparently includes a US$1 billion break-up fee. Musk said he was walking away from the deal because Twitter had failed to provide enough information about the number of problematic bots on the platform, according to The New York Times.

Elon Musk arriving at the Met Gala on May 2 – the entrepreneur is one of the most talked about people on the planet most days. Photo: AFP/Getty Images/TNS

But all is not lost for Musk, who, according to Forbes, currently sits on a hefty US$230.4 billion fortune thanks to his diverse portfolio of other businesses. And while everyone has heard of SpaceX and Tesla, they likely know less about his other ventures, which also provide him with plenty of income streams to fall back on. And let’s not forget that he’s already sold some of the world’s most successful companies, including PayPal and the now-Google-owned Deepmind Technologies.

So, while we wait for the Musk vs Twitter trial to begin, let’s take a look at the businessman’s most successful companies in 2022, based on their net valuations ...

6. Neuralink – US$500 million-US$1 billion

A still from a video uploaded by Elon Musk’s Neuralink start-up showing a macaque monkey named Pager playing the video game Pong using its mind. Photo: YouTube

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