Elon Musk’s Wealth vs. Trump’s: How Quickly They Grew Their Billions
Written by
Vance Cariaga
Edited by
Angela Corry
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There’s an old saying that the easiest way to make a billion dollars is to start off with a million dollars. It doesn’t apply to every billionaire, but it partly explains why both Elon Musk and President Donald Trump eventually amassed billions of dollars in wealth.
Both were born into financial comfort, with fathers who went on to become millionaires. Both benefited from family loans to help build their empires.
At the same time, both turned those early advantages into a lot more wealth than they were born into — and in Musk’s case, he turned it into more wealth than any person has ever had.
Neither Musk nor Trump were born billionaires. Here’s how quickly they grew their wealth to eventually become billionaires.
Elon Musk
Born in South Africa in 1971, Musk grew up in relative wealth thanks to the successful careers of his mother Maye, a model and dietitian, and his father Errol, an engineer and real estate developer. In the 1980s Errol bought an emerald mine in Zambia that helped push his net worth above $100 million by the end of the decade.
Musk eventually wound up in a Ph.D. program at Stanford University. But he dropped out in 1995 and used a $28,000 loan from his father to form Zip2, a provider of maps and directories for online publications he cofounded with his brother. Four years later the business was sold to Compaq for $307 million, netting Elon a profit of $22 million.
Today, Musk has a net worth of about $411 billion, according to Forbes. That makes him far and away the richest person in the world (Larry Ellison ranks second at $259 billion).
Musk debuted on Forbes’ list of the world’s billionaires in 2012 thanks to companies like Tesla and SpaceX, where he serves as CEO. Since then, his wealth has accelerated.
Here’s a timeline put together by Forbes that shows how quickly Musk has grown his net worth. Because so much of his wealth is tied to Tesla’s stock price, it can go up and down quickly from one year to the next.
- 2016: $10.7 billion
- 2017: $13.9 billion
- 2018: $19.9 billion
- 2019: $22.3 billion
- 2020: $24.6 billion
- 2021: $151 billion
- 2022: $219 billion
- 2023: $180 billion
- 2024: $195 billion
- 2025 (latest estimate): $411 billion
Donald Trump
Forbes estimates Trump’s current net worth at about $5.5 billion. Most of that — $3.3 billion — is now tied to cryptocurrency, which Trump has “tapped for cash and worked to promote” through his Trump Media and Technology Group.
Like Musk, Trump grew up wealthy. Born in 1946 in Queens, New York, his father was a successful real estate developer in New York City.
According to a 2018 article from The New York Times, by the time Trump was 17, his father had given him part ownership in a 52-unit apartment building. Trump continued to receive millions from his father in the ensuing decades.
But Trump also amassed wealth through his own investments, primarily in real estate holdings that included office towers, high-rise apartments, hotels, casinos, resorts and golf courses. He built additional wealth as a reality TV star in the 2000s.
According to a Forbes analysis of Trump’s wealth, he first became a billionaire in 1988. He dropped off Forbes’ billionaire list from 1990-1996 but returned to it in 1997 and has been on it ever since.
Here’s a look at Trump’s net worth since returning to billionaire status in 1997:
- 1997: $1.4 billion
- 2000: $1.7 billion
- 2005: $2.7 billion
- 2010: $2.4 billion
- 2015: $4.5 billion
- 2020: $2.5 billion
- 2025 (latest estimate): $5.5 billion
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