Elon Musk net worth booms in Tesla stock surge

Elon Musk’s estimated net worth grew by tens of billions on Thursday, after Tesla’s (TSLA+3.34%) stock had one of its best days ever. As trading fluctuates on Friday, he’s poised to get even richer.

Shares grew by 22% on Thursday, the day after Tesla delivered mixed earnings with promising results on a handful of factors that investors were eyeing. They included strong profit margins, earnings per share, net income, and the company’s lowest cost per goods sold ever. It was the first time in seven quarters that Tesla had grown its earnings.

Much of that gain was also likely due to Musk’s new round of promises.

He offered a forecast that sees Tesla begin offering rideshare services next year in at least two states, California and Texas, where he aims to get regulatory approval for “fully autonomous unsupervised” Full Self-Driving (FSD). Musk also disclosed his “best guess” for 2025 deliveries, which he says will grow by 20% to 30%, citing Tesla’s plans to begin selling more affordable models in early 2024. Tesla intends to sell more than 1.81 million electric vehicles in 2024.

“My prediction is Tesla will become the most valuable company in the world, and probably by a long shot,” Musk declared on an earnings call with analysts.

Musk controls close to 13% of Tesla’s outstanding shares, although he may be able to buy more stock — at a serious discount — if his compensation plan is approved by the courts. He also owns a large portion of SpaceX, which he leads, as well as artificial intelligence startup xAI and social media platform X (META+1.04%), formerly Twitter.

Tesla’s gains Thursday pushed Musk’s approximate net worth to about $270 billion, an increase of $33.5 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, which updates when New York markets close. Forbes’ real-time billionaire index projected a $26 billion increase to about $269 billion on Thursday. So far on Friday, Musk’s net worth has increased by another $3 billion to almost $273 billion, according to Forbes.

The next-richest individual is Larry Ellison, the Oracle (ORCL-0.48%) founder and a Musk ally, with a net worth of $213.8 billion, according to Forbes. Close behind are Amazon (AMZN+0.83%) founder Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who are worth $207.7 billion and $200.5 billion, respectively.

At around $266 per share, Tesla stock was up more than 2% in regular trading Friday morning, bringing its gains over the past six months to 55%. The stock is up just 6% year-to-date.