Tech billionaire Elon Musk is known for his bold ambitions, which he pursues relentlessly by building a strong, talented team, setting big standards, and creating a culture of success.
On multiple occasions throughout his career, Elon has essentially put his entire reputation and livelihood on the line with bold decisions. Most recently, we saw it when he supported the Presidential underdog Donald Trump.
The world’s richest person went all in for Trump, spending $118 million in his support. And this bet paid off hugely, as Trump won the US presidential elections and Musk’s wealth surpassed $300 billion.
Describing Musk as a “once-in-a-generation industry leader,” Trump suggested appointing Musk as “secretary of cost-cutting.” In another instance, Trump praised Musk, saying, “We have a new star. A star is born: Elon,” and talked about protecting “our super geniuses.”
With this yet another win, Musk continues to cement his position as a leader with a futuristic vision. So, let’s take a look at all that he has built, how far his ideas have come, and where they are going!
An automotive and clean energy company, Tesla designs, manufactures, and sells battery electric vehicles, energy storage devices, solar panels, and related services.
Founded in 2003, it wasn’t until about a year later that Elon joined Tesla as its largest shareholder and was named its CEO in 2008, the year in which its first car model, the Roadster sports car, began production. In June 2021, Tesla’s Model 3 became the first EV to sell 1 million units globally.
Of all the Musk companies, Tesla is the only one that is publicly traded, making it the primary investment option for those who believe in following Elon.
As of writing, the shares of the $1.12 trillion market cap Tesla are trading at $350, up 40.85% year-to-date (YTD). Interestingly, on election day, Nov. 5, TSLA shares were trading around $242, which means in less than a week, the shares of Elon’s electric car company surged 44.6%.
As these fresh gains help TSLA shares reach close to its all-time high (ATH) of around $413 hit in late Nov. 2021, Tesla broke the trillion dollar mark. It has an EPS (TTM) of 3.65, a P/E (TTM) of 95.96, and an ROE (TTM) of 20.65%, while its Debt To Equity (MRQ) is 11.01%, as per data from CNBC.
Much like TSLA’s own shares, the company’s Bitcoin holdings have also surged past $1 billion on the back of Trump’s victory as the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap of $1.75 trillion made a new high at $89,864. The EV maker currently holds 11,509 BTC, which was first announced in Feb. 2021 for “more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on our cash.”
Now, for the financial results of Q3 of 2024, the company reported $23.35 billion in revenue, an increase of 8% from a year earlier. Net income came in at $2.17 billion, or 62 cents a share.
Its profit margins meanwhile improved by $739 million in automotive regulatory credit revenue. According to FedScout, Tesla has reported a total of about $10 bln in sales of “automotive regulatory credits” since 2015, which are largely derived from federal and state regulations that require automakers to sell some number of low-emission vehicles or buy credits from those who have them in excess like Tesla.
During this quarter, Tesla produced about 470,000 vehicles and delivered 463,000 vehicles. Tesla also deployed 6.9 GWh of energy storage products. According to Tesla’s shareholder deck, its Cybertruck became the 3rd best-selling full EV in the US.
Meanwhile, on the earnings call, Musk guessed vehicle growth to reach 20%-30% next year, driven by “lower cost vehicles” and the “advent of autonomy.”
Last month, Tesla unveiled its long-awaited robotaxi, whose production would start in 2026 and will be priced under $30k. As per Musk, the company would eventually produce 2 million Cybercabs a year, offering driverless ride-hailing as early as one year after rollout in Texas and California. The company has also introduced a robovan, though there are few details about it other than that it can carry up to 20 people.
Amidst this, the automaker faces headwinds in the global market from declining European sales and China-based competitors. However, Trump promised to impose a 60% tariff on Chinese goods, which may help protect Tesla.
Tesla is also under scrutiny from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which has expressed dissatisfaction with the company’s social media posts that gave the impression that its Full Self Driving (FSD) tech allows cars to operate fully autonomously. Overall, Tesla is forging a new path forward in the automatic and energy sectors.
Click here to learn all about Musk-led Tesla.
SpaceX
Musk is not only bringing disruption to our roads with his electric vehicles, but his ambitions go to the skies and far beyond to other planets. Towards that goal, he founded Space Exploration Technologies Corp. or SpaceX in 2001.
Over the last two decades, SpaceX has made a lot of advancements in reusable launch vehicles, rocket propulsion, human spaceflight, and satellite constellation technology. Today, SpaceX is the world’s leading space launch provider that is paving the way to a sustainable colony on Mars.
Back when SpaceX was bankrupt, it successfully launched Falcon 1 into orbit and then began making reusable rockets. As of November 2024, its Falcon 9 rockets have had more than 390 total launches and over 320 reflights.
Over the years, developments such as the Dragon spacecraft, which sends passengers to and from Earth orbit and beyond, as well as the “world’s most powerful launch vehicle,” Starship, have helped SpaceX get the much-needed investment. Notably, SpaceX has reportedly received tens of billions of dollars from federal government contracts since 2008 and is on track to take in several billion dollars more annually.
In 2019, the company achieved a big milestone when Starlink’s first operational satellite came online. Today, Starlink offers high-speed internet in over 100 countries and generates the bulk of SpaceX’s income. During Trump’s victory speech, the President-elect praised SpaceX for delivering Starlink Wi-Fi terminals to Hurricane-stricken parts of the US.
Much like Musk’s other companies, except for Tesla, SpaceX is not publicly traded. Hence, there is no clear financial available. However, it is estimated that its revenue was $8.7 billion in 2023, while its profit was $3 billion.
The company is now proposing a plan similar to Starlink’s network of over 7,000 satellites orbiting Earth to establish communication around Mars. According to SpaceX, ‘Marslink’ could transmit data at speeds of 4 Mbps, creating a reliable communication system to serve future missions to the Red Planet.
A couple of months ago, Musk announced that the first Starships to Mars would take off in two years when the Earth and Mars are at the closest point to each other. The first few missions, however, will be uncrewed “to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars.” Once that proves successful, the first crewed flights will begin in four years.
“Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. Being multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet.”
– Musk
Building a self-sustaining city on Mars, according to Musk, requires making the technology 10,0000x better, which is “extremely difficult, but not impossible.”
Click here to learn how to invest in SpaceX.
X Corp
If you are confused as to which company this is, well, it’s Twitter. Yes, the popular social media platform was co-founded by Jack Dorsey, which Musk bought for $43 billion in 2023.
X Corp. is a technology company that is established as the successor to Twitter and a wholly owned subsidiary of X Holdings Corp., which plans to use it as a foundation for other offerings.
Before Musk took over, X (Twitter) reported revenue of $3.4 billion in 2023, a decline of 22% from the previous year. While Twitter went public in 2013, its shares were delisted, and it stopped trading on public markets in November 2022 after Musk tendered an offer of $54.20 per share.
Despite Musk reducing the overhead significantly by cutting about 80% of staff, media reports suggest the platform is still far from being profitable. At the same time, X bears the burden of large debt due to the loan Musk took to purchase the app.
However, Musk has positioned himself as a “free speech absolutist,” changing the platform’s content moderation policies and restoring previously banned accounts, including that of Trump. He then began using his social network to share his support for Trump and promoted the incoming administration.
“I have never been materially active in politics before, but this time I think civilization as we know it is on the line. If we want to preserve freedom and a meritocracy in America, then Trump must win.”
– Musk wrote on X
Musk’s intentions with X, as he shared last year, go far beyond just a social platform. He aims to turn the platform into an “everything app” that can handle “someone’s entire financial life.” Towards that end, it has already secured money transmitter licenses to process payments in several states.
The Boring Company
“Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging…,” is how The Boring Company began with a tweet, which isn’t out of the ordinary for Musk.
The tweet was made in December 2016, and the very next month, he announced the first test dig. A month later, the company broke ground. The test hole was dug on SpaceX premises.
So, what exactly does The Boring Company do? Its mission is to solve the problem of traffic by enabling “rapid point-to-point transportation” and transforming cities. This is to be achieved by building “safe, fast-to-dig, and low-cost transportation, utility, and freight tunnels.”
There are several active projects under The Boring Company, including the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) Loop, which is a 1.7-mile two-tunnel system with three transportation system stations that cost $47 million.
The Vegas Loop, meanwhile, handles the traffic moving from the LVCC to other resorts on the Las Vegas Strip. The Vegas Loop, according to media reports, has been dealing with some trespassing incidents going back to 2022 and various cases of theft, property damage, and technical issues.
Then there’s the hyperloop, an “ultra-high-speed public transportation system” for autonomous electric pods. Meanwhile, the R&D Tunnel tests the company’s Loop and Hyperloop ventures.
Recently, Musk also teased the Prufrock 5 tunnel boring machine (TBM), which hasn’t yet been on the field. Meanwhile, the 308-foot-long Prufrock 4, which weighs 797,000 pounds and produces up to 4.7 million pounds of thrust, has been put to work.
Prufrock is a tunnel boring machine used for mega-infrastructure projects. The company raised $675 million in a Series C funding round in 2022 at an estimated valuation of $5.75 billion to scale its boring machine production and more.
The Boring Company also makes flamethrowers, which are called; ‘Not a Flamethrower.’ The limited release sold 20,000 units for $500 each. As a private, independent company, there is no financials available for it.
Neuralink
Another futuristic vision of Musk can be witnessed through Neuralink, which is a neurotechnology company launched in 2016 and valued at about $5 billion last year.
This privately-held company is developing a brain-computer interface (BCI) to treat neurological conditions and ultimately enhance human cognitive abilities. With Neuralink, Musk aims to “address the existential risk” of artificial superintelligence and stay ahead of it.
For this, Neuralink is creating implantable devices that can read and stimulate large numbers of neurons in our brains.
The BCI chip called N1 is coin-sized and implanted in the skull surgically with extremely thin wires going into the brain. To record neural activity, the chip uses 1024 electrodes distributed across 64 threads, which transmit data through a Bluetooth connection. For power, the device uses a small battery, which gets charged wirelessly from the outside.
Two patients have already been implanted with the Neuralink brain chip. Its first recipient, who’s quadriplegic, is using it to enhance his abilities by learning new languages and plans to finish his degree. Meanwhile, the second person, who had lost control of limbs after a spinal cord injury, was able to use the chip to play Counter-Strike 2.
This is just the beginning, though, as in the long-term, Musk aims to use BCI to overcome neurological disorders, allow people to control devices like phones “just by thinking,” and improve the symbiosis of humans and AI to “unlock human potential.”
Musk expects Neuralink to gain widespread adoption in the next few years and achieve the milestone of reaching millions of people with Neuralinks within a decade.
Most recently, Musk’s Neuralink got a “breakthrough device” tag from the FDA for its experimental implant that intends to restore vision.
xAI
While Neuralink aims to make superhumans by merging human consciousness with AI, Musk is also involved in the advancement of AI itself through his xAI venture.
He is reportedly currently in the early stages of discussions to raise new financing after securing $6 billion in May, which could increase the company’s valuation to as high as $40 billion, up from $24 billion earlier this year.
This funding for xAI talks comes amidst the increasing amount of capital being poured into the AI sector. Interestingly, in October, OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed San Francisco startup behind ChatGPT that Musk co-founded in 2015 and helped bankroll, raised $6.6 billion at a valuation of $157 billion.
After leaving OpenAI three years later due to a dispute over its direction toward profitability, Musk went on to create xAI in 2022 to develop similar technology. Currently, xAI offers a chatbot called Grok through Musk’s social media service, X.
Grok was launched at the end of 2023, with two new models, the Grok-2 and the Grok-2 mini, released later this summer. While Grok remains exclusively available to premium users of X, it may soon be offered to free X users in select areas, according to X researchers and users who noticed updates to Grok.
Musk’s AI startup currently uses a facility in Memphis to develop its models on a network of 100,000 enterprise-grade GPUs, which is being prepared to expand to 200,000 GPUs before increasing it by another 100,000 next year.
The news of xAI’s “Colossus” supercomputer being in the process of doubling its size was revealed by Nvidia (NVDA +1.66%), which will provide its H100 and H200 GPUs for the 785,000-square-foot Memphis facility. The GPU tech from Nvidia will help improve the Grok chatbot and other AI-related tech from xAI.
This supercomputer is noteworthy for assembling the GPUs into a working cluster of AI processing pretty fast, which, according to Musk, took just 122 days “from start to finish,” as opposed to the years it usually takes to build one.
Despite his continued efforts to improve and advance AI tech, Musk believes there’s a real chance it will backfire. “It’s most likely going to be great,” said Musk during an interview at Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative summit, before adding that there’s still a chance, “10% to 20%, that it goes bad. The chances aren’t zero that it goes bad.”
This isn’t the first time Musk has shared his concerns; he has sounded the alarm before, too, saying, “I think AI is a significant existential threat and something we should be paying close attention to.” This concern is part of why he has focused on providing “superhuman” abilities to humans.
Conclusion
So, as we have seen over the years, Musk has led several ambitious projects, ranging from automobiles and energy storage to establishing a Mars colony, advancing AI, and supercharging human capabilities. These ventures showcase Musk’s unique blend of visionary ambition, relentless execution, and undeniable impact.
While all of these different endeavors from Musk are disrupting various industries, Tesla is the only publicly traded company that offers the perfect investing opportunity for those eager to align with his vision and help shape the future of humanity!