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This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business Podcast and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. We try and bring you each day 1 to 2 Market insight, issues about business, about markets and more. Then typically one interview a day or so with a business leader who we think is extraordinary. Thank you for listening. Today's discussion is Elon Musk hits 600 billion. So here's the deal with this. Forbes recently reported that Elon Musk, who is by far the world's richest man, I guess the closest thing that there may be to Elon Musk's wealth is some of the royal families in the Middle East. But across all the different prognosticators and statisticians, they tend to show Elon as the world's richest man now with a net worth of about $600 billion. So here's what has driven this, and it's really remarkable. And I'm not sure how to think about this in societal terms, but in terms of what he's accomplished between Tesla and SpaceX and Neuralink and the boring company and everything else he's done, he's done it at a massive scale, with a massive amount of commitment. And it's really, to me, a fascinating thing to watch. The most recent uptick in his net worth ranking from a 2 to $300 billion number to a $600 billion, really revolves around the revaluation of SpaceX, which in its last private valuation. He founded SpaceX, it's the private space exploration company. It's really changed the space world. It used to be all NASA and governments, and now it's private rocket companies. Really a remarkable thing. But it's the latest valuation of SpaceX that's driven this incredible valuation in a private round. About six, eight months ago it was valued at $350 billion. Now it's valued more closely to 800 billion. That's the expectation at least, coming out of a most recent private round. And then the plan is that they'll go public next year at 1.5 trillion. And because Elon Musk owns a plurality of a significant stake, at least in SpaceX, this is driving his valuation personally to numbers that have never been thought about or seen before. And again, this will drive, of course, the tax the rich people to new levels of outrage. And I, I get it. And it's so complicated because on one hand, incoming inequality and money is the root of all evil. Whenever you have income inequality, it drives more people to resent those that have money. When you've got haves and have nots, I just think that's societal, and there's no way around this. At the same time attacking someone who's created so many jobs and really transformed industries and done so many other things. I'm not sure that that's the right answer either. Of course, it all seems sort of crazy to us to have one person that's worth $600 billion when the average net worth in the world is pennies, really. But I don't know how to go about how you really think about that in a constructive way versus rewarding someone who has built so many companies, brought us to a whole different place in terms of electric vehicles, in terms of space exploration, and so much more. I don't have any answer to the income inequality side, but I can report on the fact that Most recently Elon Musk's wealth has gotten to about 600 billion, which makes him by far the richest person in the world. We'll see if it's a house of cards, it all comes falling down. It doesn't seem like it. A lot of this is also based on the valuation of Tesla, which has become the largest electronic vehicle company, but really transforming itself to a driverless taxi company and a number of other things. In any event, fascinating to watch. Thank you for listening to the Becker Business, the Becker Private Equity Podcast I I would love people's feedback on this episode. There's thoughts about this. If you're one of the first patients to text Scott Becker at 773-766-5322, we'll go ahead and send you a $25 gift certificate. You got to be one of the first three people to text with some opinion on this whole thing. Thank you for listening to the Becker Business and the Back of Private Equity Podcast.
