Yahoo Finance If You Invested $4K in These Companies With Elon Musk, You Would Be Worth $623K
With a net worth of over $210 billion, Elon Musk is one of the wealthiest people in the world, according to Forbes. He got there by founding or making early investments in some of today’s largest companies. Here’s how much you would have made if you put $1,000 into each of Musk’s best investments at the same time he did.
Also see five of Musk’s investing mistakes you can learn from.
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Tesla
Musk invested $6.35 million in Tesla during its Series A round in 2004. This bought him 12,880,324 shares — about 16% of the company. That equals a per-share price of around $0.493. Tesla’s current market cap is $548 billion. That means Musk’s original 16% would be worth over $89 billion today.
So what if you invested $1,000 at the same time he did? The amount could have bought you about 2,028 shares at the same price Musk paid. At Tesla stock’s current price of around $178, you could sell those shares for a cool $360,984 today.
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SpaceX
Musk earned $180 million when he and his partners sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. He took $100 million from that windfall and founded SpaceX in 2002. Analysts now say the company is worth around $180 billion, as reported by CNBC — good for 180 times Musk’s initial investment.
If you had invested $1,000 into SpaceX at its inception, you could sell those shares today for around $180,000 on the private market. Add that to your Tesla stake and you would have a net worth of $540,984.
The Boring Company
Tesla and SpaceX have been Musk’s best investments to date. But he’s also done quite well with The Boring Company, which provides infrastructure and underground tunnel construction services.
Musk invested around $100 million of his own money to get the company off the ground, as CNBC also reported. It’s since exploded to a valuation of $5.7 billion as of the latest Series C funding round, according to Business Insider.
The Boring Company isn’t publicly tradable and we don’t know exactly what percentage of it Musk owns. But The Washington Post says his stake is worth about $3.3 billion today.
So, Musk once again turned an investment of about $100 million into a multi-billion-dollar fortune. He returned around 33 times his initial investment. If you had put $1,000 into The Boring Company at the same time he did, it would be worth around $33,000 today. That brings your running total up to $573,984.
Neuralink
Neuralink is yet another example of Musk putting $100 million into a new company in a futuristic industry. Analysts say the business, which creates brain implants to supplement human intelligence, is now valued at about $5 billion.
We don’t know exactly what percentage of Neuralink Musk owns. But if you had put $1,000 into the company when he first started it, those shares would likely be worth around $50,000 today. This represents 50 times your initial investment, just like Musk’s initial $100 million investment has blossomed into a $5 billion company.
When you add this to the money you could’ve made on Musk’s other investments, you end up with a total net worth of around $623,984 from an initial investment of just $4,000.
How To Invest Like Musk
It’s always easy to find the investments you should have made after they become incredibly profitable. The real question is how to start identifying promising opportunities like these before they reach their full potential. Musk’s story reveals three strategies that may help you do this.
Invest In the Future
First, Musk’s top investments have all been in companies that are building toward his idea of a better future. Tesla envisions a world where cars don’t pollute the planet so severely, SpaceX imagines a world where space shuttles can be reused and so on.
Future-oriented investments can be risky. But they also offer tremendous upside. If a company is the first mover to an important trend, it can grow massively in a short amount of time. That’s how Tesla established dominance in the electric vehicle industry.
Don’t Go All in
Musk’s top investments also show us that you should never go all-in on any single venture. Even after becoming a billionaire, Musk only invested a small percentage of that — about $100 million — in each new company he created. This shows he understood the risks involved and didn’t over-invest despite his strong beliefs.
Invest In Yourself
Finally, Musk reminds us that sometimes the best investment is the one you make in yourself. He didn’t use his early fortune to buy stocks in other companies. He kept creating new businesses he believed in and has been rewarded time and time again for doing so.
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