THE MUSKTOCRACY

With a fortune of $342 billion, Elon Musk is worth more than anyone in history. Here are the employees, investors and disciples (but not ex-wives) who have gotten rich alongside him.

- BY JOHN HYATT

Elon Musk owes his staggering fortune to technological innovations and corporate machinations, but he couldn’t have done it by himself: His brother never left his side, his early employees worked around the clock and his investors have backed him time and again. He has paid many of them back with fortunes in the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.

Some folks, like SpaceX’s president, Gwynne Shotwell, and Musk’s younger brother, Kimbal, owe their entire fortune to Elon. “I am thankful for my bro every day,” Kimbal posted on X in January. Others were already rich, and then Elon made them much richer. “He is the most brilliant guy, the most brilliant engineer on the planet,” gushes Ron Baron, the 81-year-old mutual fund billionaire who embraced Musk in 2014. Between his investment firm and his personal bets, Baron has snapped up 4.5 million Tesla shares at an average cost of $12 each—a cool 22x return. He is still a bull and has vowed not to sell his personal shares for now (Tesla’s stock is down 38% since President Trump's inauguration). “A lot of people disagree with me and say that Musk’s reputation is irreparably damaged, but I think everything passes,” Baron says. “When all this blows away, people will still buy his product more than anyone else’s.”