Elon Musk just crossed the symbolic barrier: $500 billion in net worth. An unprecedented feat, putting him $150B ahead of Larry Ellison and widening the gap with Bezos and Arnault — the former icons of the summit.

The first engine of this rise is Tesla. The automaker is once again treated not as a car manufacturer but as a faith-based asset. The recent surge — +4% in a single trading day, $9.3B more for Musk — shows how each narrative move from the founder shifts the stock more than any quarterly report. Since April, when he announced he’d cut political distractions and return full focus to Tesla, the stock has nearly doubled. The market rewarded not just numbers, but discipline. Tesla is Musk again, and Musk is back to being the visionary CEO, not the digital troll.

Today, his 12% stake already totals $191B. And there’s still powder left: the 2018 option package, voided in Delaware, remains in dispute. If restored, it would add another $133B. The legal battle is not just about pay — it’s about shield. The package secures Musk enough voting power to neutralize activist funds. That’s the core dilemma: Musk doesn’t just want wealth, he wants control.

Tesla’s board got the logic. In September, they put a new package on the table: up to $1T in stock tied to “Mars-shot” goals, like multiplying capitalization eightfold over the next decade. An alignment contract, but also a hostage deal: if Tesla wants Musk, it must pay Musk on his scale. The symbiosis is clear.

The second vector is SpaceX. The last private round raised its valuation to $400B, cementing it as a strategic asset. Musk’s 42% stake equals $168B. SpaceX doesn’t live under Wall Street’s cold light but under the logic of critical assets. It dominates orbital launches, runs multi-billion NASA contracts, and keeps Starlink as telecom and defense backbone. It’s not just a rocket company. It’s a geostrategic monopoly, with no substitutes in sight. Musk doesn’t just play this game — he defines it.

The third pillar is xAI Holdings. In March, Musk merged his AI company with X, creating a $113B conglomerate. His slice: $60B. The move looks risky, but it’s asymmetric. While Google and OpenAI fight over models without social assets, Musk controls both the network (X) and the lab (xAI). Data and algorithms in one ecosystem. What looked like an ego play turns into a strategic cluster. In the AI era, whoever owns real, global-scale data owns power.

This engineering explains the historic leap. In March 2020, Musk was worth $24.6B. In five years, he multiplied that twentyfold. Not luck. Architecture. He built a portfolio of non-redundant but complementary firms: Tesla, the industrial lever; SpaceX, the geopolitical lever; xAI Holdings, the cultural/digital lever. Each in a field with no immediate substitute.

Bezos built his fortune in e-commerce, Arnault in luxury. Musk plays in arenas where the product isn’t product — it’s civilization. EVs as the symbol of energy transition. Rockets as sovereignty. AI as the battle for collective mind. That’s where wealth becomes myth. The question is not “how much is Musk worth.” It’s “what depends on Musk.”

The milestones reinforce the script: $100B in 2020, $200B in 2021, $300B that same year, $400B in 2024, now $500B in 2025. An almost parabolic curve, anchored in the perception that Musk is not just an entrepreneur but a structural piece across three markets.

Ahead lies the potential first personal trillion before 2033, when Tesla’s mega-package tranches vest. But Musk insists: it’s not about compensation. It’s about securing enough influence to prevent Tesla’s future from being hijacked by funds. He wrote himself: “If I can be removed by boards that don’t even own Tesla shares, I don’t feel comfortable with that future.”

That phrase condenses the logic. Fortune is not end, it’s armor. Half a trillion is not goal, it’s mechanism. It buys time, margin, control. Musk knows a man can be more powerful than an entire fund when his narrative becomes infrastructure.

Not fortune. Architecture of power.

Markets don’t price risk. They price dependence.