Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire when his rocket company SpaceX went public in the biggest stock-market debut ever seen. His net worth soared past one trillion dollars, and he did what no one else had ever done before.To his admirers, Musk is a once-in-a-generation builder chasing impossible dreams. To his critics, he’s simply another ultra-rich man sitting on unimaginable wealth.But somewhere between those two views lies the question of what has actually been driving him all these years and what led him to be the world’s richest man.Only a few people are better placed to answer that than the woman who raised him. Maye Musk, who is a model, dietitian, author, and Elon’s mother, has watched her son’s journey from an awkward, bullied boy in South Africa to the richest person alive. But the reason behind Elon Musk being a ‘billionaire’ then is surprising.
Elon Musk with his mother Maye Musk at Met gala(Photo: @ElonogyX/ X)
Elon Musk’s mother’s take on her son’s billions
Previously, in an interview on Fox News, when being asked, “How do you raise a billionaire?” Maye Musk gave a rather unexpected reply. She said that the staggering wealth was never the target. “Being a billionaire was never Elon’s goal,” she began. “His goal was to save the planet and then explore another planet so that the civilization can be saved; for that, he would need the billion.” In other words, the fortune was a by-product of the mission, not the mission itself.This idea lines up well with how Musk has long described his own companies. Tesla, in his opinion, exists to push the world toward sustainable energy and away from fossil fuels, to “save the planet.” SpaceX, meanwhile, is built around an even bigger ambition: making humanity a multi-planetary species, so that life has a backup if something ever goes badly wrong on Earth.
Not only his mother, but also his close ones describe him this way
Shivon Zilis, a senior Neuralink executive and the mother of several of his children, has made a strikingly similar point. According to a post she shared on X, when she first met Musk, she was surprised that “he never did anything for money,” and that he was always asking whether what he was doing actually mattered for humanity.He announced in 2020 that he would sell most of his possessions and own no house, and has even described himself as essentially homeless, staying in modest homes or with friends. Maye herself has said that when she visits, she has slept on mattresses, couches, or even a bed in the garage.