{"id":806276,"date":"2025-01-10T13:22:03","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T11:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=806276"},"modified":"2025-01-10T13:22:03","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T11:22:03","slug":"the-pretoria-boy-worth-more-than-south-africas-gdp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wealth\/806276\/the-pretoria-boy-worth-more-than-south-africas-gdp\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pretoria boy worth more than South Africa’s GDP"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria and his personal wealth is now worth more than the entirety of South Africa’s Gross Domestic Product. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index and Forbes both rank Musk as comfortably the richest person in the world, with the companies estimating his wealth at $426 billion (R8 trillion) and $416 billion (R7.9 trillion), respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest full-year GDP figures showed that South Africa’s GDP only totalled $377.8 billion (R7.1 trillion) USD in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Estimates from the IMF predict that South Africa’s GDP will total roughly $403 billion (R7.5 trillion) in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bloomberg noted that Musk is currently the CEO of the world’s most valuable carmaker Tesla. The Austin-based company sells electric cars and home solar batteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is also the CEO of SpaceX, a rocket manufacturer that resupplies NASA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SpaceX also operates the telco provider Starlink, a satellite internet company that provides coverage to over 100 countries and territories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk also owns the social networking company X, which he rebranded from Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk also has stakes in startups Neuralink, xAI and The Boring Company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk was born into a wealthy family in Pretoria with an engineering father and a nutritionist mother from Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and Pretoria Boys High School, as well as a short stint at the University of Pretoria. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He received his Canadian passport from his mother and went to college at Queen’s University\u00a0in Ontario.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He then moved to the University of Pennsylvania where he got degrees in physics and economics. After graduating, he enrolled at Stanford University in California but dropped out early. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He created his first business an online publishing platform called Zip2 in 1995 and sold it in 1999 for over $300 million. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He then reinvested these funds to start X.com, an online payment system, not to be confused with his current social media site. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He would merge that company into what would eventually become PayPal, an e-commerce giant that was later sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His next project was SpaceX in 2002 and he then became an early investor in Tesla in 2003 before taking over as CEO. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tesla went public in 2010, the same year it launched its first-ever sports car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was also involved in SolarCity, a provider of solar power systems, which was made public in 2012 and bought by Tesla in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk became the world’s richest person for the first time in January 2021 – a year after Tesla became the most valuable carmaker in July 2020. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2022, Musk also made a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter Inc. Despite Musk trying to walk out of the deal, he eventually purchased the social media site in October 2022. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bloomberg noted that X\/Twitter’s value has since fallen by about 71% based on the carrying value assigned by investor Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund in their November 2024 filing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent weeks, Musk’s value has skyrocketed, with many believing that his close connection with US President-Elect Donald Trump will give his companies an edge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk and South Africa<\/h2>\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>
Elon Musk and President Cyril Ramaphosa<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Musk and his companies have been notably absent from South Africa, with Tesla cars not sold in the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk claimed that import duties in South Africa are super high, meaning that it doesn’t make sense for the company to come to South Africa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to Starlink, the company has not received approval from the country’s regulators. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, reports indicate that President Cyril Ramaphosa and Elon Musk<\/a> are discussing ways to allow Starlink\u2019s high-speed Internet to operate legally in South Africa, with the government changing laws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk would then invest in areas such as battery production for Tesla. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Read<\/strong>: The woman looking after South Africa\u2019s biggest retailer \u2013 worth R175 billion<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reports indicate that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, could start bringing investment into his country of origin. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":806284,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9880],"tags":[21373,149,2660,18568,6118,93],"class_list":["post-806276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wealth","tag-musk","tag-paypal","tag-spacex","tag-starlink","tag-tesla","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806276"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":806367,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806276\/revisions\/806367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}