Okay hear me out. SpaceX. Not a very successful name as compared to NASA. Microsoft. Apple. Amazon or any Chinese space industries. Same goes for Tesla. There are way bigger car brands like Toyota or honda or Bugatti if we are going big. But think about it. Why arnt the owners of these brands the richest person. When they are clearly more successful and prominent… same goes with starlink. All of elons companies aren’t world wide. So how is he the richest. And plus. Him loosing billions of worth of stocks in a span of days dropping from 1T isn’t normal is it…
Are we being lied to?
My personal dislike for Tesla/SpaceX aside, they do employ 6-digit numbers of workers and make impactful real-life products, so Musk’s companies themselves would be worth a metric fuckton of money (maybe comparable to Honda/Toyota?) no matter what. But they are also somewhat overvalued on top of their already high inherent worth
And on top of this, Musk has really large stakes in his companies… I don’t know the exact details, but I don’t think it’s common for a CEO to own 20% of their company outright. So these together made Musk the richest person
If I am being pedantic, technically the richest entities in the world are countries and their governments… Basically like your examples suggested. No private company in the world can spend as much as the world’s largest countries. So by extension, leaders of dictatorships are arguably “richer” because they essentially own their country. Case in point, the House of Saud has a total net worth of ~1.4T USD