Elon Musk's Investment Strategy

Elon Musk is, by many metrics, the most successful entrepreneur of modern times. He had a net worth of $394 billion as of June 2025, making him the richest person in the world. Near the end of 2024, he was worth a record $486 billion before Tesla (TSLA 3.49%) stock fell.

A natural question among investors is where Musk chooses to invest his money. Let's take a look at Elon Musk's investments (and the businesses he starts and acquires), the type of investments he avoids, and what you should know about his strategy.

His strategy

Elon Musk's investment strategy

Elon Musk's investment strategy is rather simple, at least as far as he's made public. His investments can be divided into two general categories: companies he started or controls and cryptocurrencies. Unlike many other billionaires, Musk doesn't have a large portfolio of publicly traded stocks of companies where he doesn't have day-to-day involvement.

Even when Musk took a 9.2% stake in social media platform Twitter in April 2022, his ultimate goal was to buy the company and take it private. He rejected a seat on Twitter's board of directors for that reason. After ample back-and-forth, the deal went through in late October 2022, with Musk buying Twitter for $44 billion. He rebranded Twitter as X in 2023.

Musk's investments are highly concentrated in his entrepreneurial endeavors. The first category comprises publicly traded stock investments, and the second includes private companies that he founded and in which he continues to hold an investment. With that in mind, here's a breakdown of what we know about Musk's investments.

Public holdings

Elon Musk's publicly traded stock investments

The largest publicly traded stock holding for Elon Musk is electric vehicle giant Tesla. Musk was an early investor, having led the Series A funding round, and he was one of the company's first employees. Musk accumulated a majority stake and took control of the company in 2008.

As of June 2025, Musk owned about 12.8% of Tesla, valued at over $100 billion. He also has a compensation package from Tesla that pays him exclusively in company stock through performance-based tranches of stock options, so his ownership has increased over time.

During the dot-com boom era, Musk was a co-founder of the original X.com, which ultimately became PayPal (PYPL 0.26%). He was CEO of PayPal until 2000 and owned 11.7% of the company's shares at one point. He no longer has a stake in PayPal, although he owned shares before the company was acquired by eBay (EBAY -1.13%) in 2002.

He received more than $100 million for his stake after cashing out. Today, Musk's PayPal stake would be worth billions of dollars. However, since he used the proceeds to fund both Tesla and SpaceX in their early days, it's tough to make the case that cashing out was a bad move.

Private equity

Elon Musk's private equity

Musk founded and still controls several companies, but SpaceX is, by far, the largest. He owns about 42% of the space exploration technology company, which was valued at roughly $350 billion as of the fourth quarter of 2024.

In addition to SpaceX, Musk has majority ownership of several other privately owned start-ups he founded or co-founded, most notably:

• The Boring Company
• Neuralink
• xAI

Cryptocurrency

Elon Musk's cryptocurrency investments

Although we don't know the exact amounts he owns, we do know that Musk is a cryptocurrency investor, both through the companies he controls and personally. He has been quite outspoken about some of his favorite digital assets, particularly Dogecoin (CRYPTO:DOGE).

Musk has also revealed that he owns Bitcoin (BTC 1.58%) and Ethereum (CRYPTO:ETH) and has stated that his Bitcoin is worth much more than his Ethereum or Dogecoin.

Tesla and SpaceX both own significant amounts of Bitcoin, too. Although we know Tesla owned 11,509 Bitcoins as of March 2025 (worth more than $1 billion at the time), we don't know how much of any cryptocurrencies Musk personally owns.

What he doesn't buy

Stocks Elon Musk doesn't buy

While we don't know every single detail about Musk's investment portfolio, we do know that the bulk of his stock holdings are in both public and private companies he controls. He doesn't own any well-known stock positions in other businesses. In 2021, he said, "The only significant thing I hold outside of Tesla is SpaceX."

Musk isn't a hedge fund manager and isn't required to disclose relatively small investments. It's entirely possible that he has small investments in publicly traded stocks that we don't know about. But all indications are that he primarily invests in his own companies.

Investing like Elon

How you can invest like Elon Musk

If you want to invest like Elon Musk, the first thing you should do is buy shares of Tesla stock since it makes up the vast majority of the billionaire's net worth. However, the private equity side of his portfolio is harder to emulate.

You can't simply buy shares of SpaceX or The Boring Company on the public market, and most people are unable to participate in funding rounds for those businesses. The next best thing you can do is find publicly traded companies with a similar focus. For example, many investors have called Rocket Lab (RKLB -1.4%) the closest thing to SpaceX on the public markets.

Related investing topics

If you want to follow Musk's approach with cryptocurrencies, that's easy enough, since he's only known to hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin. However, just because a rich and/or famous investor buys a cryptocurrency doesn't mean you should put your own money in it. Do your own research on each coin first, and don't commit too much of your portfolio to crypto due to the risk involved.

The bottom line is that although Elon Musk is very wealthy, most of his net worth is tied up in a single stock (Tesla) and private companies that you or I likely cannot invest in. Besides buying Tesla stock, if you want to invest like Elon Musk, becoming an entrepreneur might be the best way to go about emulating his style.

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