In the span of just three days, SpaceX founder Elon Musk ascended to trillionaire status before crashing out of the club in a billion-dollar downturn. And while he remains the richest person in the world by a $600-billion longshot, the entrepreneur says his wealth is always at the whim of his companies’ success.
“Trillionaire represents some percentage ownership in companies that I built, and it’s not sitting in a bank account,” Musk said in an interview with entrepreneur Peter Diamandis earlier this year, about three months before he first became a trillionaire following SpaceX’s IPO in June.