NEW ERA

Elon Musk Is on Track to Become a Trillionaire in Two Years

A new report from Oxfam predicts five trillionaires by the end of the decade.

Billionaire wealth surged to previously “unimaginable” heights in 2024, leading experts to predict that at least five people will become trillionaires within a decade, according to a new report from Oxfam International. The world’s richest man and Donald Trump’s “First Buddy” Elon Musk is expected to hit the $1,000,000,0000,000 milestone even earlier, by 2027. The combined wealth of the world’s richest people surged from $13 trillion to $15 trillion in 2024 alone, with 60 percent of that wealth now thanks to inheritance, monopolies, or “crony connections,” according to Oxfam. Musk is already worth about $440 billion, a figure roughly equivalent to the GDP of Denmark. “The failure to stop billionaires is now spawning soon-to-be trillionaires. Not only has the rate of billionaire wealth accumulation accelerated—by three times—but so too has their power,” Oxfam executive director Amitabh Behar said. At the same time, the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990. The richest 1 percent own nearly 45 percent of all wealth, while 44 percent of the world lives in poverty. This extreme inequality is “not just bad for the economy—it’s bad for humanity,” Behar said. Governments should commit to ensuring the incomes of the top 10 percent do not exceed those of the bottom 40 percent worldwide, according to Oxfam.