Asia Pacific Daily Liu Yunli According to NBC News, Elon Musk spent $44 billion to acquire Twitter (now known as X) and spent at least $130 million to help Donald Trump be elected president. This combination pays off handsomely. Musk's paper wealth has increased by about $70 bill

Asia Pacific Daily Liu Yunli

According to NBC News, Elon Musk spent $44 billion to acquire Twitter (now known as X) and spent at least $130 million to help Donald Trump be elected president. This combination pays off handsomely. Musk's paper wealth has increased by about $70 billion since Trump's victory last week.

Much of Musk's wealth is concentrated in his Tesla stock holdings, with the electric car maker's shares soaring about 39% in the four trading days since the election. That gives the company a market capitalization of well over $1 trillion.

According to "Forbes", Musk's net worth has swelled to 320 billion U.S. dollars. He is nearly 90 billion U.S. dollars higher than the world's second richest man, Oracle's founder Larry Ellison . Ellison, a close friend of Musk and a former Tesla board member, is a long-time Republican donor who himself has benefited from the Trump effect, with Oracle shares up 10% , increasing his net worth by approximately $20 billion.

For Musk, returning Trump to the White House has become another full-time job. He funded a swing-state effort to register right-leaning voters and led rallies as a surrogate for candidates he supported. He began giving away $1 million to registered voters who signed one of his U.S. Political Action Committee petitions and faced a lawsuit for operating an illegal lottery in Pennsylvania.

Musk has also used the social media platform x, which he acquired in 2022, to continually declare support for Trump while frequently spreading misinformation about his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as topics such as immigration and voter fraud. . Now, Musk is working hard to make sure his investments turn a profit.

According to NBC News, Musk briefly joined Trump in a call with Ukrainian President Zelensky after the election last week. Other outlets, including the New York Times and ABC, reported that Musk has been weighing personnel arrangements for the next administration and has spent a lot of time at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida since the election. . Trump is likely to choose Brendan Kahl, seen as a long-time Musk ally, as FCC chairman.

Musk conducted a poll for his more than 200 million followers on x asking who should serve as Senate majority leader, and he personally supports Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott for the position. He also retweeted a comment from Trump that the majority leader needs to support his nominees being appointed during recess so they don't need Senate confirmation.

Benefiting Musk's empire

Musk has long sought to reduce regulatory power in order to remove obstacles to the development of his vast business empire, which includes Tesla and X, as well as defense contractor SpaceX, brain-computer interface company Neuralink and others. .

The companies are currently involved in a series of investigations and lawsuits by federal agencies involving alleged violations of securities laws, workplace safety, labor and civil rights violations, violations of federal environmental laws, consumer fraud and vehicle safety defects.

Given the executive branch’s excessive control over federal regulators, Musk can expect regulators and intelligence agencies to close some or all of the 19 federal investigations and lawsuits known to be ongoing against Tesla, SpaceX, and X.

Long-term bullish on Tesla's deepwater asset management investor Gene Munster told CNBC on Wednesday: "He now has the Midas touch and is a good listener." Munster said , in addition to Tesla, SpaceX is also an "obvious beneficiary" of Trump's election as president. He added that xai could reap rewards as the new government considers AI regulations.

As of the latest filing, Musk held 411.06 million Tesla shares and about 304 million performance-based options.In January, a Delaware Chancery Court judge invalidated Musk's historic 2018 compensation package, which included options, calling it "inconceivable" in part because Musk controlled the board of directors. Shareholders subsequently voted to retroactively approve the package in June.

Musk and Ellison are not the only two billionaire tech executives to reap post-election windfalls. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's net worth has increased by about $4.5 billion since Trump's victory. Coinbase shares soared 20% on Monday, taking their gains to 67% since Tuesday.

The cryptocurrency exchange is a major backer of pro-crypto candidates, primarily through a political action committee called fairshake. Most of the exchange's favored candidates won, setting the stage for a more favorable regulatory environment for the industry.

This is also a win for Tesla. At the end of the third quarter, the company reported a "digital asset" fair value of $729 million. Cryptocurrency prices have been on a tear since the election, with Bitcoin rising about 29% on Monday to hit a new high above $88,000.

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