Elon Musk Has Made Many People Rich. Not His Ex-Wives

Forbes

Justine Musk, Elon Musk’s first wife and the mother of six of his children, asked for stakes in Tesla and SpaceX when they got divorced. Musk made sure she got no shares.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2025/04/18/what-elon-musks-first-wife-isnt-even-close-to-being-a-billionaire/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Today on Forbes, why Elon Musk's first wife isn't even close to being a billionaire.

00:07Long before he became a household name and before he began fathering multiple children with several

00:13single women, Elon Musk was a married man. His first marriage, to Canada-born novelist

00:20Justine Wilson Musk, lasted eight years, from 2000 to 2008. During that time, Justine bore

00:27him six children, the first of whom died tragically as an infant, followed by twins and triplets.

00:34But while Elon is now the wealthiest person in the world, Justine is merely a millionaire,

00:40worth some $15 million, Forbes estimates, for about one 24,000th of Elon's current $364 billion fortune.

00:50In many ways, his handling of Justine gave Elon a template for how to treat all the mothers,

00:56at least four so far, of his much-desired so-called, quote, legion of children, now counting 14 known

01:04kids. Musk offered Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of his children, $15 million and $100,000 a

01:12month in exchange for her silence about the child, whom they named Romulus, and quickly pulled back

01:18the offer after St. Clair went public about Musk being the father, the Wall Street Journal reported

01:23last week. While Elon has recently taken to X to proposition women to have his children,

01:29according to the journal, he met his first wife in old-fashioned way, at Queen's University in

01:34Ontario, Canada, where both were students there until Musk transferred to the University of

01:39Pennsylvania's Wharton School to finish his degree. They picked up dating again in the mid-1990s,

01:46when Justine moved to Silicon Valley and lived with Elon in an apartment they shared with roommates,

01:51while he was busy building software firm Zip2, which he founded in 1995 with his brother Kimball

01:57and a friend Greg Corey. In 1999, Elon and his co-founders sold Zip2 to Compaq for a reported

02:06$300 million, with Elon pocketing an estimated $20 million. He bought an 1,800-square-foot condo in

02:14Palo Alto and dropped $1 million on a McLaren F1 sports car, which CNN filmed being delivered

02:20to Elon's home in 1999 with Justine at his side. At the time, Justine told CNN, quote,

02:28it's a million dollars for a car. It's decadent. My fear is that we become spoiled brats,

02:33that we lose a sense of appreciation and perspective. Musk later totaled that car.

02:40Elon and Justine married the following year, and by 2002 had moved to Los Angeles,

02:44where he founded SpaceX. Two years later, he invested in Tesla and joined the board.

02:51In just four years between 2002 and 2006, Justine gave birth to six boys. She also pursued her

02:58passion for creative writing, publishing three fiction books between 2005 and 2008.

03:04Elon asked for a divorce in the late spring of 2008, just months before he became CEO of Tesla,

03:09and four years before his 2012 debut on Forbes' list of the world's billionaires with a $2 billion

03:16net worth. And six weeks before he got engaged to his next wife. During the divorce proceedings,

03:24Justine wrote, she asked Elon for their house, child support, 10% of his Tesla shares, 5% of his

03:31SpaceX shares, $6 million and a glacier blue Tesla Roadster. Had she gotten all that, she'd be worth

03:38$17.3 billion today, Forbes figures, enough to make her the planet's 113th richest person.

03:47Instead, according to Elon, he offered Justine a settlement of $80 million before taxes,

03:53which she turned down, preferring the Tesla shares and a SpaceX stake, a smart move given

03:58that both were in their relative infancy. She got neither and ended up with a lot less than his

04:04original offer. The main reason? She signed a post-nuptial agreement in March 2000.

04:11Justine took Elon to court in 2008, contesting the validity of the post-nup agreement because Elon

04:17hadn't disclosed the pending merger between his payments firm X.com, not to be confused with his

04:23social media platform X, and another payments firm, Confinity. After that merger, the company renamed

04:30itself PayPal and sold two years later to eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. Musk's estimated take

04:38was at least $100 million. The lawsuit dragged on for two years, cost Elon at least $4 million in

04:46legal bills, and ended with the judge ruling in favor of Elon. After all that, according to Elon,

04:52Justine got $20 million after taxes. For full coverage, check out Carrie A. Dolan and John Hyatt's

05:00piece on Forbes.com. This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.

Category

Transcript

Recommended