Elon Musk is 55 years old. He was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa, and his 56th birthday falls on Monday, June 28, 2027.
The number carries extra weight this year. Musk was 54 when SpaceX opened on the Nasdaq at $150 a share and made him the first trillionaire, and he turned 55 sixteen days later. This guide covers his exact age, what he was doing at each stage of life, and why some websites still show the wrong figure.
Elon Musk’s Exact Age and Birthday
As of September 29, 2026, Musk is 55 years and about three months old, or roughly 20,180 days. Elon Reeve Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital, and BirthdayDBs notes the day was a Monday.
Britannica, CNN, Biography.com, and Wikipedia all give the same date and place, so this is one of the least disputed facts about him. His mother, Maye Musk, is a model and nutritionist, and his father, Errol, is an engineer.
He grew up alongside his brother Kimbal and sister Tosca, and his parents divorced when he was 10.
What Elon Musk Was Doing at Each Age
A birth year says little on its own. The more useful view is how his age lines up with the decisions that built his companies, because it shows how long each payoff took.
Childhood and Teens, Ages 0 to 19
At 12, Musk wrote code for a video game called Blastar and sold it to a computer magazine for $500. His mother later recalled that “When Elon was young, I noticed that he read everything.”
He left South Africa for Canada and studied at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Britannica dates his departure to 1988 and says he did not want to support apartheid, while CNN’s timeline places it around his 18th birthday in 1989.
He then moved on to the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 1995 with degrees in economics and physics.
His 20s: The First Two Companies
In 1995, Musk co-founded Zip2, a web software company, using $28,000 from his father. Zip2 provided online business directories. The National Today page says the company sold the same year for $307 million, but the sale to Compaq came in 1999, when Musk was 27.
Around the same time he co-founded X.com, the payments company that became PayPal. eBay bought it for $1.5 billion, and the deal closed in 2002, when he was 31.
PayPal’s alumni went on to found or lead some of Silicon Valley’s most influential companies and earned the nickname “PayPal Mafia.” Musk was the one who turned his payout into rockets.
His 30s: Rockets and Electric Cars
SpaceX launched in 2002, the same year PayPal sold. Musk joined Tesla in 2004 and became its CEO in 2008, at ages 32 and 37.
Running both companies at once became a pattern. He still leads Tesla and SpaceX at the same time.
His 40s: AI, Brain Chips, and Starship
Musk founded the non-profit OpenAI in 2015, at 44, and co-founded Neuralink in 2016. In September 2019, at 48, he revealed a prototype of Starship, the spacecraft at the center of his plan to colonize Mars.
In January 2021, at 49, he was the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $188 billion, and Time named him Person of the Year that year.
His 50s: Social Media, Government, and a Public Listing
Musk bought Twitter in 2022, at 51, in a debt-laden $44 billion deal, and renamed it X. Tesla’s stock sank 65% that year, which cut into the fortune he had built.
From January 20 to May 30, 2025, he served as Senior Advisor to the President for Government Efficiency, a position that has since been abolished.
On February 2, 2026, SpaceX announced it had acquired xAI, merging two of his companies. Four months later he helped ring the Nasdaq opening bell in Texas. He said it was hard to believe that “a little company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo” was going public.
Why Some Pages Show a Different Age for Musk
Musk’s age changes once a year, on June 28, and pages that are not updated fall behind. Before June 28, his age is the current year minus 1972. From June 28 onward, it is the current year minus 1971.
That is why CNBC called him 54 in early June 2026, which was correct at the time, while Famous Birthdays now lists him at 55.
Older pages have bigger problems. The National Today profile, dated 2022, says Musk has eight children, while Biography.com lists 14. Check the date on any page before trusting a number about him.
Musk’s Family and Personal Life at 55
Musk married Justine Wilson in 2000 and they divorced in 2008. He married Talulah Riley in 2010, divorced in 2012, remarried her in 2013, and divorced again in 2016.
He and the musician Grimes were domestic partners from 2018 to 2021, and Wikipedia lists 14 children, including Vivian Wilson. Details beyond these reference profiles are not confirmed by reliable public sources, so they are left out here.
Age and Wealth: What Musk Is Worth at 55
Musk’s net worth is an estimate that moves with two stock prices. Forbes figures show he reached $400 billion in December 2024, at 53, then $500 billion in October 2025 and $800 billion in February 2026.
The SpaceX IPO priced at $135 a share and raised a record $75 billion. CNBC put his SpaceX and Tesla holdings together at roughly $1.05 trillion on opening day, and Bloomberg’s index had him at $1.11 trillion.
Forbes recorded a record of $1.33 trillion at SpaceX’s mid-June peak. His fortune then collapsed by $363 billion in July and rebounded by $202 billion in August, leaving him at $892 billion. Forbes’ real-time list showed about $906.7 billion in late September.
Other trackers land elsewhere. Celebrity Net Worth listed $975 billion in August, and one independent tracker put him near $1.01 trillion on September 28. Part of the gap comes from method, because Bloomberg removed unvested Tesla restricted shares from its calculation, and Forbes did the same. Treat every figure here as an estimate that changes daily.
How Musk’s Age Compares With the Next Richest People
Musk sits in the middle of the age range at the top of the Forbes list. Jeff Bezos, born January 12, 1964, is 62, and Michael Dell, born February 23, 1965, is 61. Larry Page, born March 26, 1973, is 53.
That makes Musk the second youngest of the top four. On Forbes’ real-time list he is at $906.7 billion, ahead of Bezos at $366.4 billion, Page at $281.1 billion, and Dell at $267.4 billion.
Most of that lead traces back to two companies he started or joined before turning 33.
What Comes Next for Musk After 55
Under an April 2026 agreement, Musk must remain at Tesla as CEO, or as an executive responsible for product development or operations, through January 2028 for a block of restricted shares to vest. He will be 56 then. Tesla shareholders also approved a pay package last year that could be worth as much as $1 trillion if the company reaches several benchmarks.
At SpaceX, his voting control is expected to be north of 82%, and he is not permitted to sell shares for one year. That lockup runs to about June 12, 2027, roughly two weeks before his 56th birthday.
Musk has said SpaceX revenue could pass $1 trillion as early as 2029. SpaceX generated $18.67 billion in sales last year, so the target is a projection with a very large gap to close. He would be 57 or 58 by then.
How to Read Musk’s Legacy at 55
Supporters point to hardware. Starlink’s turnover nearly doubled in SpaceX’s second quarter, and Bloomberg describes Tesla as the world’s most valuable carmaker.
Critics point to social media and AI. Wikipedia notes the Twitter deal was controversial because hate speech and misinformation rose after his pledge to decrease censorship. X generated about $1.8 billion in ad revenue in 2025, less than half of the $4.5 billion Twitter reported in 2021, and the xAI segment posted a $6.36 billion operating loss.
His government role drew protests as well, mainly over its cuts to a major foreign aid agency.
The open question at 55 is whether the AI spending pays off. SpaceX’s capital spending reached $18.3 billion in its latest quarter, and $15.8 billion of that went to artificial intelligence.