Weird products, 'crazy' ideas

Elon Musk's fortune has not increased significantly, but the South African-American businessman - the richest man on the planet today - has surprised the world with a series of products from "crazy" ideas.

These bizarre products could transform human life, usher in the era of sending humans to Mars and are predicted to make Elon Musk the first person in the world to have assets reaching 1,000 billion USD by 2027.

In just two days (October 10 and October 13 - US time), Elon Musk surprised the world with his "giant steel arm" which for the first time in history successfully "captured" the Super Heavy rocket - the first stage of the 121m high Starship spacecraft complex (including the first stage, the 70m high Super Heavy, and the remaining stage, the Starship spacecraft).

The success in returning the rocket to the launch pad on October 13 in Texas (USA) marked a turning point for SpaceX - a company of billionaire Elon Musk operating in the field of rocket development.

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Elon Musk is the co-founder of seven companies, including electric car maker Tesla, rocket maker SpaceX and artificial intelligence startup xAI. Photo: BT

Previously, on October 10, Elon Musk announced the Tesla Robotvan, a fully self-driving electric vehicle with a capacity of 20 people, which can be converted into a cargo vehicle and a Robotaxi that also runs completely autonomously, for $30,000 with huge data collected from millions of Tesla cars running on the roads.

Elon Musk's self-driving cars are expected to help reduce private car ownership, reduce the number of idle cars in garages, thereby reducing environmental impact.

Elon Musk also introduced the humanoid robot Tesla Optimus Humanoid, which can do many things and is expected to operate in many fields, from production support, customer service, to health care... In the future, the number of Tesla Optimus robots, as revealed by Elon Musk, "will outnumber humans".

Semi Truck - a giant electric cargo truck - is also considered a strange product, the vehicle can run 800km continuously, carry 37 tons, at a very low cost.

In addition, there are many other bizarre ideas being implemented by Elon Musk, including the Neuralink brain chip implant with the ambition to change the world, opening up the potential of telepathy, allowing humans to use digital devices just by thinking.

Where does Elon Musk's wealth mainly come from?

In a recent prediction from Informa Connect Academy, Elon Musk could become the first trillionaire.

As of October 16, according to Forbes, Elon Musk has a fortune of 246.8 billion USD, about 9 times higher than at the beginning of 2020.

According to Forbes, Musk's wealth comes mainly from SpaceX.

Elon Musk is the co-founder of seven companies, including electric carmaker Tesla, rocket maker SpaceX, and artificial intelligence startup xAI. Musk owns about 12% of Tesla, excluding options. As of October 16, Tesla had a market capitalization of $701 billion. Tesla shares were worth about $30 at the beginning of 2020 and are now around $220.

SpaceX was founded in 2002 and is valued at about $210 billion based on an offer made in the second half of 2024. Musk owns about 42% of SpaceX.

In 2022, Elon Musk bought the social network Twitter for $44 billion, later renaming it X. Musk owns about 60% of xAI. The company was founded in 2023 and is valued at $24 billion.

NASA is by far the biggest customer for SpaceX’s Starship, paying SpaceX $4 billion to develop two Starships that have been modified into manned lunar landers for the Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon.

But Musk and SpaceX's ambitions are huge, with the aim of sending humans to Mars one day and realizing the dream of settling humans on Mars in the next 50-100 years.

In the immediate future, Starship could be used to continuously launch commercial Starlink satellites.

Rocket explodes in mid-air, billionaire Elon Musk 'evaporates' 11.4 billion USD Billionaire Elon Musk's assets evaporated 11.4 billion USD (6.17%) in the trading session on April 20, down to 173.6 billion USD.