His initial wealth of 42 million dollars came from working on travel software. He used that wealth to become rich by founding x.com, a payments company that failed. How does a failing company lead to massive wealth you might ask? Well, that failing company merged with PayPal.com, and Musk was CEO of the merged company for about 6 months before he got fired. PayPal went on to be huge, so after he was fired he made his fortune on his shares. Next he invested money in Tesla, bought the title of “co founder” even though he wasn’t, waited 7 years passively then noticed the company wasn’t going anywhere, replaced an exec or two and then took credit for turning the company around. So yeah, maybe that’s his end game? Make Twitter (now x.com) as bad as the old x.com so someone merges and gives him stocks and fires him again?