Elon Musk X Money rolls out as Forbes marks his fortune below $700 billion

Elon Musk X Money began reaching paid users of X in the same week Musk publicly described himself as a “(Former) Trillionaire.” Forbes estimated his fortune at about $695.7 billion after a sharp pullback from a reported peak of $1.45 trillion six weeks earlier.

Musk posted the “(Former) Trillionaire” line on X on July 24. According to Fortune, his wealth had first slipped below $1 trillion on July 1, and SpaceX shares fell another 4.8% on Monday to about $109.50, extending a roughly 50% drop from their June 16 high.

Forbes put Musk’s paper decline at about $750 billion from the peak reached after SpaceX’s IPO briefly made him the world’s first trillionaire. Fortune compared that loss with the combined wealth of Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Jeff Bezos, whom it listed at roughly $268.5 billion, $270.6 billion and $252.6 billion, respectively.

What is X Money?

X Money is a payments feature inside X that gives users a digital wallet, a deposit account, no-fee peer-to-peer transfers and a metal Visa debit card linked to an X handle, according to Fortune. Musk said on X, “This is money,” as the service started rolling out to Premium and Premium+ subscribers on July 27.

The feature is part of Musk’s longer-running plan to turn X into a broad “everything app.” Fortune reported that Musk described that ambition in a 2022 investor pitch deck, with China’s WeChat as a reference point, and that Visa became X Money’s first partner in early 2025.

What did Musk say about money?

The rollout followed Musk’s comments to The Economist editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes at Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory. In that interview, Musk predicted that money “won’t matter” by 2036 because artificial intelligence and robotics could produce more goods and services than people could use.

Musk has made similar arguments in other recent appearances. Fortune reported that he told XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis that money would eventually lose relevance if AI and robots produced beyond the limits of the money supply, and that Diamandis noted the timing because Musk had just become the world’s first trillionaire.

Fortune also reported that Musk said earlier this year that saving for retirement could become unnecessary in a future of AI-driven abundance, and that on the podcast People by WTF he said money could “disappear as a concept” if AI and robotics met human needs without wages serving as the way to allocate labor.

Vinod Khosla, the tech investor, disputed the certainty of that outcome in a Fortune piece. Khosla argued that abundance would matter only if political systems allowed it to be shared, raising the question of whether AI-created gains would be distributed evenly.

Why did Musk’s net worth fall?

Tesla and SpaceX both contributed to the decline reported by Fortune. Tesla shares dropped 14.5% on July 23 after second-quarter earnings showed record revenue but weaker profit, with adjusted earnings of 33 cents a share below Wall Street expectations of 51 to 54 cents.

Fortune reported that Tesla’s operating margin fell to 1.4% from 4.1% a year earlier, citing price cuts and a 142% rise in capital spending tied to AI, robotaxis and the Optimus robot. JPMorgan and Mizuho were among the banks that lowered price targets afterward.

SpaceX shares, meanwhile, were down nearly 50% from their June high, according to Fortune. The report cited two delayed Starship test launches, a $60 billion all-stock acquisition of AI coding company Cursor that diluted existing shareholders before an August 6 lock-up expiration, and a demanding valuation.

Starship’s 13th test flight succeeded on July 25, Fortune reported, but SpaceX’s stock still touched a new low. The company’s first earnings report as a public company, due August 4, was described by Fortune as the next major test for investors.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.