Elon Musk. Photo: UK Government / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
Elon Musk became the world’s first U.S.-dollar trillionaire in June 2026, when SpaceX went public. A drop in SpaceX shares pushed him back under the line the following month, but Forbes put his net worth at about $1.1 trillion again by October. He has been the world’s richest person since 2025.
Those figures are hard to picture from a storefront on Broadway. Musk’s companies, though, are closer to Chicago than they might seem.
Tesla on Chicago streets
Tesla is the most visible. Electric vehicles have become a common sight on Lake Shore Drive and in the parking lanes of Uptown’s side streets, and charging stations have appeared in garages and retail lots across the North Side. Tesla’s shareholders approved a pay package for Musk in November 2025 that could be worth $1 trillion over ten years if the company hits targets that include an $8.5 trillion market value. Many Chicago-area retirement accounts and index funds hold Tesla stock, so the company’s performance shows up in local portfolios whether investors chose it or not.
SpaceX and xAI
SpaceX, founded in 2002, is now a public company. Its Starlink satellite internet service has found customers in rural Illinois, where broadband is thin. In 2026 Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, became a SpaceX subsidiary, folding his AI ambitions into the rocket business.
X and local advertisers
Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X the next year. For small businesses, the platform has been a changing tool. Some Chicago restaurants, venues and shops still use it to post specials and show announcements. Others shifted their marketing to other platforms after policy and audience changes.
Politics
Musk was the largest donor in the 2024 presidential election, backing Donald Trump, and served as an advisor and de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency in early 2025 before leaving in May and publicly feuding with the president. In 2026 he became the largest political donor in American history, supporting Republican candidates in the midterm elections.
For Uptown, that mix of wealth, industry and politics lands in a neighborhood that votes heavily Democratic and depends on federal programs for housing, transit and social services. Musk’s choices, from cost cutting in Washington to campaign spending, have a way of reaching places far from Texas and California.
Marcus Hadley covers business, transit and real estate in Uptown.
