On Wednesday, Maye Musk celebrated her son Elon Musk’s latest accolade after Forbes ranked him No. 1 on its 2026 list of America’s greatest living innovators, ahead of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Jensen Huang.
Forbes named Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) and SpaceX CEO the top innovator on its annual “Forbes 250” list.
The list cited his role in building or scaling five multibillion-dollar companies across different industries: electric vehicles at Tesla, space exploration at SpaceX, brain-computer interface startup Neuralink, artificial intelligence venture xAI and tunneling firm The Boring Company.
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According to Forbes, Musk is “the only person in history” to have founded or grown five companies, each now valued in the billions, spanning separate sectors.
Bezos ranked No. 2 for transforming retail with Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and pioneering cloud computing through Amazon Web Services, while Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang placed fifth for turning the chipmaker into a central force in the AI economy.
Gates is ranked third for founding Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) and for global philanthropy, while George Lucas is ranked fourth for “Star Wars” and film technology innovation.
.@ElonMusk named No. 1 on the #Forbes250 Greatest Innovators list.
See who else is in the Top 10: https://t.co/CFs11UNXUH (Photo: Martin Schoeller) pic.twitter.com/HNcHUVGZQH
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Shortly after the announcement, Maye Musk reposted the Forbes cover on X, writing, “Proud Mom.”
Proud Mom 👏👏 https://t.co/9HluzPshjU
Musk’s recognition comes as he remains the world’s richest person, with a net worth of about $684 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Earlier this month, Musk said SpaceX would prioritize building a base on the moon before sending humans to Mars.
Last month, Bezos’ Blue Origin also announced it would pause its space tourism flights to focus on developing a lunar lander for NASA.
