Elon Musk, the world's richest person, questions if money buys happiness. Studies suggest income boosts happiness, but with diminishing returns.

Elon Musk just became the first person ever worth $800 billion or more after his rocket maker SpaceX acquired his artificial intelligence and social media company xAI. Forbes estimates that the deal, which values the combined company at $1.25 trillion, boosted Musk’s fortune by $84 billion, to a record $852 billion.

Elon Musk has spent recent days on his social media site X trying to explain why he exchanged so many emails with Jeffrey Epstein. The billionaire Tesla CEO insists that Epstein was the one pursuing him.

Elon Musk is joining his space exploration and artificial intelligence ventures into a single company before a massive planned initial public offering for the business later this year

Dig deeper into Musk’s big picture goals, and the merger starts to make a lot more sense — even if there’s a decidedly sci-fi twist.

Prosecutors in Paris said they asked Elon Musk to appear for questioning after searching X's offices in as part of a probe into sexual deepfakes.

Musk wrote that the merger of SpaceX and xAI will ‘form the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth.’

As with SpaceX, then, Mr Musk is gambling Tesla’s future on AI, and his belief that he can harness his existing businesses to dominate the technology. Plenty of doubters have scoffed at his grand ambitions before. But never has Mr Musk put so much on the line. ■

Elon Musk's mega-deal combining SpaceX and xAI is the latest sign that the billionaire is consolidating his business empire as he goes all in on AI.

SpaceX on Monday acquired xAI, the AI startup that also owns the X social media platform, in a deal combining two companies owned by Elon Musk

Overall, Musk was undeterred, marking 2028 as a tipping point year for orbital data centers. “You can mark my words, in 36 months but probably closer to 30 months, the most economically compelling place to put AI will be space,” Musk said.