What is the most money one person has made in a day
Executive summary
The clearest, sourced record for the largest one‑day personal wealth gain belongs to Elon Musk, whose net worth jumped by $62.8 billion in a single session — described by reporting as “the largest on record” [1]. That figure is a wealth change tied to asset revaluations and transactions, a different concept from salary or realized cash income and much larger than routine per‑day averages calculated for billionaires such as Jeff Bezos [2].
1. What the record actually measures: net worth jumps, not paycheck deposits
The $62.8 billion headline for Elon Musk is a one‑day increase in estimated net worth, driven by stock moves and a SpaceX insider share sale that Bloomberg said added roughly $50 billion to Musk’s stake — not a single payout of cash into a bank account [1]. Reporting describing Musk’s surge also frames it as an index observation — the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and similar trackers update paper wealth as public and private asset values change, so “made” here means an accounting gain, not earned disposable income recorded as wages [1].
2. How that compares to commonly quoted “per day” billionaire figures
Contrast the record jump with daily averages often cited for billionaires: Business Insider calculated Jeff Bezos’s 2017 net‑worth rise as about $107 million per day by dividing a one‑year net‑worth increase by 365 days, explicitly noting that this smooths over huge intra‑year volatility and that most wealth comes from fluctuating stock values rather than steady daily income [2]. Those average‑per‑day calculations are instructive for scale but can mislead if presented as literal daily earnings because they erase volatility and the difference between paper gains and realized cash [2].
3. Corporations dwarf individuals in daily revenue or profit, but are different legal actors
Several data visualizations and summaries put corporate daily profits in the hundreds of millions or even billions, for example naming Saudi Aramco earning roughly $304 million daily and studies claiming Apple generated enormous per‑day revenues or profits [3] [4]. These company figures are not individual earnings and reflect corporate profit or revenue streams rather than personal wealth changes, so while they show scale — firms can “make” far more money per day than any person — they are not a direct counterexample to an individual’s one‑day wealth change [3] [4].
4. Why the media narrative can skew perception and what to watch for in sources
Coverage of record wealth spikes often mixes factual reporting with political framing or editorialized context: the Detroit News piece naming Musk’s $62.8 billion day also tied the rally to political developments and included commentary about regulatory and appointment expectations, which can imply causal links that require scrutiny [1]. Story formats that average annual changes into “per day” figures, as Business Insider did for Bezos, make dramatic numbers more digestible but risk suggesting steadier income than exists in reality [2].
5. Limits of available reporting and honest gaps
Available sources document a record single‑day net‑worth increase for an individual (Musk) and offer average daily calculations for others (Bezos), and they summarize corporate daily profits, but they do not provide a comprehensive, standardized database comparing realized one‑day cash earnings across all individuals or accounting for private transactions beyond estimates [1] [2] [3] [4]. Therefore, while the best documented headline answer is Musk’s $62.8 billion one‑day net worth gain, reporting limitations mean smaller, private or unreported transactions could exist outside these tracked indices [1] [2].
6. Bottom line
The most reliably sourced figure in public reporting for “most money one person has made in a day” is a $62.8 billion paper gain by Elon Musk — the largest one‑day wealth jump on record as reported [1] — while commonly quoted “per day” numbers for billionaires like Jeff Bezos are averageized annual changes that should not be read as literal daily income [2]. Corporate daily profits can exceed individual gains by orders of magnitude but are different entities and not an apples‑to‑apples comparison [3] [4].