He is no different than any other tech bro of the last 30 years. They were lucky, they got rich and they confuse their luck with skill.
And he is of the same vein as Trump in his hucksterism.
First let's look at the luck. He came up with a few ideas in the 90s, which culminated with X.com. Like most of us, you probably never heard of it (I only barely knew about the 90s version), and they were in the right place and right time and were bough up by PayPal and made a boat load of money. But he did shitty there and was forced out. But still rich.
Then he invested in Tesla. And he did OK. But they nearly went bankrupt in 2008, except for a government bailout and around 2018 when the model 3 nearly broke them, but using regulatory credits was able to get them back on track.
But this is where the hucksterism comes in. In exchange for taking no salary around that time, Musk was gifted that massive stock package for meeting stock metrics. And from that time on, he started to become a weaver of the future of Tesla. Most of which hasn't been achieved. Full Self Driving. Battery Swap out Stations, Humanoid Robots, RoboTaxis, etc.
They make a great story, and people lap it up, like their stock and his net worth goes up. But it's all vaporware.
I will give him one piece of credit, at at least prior to 2018. He either had a good eye for top level management or had the right person working under him that did, because he assembled some good teams because he had management in place that could do that. IE SpaceX - this is really the work of Gwynne Shotwell. She is THE reason they is successful, not Elon. Tesla did something right back with the Models S and X. But that management team has also left.
But he's not all rainbows and lollypops. Remember SunCity? The Boring Company? Zip2? Hell even Tesla right now is stagnating and SpaceX is struggling to take their next step.