Elon Musk has crossed a line no one else in human history has reached. After SpaceX went public on the Nasdaq earlier today, his net worth pushed past one trillion dollars, making him the first person ever to hit that number.
The IPO priced SpaceX shares at around $135, but they opened well above that, near $150, and kept climbing throughout the day, eventually closing above $160. That single jump in stock price added more than 180 billion dollars to Musk’s fortune in a matter of hours.
Combined with his stake in Tesla, which on its own is worth somewhere around 280 billion dollars, his total wealth now sits at roughly 1.05 trillion dollars.
To put that number in perspective, Elon Musk is now worth more than the next four or five richest people on the planet combined, as per Forbes. Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Ellison together don’t add up to what Musk has on paper by himself.
His personal fortune is also larger than the entire economic output of countries like Sweden, Ireland, or Taiwan.
It is worth remembering that this trillion dollars isn’t sitting in a bank account. Almost all of it is tied up in stock, much of which Musk can’t sell right away.
In fact, a billion of his SpaceX shares are locked until the company achieves a self-sustaining colony on Mars, something even SpaceX admits is unlikely anytime soon.
Still, Musk can borrow money against those shares, which means he can access huge amounts of cash without selling anything or paying taxes on it.
This milestone comes at a strange moment for Musk’s public image. He spent heavily to support Donald Trump‘s presidential campaign and later took charge of an effort to slash government spending.
The results were mixed at best, with critics pointing out that overall spending didn’t actually drop. One of the most controversial outcomes was the dismantling of USAID, a move that researchers have linked to a massive humanitarian toll.
Musk’s growing wealth and influence have made him a deeply polarizing figure. Protesters even set up a giant inflatable effigy of him in Times Square this week to mark the IPO. Despite the backlash, his position only seems to be getting stronger.
With SpaceX now public, Elon Musk still controls more than 80% of the voting power, gets to pick the board, and has built in protections that make it very hard for outside shareholders to challenge his decisions, and this might not even be his ceiling.
Tesla shareholders previously approved a pay package for Elon Musk that could be worth another trillion dollars if he hits certain growth targets. If that happens, the gap between Musk and everyone else on the wealth charts could grow even wider.
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Until then, one fact stands out above all the numbers and controversy. It took John D. Rockefeller decades to become the world’s first billionaire back in 1916.
It took Elon Musk just over a century after that to become the world’s first trillionaire, a jump in personal wealth that nothing in history has ever matched.
