Elon Musk has become the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX’s historic IPO

Elon Musk is now the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX made its public market debut on Friday, according to Bloomberg News.

The SpaceX founder and CEO owns nearly $860 billion worth of the rocket company’s stock after it was priced at $135 a share before its IPO. Combined with his Tesla stake, and the immediate rise in SpaceX stock on Friday after the start of trading, that’s enough to give the tech mogul – already the richest person in the world – a paper fortune of more than $1,000,000,000,000.

SpaceX stock continued to rise Friday in early trading, adding to Musk’s wealth.

Musk’s rise to trillionaire status comes at a time when he is more hated and more powerful than ever.

Musk spent most of 2024 bankrolling Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, to the tune of about $300 million. He then became involved in the Trump administration, leading the so-called “Government Efficiency Administration” — which, by all accounts, did not reduce overall government spending and mostly involved canceling a number of contracts with little review or attention to their content.

Musk also led the dismantling of entire departments like the U.S. Agency for International Development, a decision that the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health says has already led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

There is more wealth coming to Musk.

Last year, he secured a pay package from Tesla shareholders that could be worth $1 trillion alone, provided he increases that company’s valuation and hits certain operational milestones. And while his billion shares in SpaceX cannot be sold unless the company establishes a human colony on Mars, Musk can borrow against those shares in the meantime. This means he can quickly access billions of dollars in cash before reaching that goal (which SpaceX itself says is “unlikely”), and without paying taxes on that wealth.

While SpaceX will now have public shareholders, Musk will wield enormous power as the company pursues what it calls the largest addressable market in history. He owns more than 80% of the voting rights, can hand-pick the board of directors, and has structured the company in a way that severely limits any legal challenges.