Elon Musk Becomes World's First Trillionaire
World’s richest man Elon Musk just became the first person in the world to be a trillionaire.
With SpaceX opening on the Nasdaq at $150 a share Friday, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla now has a stake in SpaceX that’s worth more than $766 billion. Combined with his Tesla stake, which is worth $280 billion, Musk’s net worth from both companies as of Friday was roughly $1.05 trillion.
The SpaceX IPO added more than $180 billion to Musk’s fortune. He is now worth more than the next five richest billionaires in the world combined. His personal net worth is larger than the national GDP of Taiwan, Ireland or Sweden.
Musk’s coronation as the first person in history to be worth $1 trillion is likely to add fuel to the debate over wealth inequality and the rise in power of America’s richest tech founders.
Along with creating the world’s first trillionaire, the SpaceX IPO also minted thousands of new millionaires and several new billionaires among the employees and executives who own stock.
Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at asset manager Wealth Club said the share price jump was "indicative of huge interest in Elon Musk's vision".
"He has long been reaching for the stars with his extra-terrestrial ambitions, and it appears plenty of investors share his enthusiasm for the future," she said.
But she warned Friday's rally was "being driven as much by hype and scarcity as fundamentals".
While many individual investors were eager to be a part of SpaceX's listing and snap up stock, others had expressed concerns about the number of investors who will be exposed to the company perhaps unintentionally.
Pension pots and savings accounts often invest in index-linked funds, which buy into the biggest firms and will be affected by expected fluctuations in the company's share price.
Where the price of SpaceX goes from here will be the biggest concern for such investors.
"The question on SpaceX is less about the immediate trading after IPO," said Samel Kerr, who leads equity capital markets research for Mergermarket. "It's more about how the price holds over the longer term."
Democratic US senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were among a slew of politicians to condemn the trillionaire milestone. Warren said it should be a "wake up call" and argued it underlines the need for wealth taxes.
Such unheard of wealth has already turned Musk into a powerful and divisive figure in global politics.
He gave hundreds of millions of dollars to the re-election campaign of US President Donald Trump after criticising the country's leadership, and for several months last year, Musk led the Department for Government Efficiency (Doge).
Through drastic cuts to government spending, Musk was responsible for the closure of the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
Such cuts could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to a warning published by researchers in the Lancet medical journal.
He has also criticised leadership in the UK and elsewhere, often on topics of immigration and promoting of racial divisions.