SpaceX IPO makes Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire

SpaceX shares opened at US$150 each on Friday, 11% above their offering price, valuing the rocket and AI company at roughly US$2 trillion. The first-day pop pushed Elon Musk's fortune past US$1 trillion for the first time, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Musk, 54, now holds a net worth of almost US$1.05 trillion – more than three times that of Google co-founder Larry Page, the world's second-richest person. The milestone comes less than a decade after Bloomberg's wealth index registered its first US$100 billion fortune, a mark Musk blew past in 2020 as Tesla shares surged.

A trillion-dollar fortune is roughly equivalent to Switzerland's gross domestic product. Steve Cohen, who made US$3.4 billion last year as the world's highest-earning hedge fund manager, would need nearly 300 years at that pace to reach a trillion. Each of Musk's 14 children would rank 29th among the world's richest individuals if they inherited equal shares of his estate.

"We're not talking about generational wealth," said Dan Walter, an independent pay consultant. "We're talking about infinite."

Musk has deployed his fortune aggressively in recent years. He bought Twitter in 2022 for US$44 billion, funded an AI chatbot that mirrors much of his worldview, and donated more than US$291 million to help propel Donald Trump to a second term. That donation represents less than 0.03% of his current net worth – the equivalent of a US$291 gift for a millionaire.

SpaceX, formally Space Exploration Technologies Corp., is now among the world's most valuable companies. Investors had scrambled for a piece of the stock ahead of the IPO, which valued the company at roughly US$1.8 trillion at the offering price. The first-day gain added about US$200 billion in market value.

Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns: "Whoever said 'money can't buy happiness' really knew what they were talking about."