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Money has a new ceiling. Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire on Friday after his rocket company SpaceX hit the stock market.
Shares opened at $150, up 11% from their offering price of $135. As a result, the debut valued SpaceX at $1.77 trillion and lifted Musk’s fortune to roughly $1.1 trillion by midday, per Forbes. His wealth also flows from his stake in Tesla, along with holdings in Neuralink and the Boring Company.
How Musk built the fortune
Musk, 54, already held the title of richest person on Earth. He first claimed it in January 2021 after a Tesla rally pushed him past Jeff Bezos. Since then, his fortune has more than quintupled. Along the way, he bought Twitter, launched an AI startup, folded both into SpaceX and then took the whole thing public. Most of his wealth now sits in his nearly 50% stake in SpaceX, which is worth more than $900 billion on its own.
The pace keeps quickening too. His net worth stood at $195 billion in 2024 and $342 billion just last year. Since October, it has doubled.
What $1 trillion really looks like
The number itself is hard to picture. One trillion is a thousand billions and a million millions. For instance, one trillion dollar bills laid end to end would stretch nearly 97 million miles. That covers more than 200 round trips to the moon and even beats the distance from Earth to the sun.
There are other ways to frame it. Split evenly, $1 trillion would hand almost $122 to every one of the 8.2 billion people on Earth. It could also buy nearly 2.5 million homes at the current US median price of about $403,200. In addition, it more than doubles the yearly GDP of South Africa, the country where Musk was born. Only about 21 nations produce over $1 trillion in goods and services each year.
The gap to his peers is just as striking. Google co founder Larry Page ranks second with close to $295 billion. In fact, the next four names on the Forbes list combined barely top $1.04 trillion.
A widening divide
Not everyone is celebrating. Economist Steven Durlauf of the University of Chicago says wealth at the top is growing at a scale never seen before. For perspective, John D. Rockefeller’s peak fortune in 1937 equaled about 1.5% of US GDP. Musk’s now tops 3%. Senator Bernie Sanders went further and blasted the milestone as morally wrong, pointing out that 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
His allies see it differently. Investor Peter Diamandis argues that Tesla and SpaceX lift humanity along with their founder. Meanwhile, his old college roommate Adeo Ressi says Musk treats money as fuel for one giant goal. He wants to put people on Mars.
SOURCE: KTSM 9 News
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