There are thousands of billionaires across the world. But there is only one trillionaire.
Elon Musk became the first person to amass a personal fortune of over $1,000,000,000,000—that’s 12 zeros—after shares of his rocket company SpaceX debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Friday.
SpaceX’s initial public offering on Thursday valued the company at nearly $1.8 trillion, up from its most recent private valuation of around $1.25 trillion. After shares opened at $150 on Friday morning in New York and kept surging, SpaceX’s market capitalization reached about $2.2 trillion.
Between Musk’s significant ownership stakes in SpaceX, his car company Tesla, and several other ventures, his personal coffers expanded enough to propel him into trillionaire territory, according to Bloomberg and Forbes, which conduct extensive research to identify the world’s richest individuals. In 2024, his net worth surpassed $400 billion, per Bloomberg—which means it has nearly tripled in less than two years. (An important caveat: Musk doesn’t have $1 trillion in his bank accounts. Most of his wealth is tied up in shares, some of which he is restricted from selling anytime soon. He has also pledged to donate half his wealth eventually.)
He remains a reviled figure in many circles, including for his efforts last year to dismantle parts of the US government and his years of popularizing and allowing hateful rhetoric through his social media presence. To protest the IPO, one activist group inflated a giant effigy of Musk in New York’s Times Square this week.
In addition to Musk, Forbes estimates the wealth for 3,350 people it considers to be mere billionaires, from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos near the top to music mogul Dr. Dre at the bottom. Bloomberg, meanwhile, tracks the 500 richest billionaires.
Musk is now more than three times richer than his closest competition, the founders of Google, according to the estimates. The potential upcoming IPOs of generative AI labs OpenAI and Anthropic will cement at least several additional billionaires, but they won’t bring anyone close to Musk’s orbit. Retail investors buying SpaceX shares now certainly won’t be getting rich immediately, and neither will the people living near xAI’s dirty data centers.
As long as SpaceX continues to successfully ferry people, goods, and data between Earth and space while facing little competition, Musk will remain in a league of his own.
