Elon Musk Just Became the World’s First Trillionaire, and SpaceX Hasn’t Even Finished Its First Day of Trading

Quick Learning

• SpaceX (SPCX) debuted at $135 and rose to $168, getting Musk past $1 trillion to become the world’s first trillionaire.

• Musk’s $1 trillion fortune exceeds the GDP of all but 19 countries, with Larry Page in second place with $288 billion.

• SpaceX’s two-tier structure gives Musk 10 votes per share, ensuring he controls the board regardless of how many public shares trade.

• Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and SpaceX didn’t make the cut. Pick up FREE words today.

Elon Musk became the world’s first paper trillionaire there Company Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:SPCX) hit its record IPO price of $135 on Thursday night, and the cushion quickly grew when shares began trading today. SpaceX bought its NASDAQ IPO at $135, opened at $150, and traded at $168.75 as of 11:55 am ET, up 25% since the sale and knocking Musk past an unprecedented high.

How Mathematics Works

According to CBS News’ IPO pricing report, Musk owns approximately 4.8 billion SpaceX shares (about a 42% economic stake) and 350 million options that hit $8.39. At an IPO price of $135, CBS valued its shares at close to $648 billion and options at close to $44.3 billion. Forbes had pegged Musk at an estimated $813 billion pre-IPO, a figure that already embedded SpaceX’s $500 billion private label; stock prices raised his stake to about $192.3 billion more, pushing the total value to about $1.005 trillion before a single share changed hands. Every dollar of SPCX that trades above $135 adds up to about $5.2 billion more. As of midday, his net worth is close to $1.1 trillion.

Your Donation Breaks Records

SpaceX sold 555.6 million shares to raise $75 billion, surpassing Saudi Aramco’s 2019 debut as the largest IPO in history. The $135 price set the initial price at nearly 1.77 trillion, and the first-day pop pushed the company’s market value over $2 billion during the day, making SPCX the sixth-largest public company in the US behind only Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan led the underwriting, and retail investors got day one access through Schwab, Fidelity, SoFi, E*TRADE, and Robinhood.

Context and Warnings

Larry Page sits in second place on Forbes with an estimated $288 billion, less than a third of Musk’s new net worth. Only 19 countries post a GDP of more than $1 trillion, according to the World Bank, and The New York Times estimates that there are about 4,400 millionaire SpaceX employees. Nabil Ahmed of Oxfam called the milestone “a new era of tyranny” and “a new peak of oligarchy,” noting that Musk is now richer than the bottom 46% of the population, about 3.8 billion people. Oxfam figures: hitting $1 trillion means Musk’s fortune has grown by more than $550 billion in the past year, which is a pace of more than $1 million per minute.

Take action now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 recently named his top 10 AI stocks — and SpaceX didn’t make the cut. Pick up FREE words today.

SpaceX’s two-tier setup gives Class B holders 10 votes per share compared to one vote for publicly traded Class A shares, leaving Musk with 82.4% voting power in a 42% economic stake, according to the amended S-1. Only Class B owners can remove him as CEO, CTO, or chairman, and he controls that class.

Asset value, in contrast, is a live measurement relative to day one performance. Morningstar values ​​the company at just $780 billion on a discounted cash flow basis, less than half of its IPO valuation, and SpaceX posted $8.7 billion in consolidated losses from early 2025 to March 31, 2026. The trillionaire’s calculations only require SPCX to hold $135; Musk moves back below the mark if shares drop below around $134. Look at the closing price, then the greenshoe (an option that allows the underwriters to sell up to 83 million additional shares at $135, worth about $11.2 billion, which they will use in a stock exchange over and above the offering), then the closing calendar.

Take action now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 recently named his top 10 AI stocks — and SpaceX didn’t make the cut. Pick up FREE words today.