Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire on Friday, after the record-breaking stock market debut of his company SpaceX catapulted his fortune past the $1tn mark. According to Bloomberg, his net worth now stands at about $1.11tn — almost four times that of Google co-founder Larry Page, his nearest rival, and more than five times that of Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg.
The milestone caps a volatile six-year journey that began in January 2020, when Musk was only the 35th richest person in the world, with a fortune of around $28bn. His wealth took off that year as the value of his two biggest companies — electric carmaker Tesla and space exploration and AI firm SpaceX — began to grow sharply. By January 2021, he had briefly overtaken Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest person.
“Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire after SpaceX's record-breaking stock market debut, amassing a $1.11tn fortune.”
But the ride has been far from smooth. His fortune dipped in 2022 amid a downturn in US tech stocks, and fell sharply again in early 2025, as investor concerns over his role in the Trump administration coincided with a slump in Tesla’s share price. Each time, he has come back stronger.
Musk’s wealth is heavily tied to paper assets. He owns a 12% stake in Tesla, which has a market valuation of around $1.5tn, and a 42% stake in SpaceX, now worth more than $2tn. Many of his shares have been pledged as collateral against personal loans. The tech boss also holds stakes in smaller businesses, including The Boring Company, a tunnel construction firm, and Neuralink, which develops implantable brain-computer interfaces.
Despite his immense fortune, Musk has said on X that less than “0.1%” of his net worth is held in cash. The extreme reliance on stock holdings creates a striking imbalance — a fact that underscores the fragility of his wealth, which can rise or fall depending on investor sentiment.
Musk first made waves in the tech industry in the late 1990s. Now, at 53, he sits well above the other billionaires topping rich lists: Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, and Bernard Arnault, boss of French luxury goods group LVMH. The question hanging over his trillionaire status is how long he can hold on to it.