Elton John’s Rocket Man blasted over the Nasdaq exchange floor as SpaceX’s president, Gwynne Shotwell, rang the bell to open trading. “Today, we make history again,” she declared. Within hours, the company’s CEO had become the world’s first trillionaire.
SpaceX listed on the Nasdaq on Friday with shares priced at $135 each, but trading opened at $150 and briefly reached $176.50 as investors rushed to buy into the rocket, telecommunications and artificial intelligence company. By market close, shares traded at $161, putting the company’s valuation at $2.2tn and handing its founder Elon Musk a personal net worth of $1.11tn (£828bn) according to the Bloomberg rich list.
“Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire after SpaceX's record-breaking stock market debut valued the company at $2.2tn.”
“It is certainly hard to believe that a little company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo is now going public with the largest IPO ever,” Musk said in an address at SpaceX’s headquarters. He reiterated the company’s mission to “make humanity multiplanetary” and “take the fiction out of science fiction”.
The initial public offering raised $75bn from investors and underwriters. Musk owns a 42% stake in SpaceX, giving him unilateral control over the company. According to Bloomberg, his SpaceX shares were worth $767.1bn at close of trade, with another $53.8bn in options, plus $168bn in Tesla shares and $116.4bn in Tesla options. The vast majority of his fortune is tied up in stock; he cannot sell any SpaceX shares for at least a year.
The milestone immediately ignited debate over wealth inequality. Democratic US senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were among politicians to condemn it. Warren called it a “wake up call” and argued it underlines the need for wealth taxes.
Musk’s financial power has already made him a divisive figure in global politics. He gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and last year led the Department for Government Efficiency (Doge), where drastic spending cuts led to the closure of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Researchers in the Lancet medical journal warned those cuts could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030. Musk has also repeatedly clashed with UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, including over the murder of 18-year-old British student Henry Nowak.
His wealth, equivalent to the entire economic output of Poland or Switzerland, has grown at a staggering pace. “Musk has a proven track record in creating sectors out of nothing,” said Quinn Slobodian, a history professor at Boston University and author of Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed. “There’s a sense to never bet against Elon – he’ll always make you money.”