Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire on Friday, following the record-breaking stock market debut of his company SpaceX. With a current estimated net worth of about $1.11tn, according to Bloomberg, the tech mogul now sits well above wealthy billionaires such as Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Bernard Arnault, boss of French luxury goods group LVMH.
Musk, who first made waves in the tech industry in the late 1990s, hasn't always topped the rich list. In January 2020, he was only the 35th richest person in the world, with a fortune of around $28bn. But 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. Musk holds large stakes in both businesses.
“Elon Musk becomes world's first trillionaire after SpaceX record-breaking stock market debut, net worth $1.11tn.”
By January 2021, he had risen to become the world's richest person, briefly overtaking Jeff Bezos. However, 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. Now a trillionaire, Musk is almost four times richer than his nearest rival Larry Page, and more than five times richer than Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg.
It is important to remember that Musk's wealth is mainly made up of stock holdings that can rise or fall depending on investor sentiment. Indeed, in February, the tech mogul said on X that less than "0.1%" of his net worth was held in cash. He currently owns a 12% stake in Tesla, a company with a market valuation of around $1.5tn, and a 42% stake in SpaceX, which is now worth more than $2tn. Many of his shares have been pledged as collateral against personal loans.
Musk also owns stakes in smaller businesses, including The Boring Company, a tunnel construction firm, and Neuralink, which develops implantable brain-computer interfaces. This extreme reliance on paper assets rather than liquid cash creates a striking imbalance – but for now, his trillion-dollar status places him in a league of his own.