Elon Musk is now worth over $1 trillion — he's the first human to ever hit that number.
SpaceX went public on Friday, pricing shares at $135 each. Musk owned roughly $860 billion worth of the rocket company's stock at that price. Then shares popped on the open market, pushing his total on-paper wealth past a trillion dollars when combined with his Tesla stake, according to Bloomberg News.
Musk was already the richest person in the world. Now he's in a league of his own — no one else has ever been worth even half a trillion dollars on paper.
The SpaceX IPO has been anticipated for years. The company, founded by Musk in 2002, has become the dominant player in commercial spaceflight. It launches satellites, resupplies the International Space Station, and is developing Starship, the rocket Musk wants to use to colonize Mars.
Musk's net worth is mostly tied up in stock — not cash. He owns about 42% of SpaceX's equity, according to filings. He also holds roughly 13% of Tesla, the electric car maker he runs, which has a market cap around $500 billion.
The trillion-dollar milestone is hard to visualize. $1 trillion is a thousand billion dollars. If you spent $1 million every single day, it'd take you over 2,700 years to spend it all.
Musk's wealth has grown explosively in the last decade. In 2012, he was worth about $2 billion. In 2020, he passed Jeff Bezos to become the world's richest person. Now he's lapped the field.
Bezos, the Amazon founder, is worth roughly $210 billion, according to Bloomberg. That's less than a quarter of Musk's current fortune.
The IPO also made dozens of early SpaceX employees and investors millionaires or billionaires. SpaceX's valuation after the IPO pop is estimated at over $200 billion, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world.
Musk's path to trillionaire status wasn't smooth. SpaceX nearly went bankrupt in 2008 after three failed rocket launches. The fourth launch succeeded, and the company secured a NASA contract that saved it.
Tesla also faced near-death moments. In 2018, Musk slept on the factory floor to ramp up Model 3 production. The company was months from running out of cash.
Now Musk controls two of the most valuable companies in the world. He also owns X (formerly Twitter), which he bought for $44 billion in 2022 and has since lost much of its value.
Musk didn't comment publicly on the milestone on Friday. His net worth will fluctuate with stock prices — a 10% drop in SpaceX shares would wipe out over $100 billion.
But for now, the number stands: $1 trillion. And it belongs to one man.