Elon Musk becomes the world's first trillionaire after SpaceX IPO

Dubai, UAE: Elon Musk has become the first person in history with a net worth above $1 trillion, after the stock market debut of his rocket company SpaceX on Friday.

SpaceX began trading on the Nasdaq and rose sharply on its first day, lifting Musk's fortune past the trillion-dollar mark and into the record books. The company is now among the most valuable in the world.

SpaceX stock price on its first day of trading

SpaceX shares closed up about 19 percent on their opening day. The stock was priced at $135 before trading began, opened at $150 and closed at $160.95, implying a market capitalisation of nearly $2.2 trillion, according to Forbes. It briefly peaked at $176.52 during the session. That ranks SpaceX sixth among the world's most valuable companies, behind Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, according to the Washington Post.

SpaceX marked the moment its stock opened to the public with a short post on X reading "Liftoff! First trade complete," alongside a rocket emoji.

The offering drew strong demand. Institutional investors placed orders worth around $250 billion and individual investors around $100 billion, for a total order book near $350 billion, according to a report by South Korea's Chosun. The company raised a record $75 billion through the listing.

Elon Musk's net worth passes $1 trillion

Musk's net worth reached an estimated $1.1 trillion at Friday's close, up from $982 billion the day before, according to Forbes. The IPO pricing alone added about $188 billion to his fortune in a single day, Forbes calculated. At one point during trading, the rise briefly pushed his wealth to a record $1.2 trillion.

Musk owns about 4.8 billion SpaceX shares, worth $767 billion at Friday's close, according to Forbes. Including stock options, his stake of around 38 percent is worth roughly $821 billion, making SpaceX his most valuable asset by a wide margin.

To put the scale in context, Musk's wealth is now larger than the gross domestic product of Taiwan, which stands at about $976.7 billion, according to Chosun.

Why SpaceX is valued so highly despite its losses

SpaceX reached its record valuation despite continuing to lose money. The company reported a net loss of $4.9 billion on revenue of $18.7 billion in 2025, and has lost around $13 billion since the start of 2023, according to the Washington Post.

The company has set out ambitious long-term goals, including placing large numbers of satellites in orbit to power data centres for artificial intelligence, and establishing a colony on Mars. Much of the investor case rests on its Starlink satellite internet network, which it sees as a source of recurring global revenue.

What Elon Musk said about the SpaceX IPO

Speaking from SpaceX's headquarters at Starbase, Texas, Musk reflected on the company's origins. "It is certainly hard to believe that a little company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo [in California] is now going public with the largest IPO ever," he said, according to the Washington Post. "If people had told me this was going to happen, I was like, 'Man, you must be smoking some really good crack because I think this company's going to fail.'"

US lawmakers criticise Musk's record wealth

The milestone drew immediate criticism from some US lawmakers, who framed Musk's wealth as a symptom of economic inequality. Senator Elizabeth Warren said in a video on social media that Musk now holds more wealth than anyone in human history, describing it as a feature of what she called a rigged economy, according to the Washington Post. Representative Ro Khanna and Senator Bernie Sanders raised similar concerns.

Elon Musk's companies: SpaceX, Tesla, xAI and more

Musk founded SpaceX in 2002. The company has since grown from a startup into a central partner for NASA and the US Department of Defense, alongside its commercial launch and satellite businesses. Musk also leads Tesla and the artificial intelligence company xAI, and holds stakes in Neuralink and the Boring Company.