SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Photo Credit: Brendan SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Elon Musk’s net worth has crossed $1 trillion, making him the world’s first trillionaire. This comes a day after SpaceX went public for the first time and its stock began trading on Nasdaq.

SpaceX initially priced its initial public offering (IPO) at $135 per share, selling 555.6 million shares and raising $75 billion. This offering valued the company at roughly $1.77 trillion, making it the largest IPO on record and surpassing Saudi Aramco’s $29 billion raise in 2019. And because Musk owns roughly 40 % of SpaceX, that stake alone immediately became worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

This Status Took Months, Not Years

As recently as the summer of 2024, Musk was competing with Jeff Bezos and Bernard Arnault for the title of world’s richest person, with each of their fortunes sitting around $200 billion. His net worth crossed $500 billion in October 2025. It passed $700 billion two months later, helped by a Delaware Supreme Court ruling that reinstated a 2018 Tesla stock package worth $139 billion, and by a private SpaceX valuation that had reached $800 billion at the time.

The SpaceX IPO then pushed him past $1 trillion this month, which is years ahead of what most analysts had projected. Some earlier estimates placed the trillion-dollar mark as far out as 2032. Few days after the IPO, on June 16, SpaceX’s market cap climbed to roughly $2.8 trillion and Musk’s net worth briefly touched $1.5 trillion, before settling closer to $1.4 trillion by the end of that trading day.

What’s Backing the Valuation

Not every analyst is convinced the number will hold. Morningstar valued SpaceX at $780 billion using a discounted cash flow model, less than half its IPO price. The firm put the launch and Starlink businesses at $611 billion combined, and assigned a probability-weighted value of $170 billion to the AI segment, which it called the bigger source of uncertainty.

SpaceX’s AI unit, which includes X, posted a $6.36 billion operating loss in 2025 on $3.2 billion in revenue. X’s advertising revenue came in at $1.8 billion that year, less than half of what Twitter generated back in 2021. SpaceX also carries about $30 billion in debt, including a $20 billion bridge loan that matures 15 months after the IPO and will need to be refinanced.

SpaceX is expected to join the Nasdaq 100 within 15 trading days of its debut, a fast track few companies get. Whether the stock holds its valuation through that stretch, or starts closing the gap toward Morningstar’s lower estimate, will determine the durability of Musk’s trillion-dollar fortune.

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I’m Precious Amusat, Phronews’ Content Writer. I conduct in-depth research and write on the latest developments in the tech industry, including trends in big tech, startups, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and their global impacts. When I’m off the clock, you’ll find me cheering on women’s footy, curled up with a romance novel, or binge-watching crime thrillers.

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