Elon Musk just became the world’s first trillionaire, and it happened because SpaceX finally went public this week with the biggest IPO in history.
The rocket company raised $75 billion and valued itself at nearly $1.8 trillion, which means Musk’s roughly 50 percent stake is now worth over $860 billion on paper alone. That’s on top of his Tesla holdings and everything else he’s built over the past two decades, so yeah, the math checks out.
According to Reuters, this historic moment cements his status as the richest person to ever exist. He co-founded PayPal back in the late 90s, then took that money and bet everything on Tesla when electric cars were still a punchline. SpaceX came next, and he literally made rockets land themselves and reuse them, which everyone said was impossible. Neuralink, the Boring Company, and a dozen other ventures followed. The man’s been building an empire for real, and now that empire is worth more than most countries’ GDP.
The problem is that Musk has become a lightning rod for controversy, especially because he’s using his massive platform to push hard for right-wing politics. He owns X, formerly Twitter, and he’s not shy about amplifying conservative voices and conspiracy theories. He endorsed Trump, co-hosted Ron DeSantis’ presidential announcement, and he’s been feuding with governments in Australia, Brazil, the UK, and the EU over what he calls “free speech” but what critics call the spread of misinformation.