Elon Musk has become the world’s first trillionaire, marking a historic milestone in global finance after SpaceX’s long-awaited public debut sent his fortune soaring past the $1 trillion mark for the first time.
Rocketmaker SpaceX began trading on the Nasdaq Friday at $150 per share and closed at $160.95 per share, implying a market capitalization of nearly $2.2 trillion. At its peak during the session, shares reached $176.52, briefly lifting Musk’s estimated net worth to a record $1.2 trillion intraday before settling at about $1.1 trillion at the close, according to Forbes estimates.
The listing caps a dramatic surge in wealth following SpaceX’s IPO pricing at $135 per share on Thursday. That pricing alone lifted Musk’s net worth from an estimated $982 billion to roughly $1.1 trillion, a single-day gain of about $188 billion, according to Forbes calculations.
Musk, who serves as chairman, chief executive officer and chief technical officer of SpaceX, holds an estimated 4.8 billion shares in the company. At Friday’s close, that stake was valued at approximately $767 billion. He also holds roughly 350 million stock options with an exercise price of $8.40 per share, worth about $53 billion, giving him an estimated 38% stake in SpaceX valued at around $821 billion.
Before the IPO, Forbes had valued Musk’s stake in SpaceX at roughly $500 billion, based on a prior $1.25 trillion valuation tied to the company’s merger with Musk’s artificial intelligence and social media venture xAI earlier in 2026. xAI itself had previously merged with X (formerly Twitter) in March 2025.
Born in Pretoria, South Africa, Musk’s rise to global prominence began in the 1990s with Zip2, a software startup he co-founded that provided online business directories and mapping services for newspapers. The sale of Zip2 marked his entry into Silicon Valley and launched a career that would span some of the most influential companies of the modern era.
He went on to co-found X.com, which later became PayPal, helping to redefine online payments and establish his early fortune. Musk later became a central figure in Tesla, transforming the electric vehicle company into a global automotive leader and one of the most valuable companies in the world. Through SolarCity, he also played a key role in advancing residential solar energy and broader clean-energy infrastructure. SpaceX, founded in 2002, became his most ambitious venture, pushing the boundaries of reusable rockets and satellite internet through Starlink.
In the social media and AI space, Musk acquired Twitter in a landmark deal that reshaped the platform, later rebranding it as X, integrating it into a broader ecosystem alongside his artificial intelligence venture xAI, which he founded to accelerate advanced AI development.
Across Zip2, PayPal, Tesla, SolarCity, SpaceX, Twitter/X, and xAI, Musk has built a sprawling business empire spanning software, finance, energy, automotive, artificial intelligence, social media, and aerospace—each contributing to his ascent as one of the most influential and wealthiest individuals in history.
Musk first appeared on Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list in 2012 with an estimated net worth of $2 billion. He later overtook Jeff Bezos in 2021 to become the world’s richest person as Tesla’s valuation surged.
The SpaceX debut now marks the culmination of a decades-long ascent, placing Musk at the top of global wealth rankings and cementing one of the most dramatic wealth creations in modern financial history.
Neither SpaceX nor Musk immediately responded to requests for comment on the milestone.