Elon Musk just became the world’s first millionaire.
and space x The Nasdaq market opened Friday at $150 a share, valuing his stake in the company at more than $766 billion. Combined with his tesla The stake is worth $280 billion, but Musk’s net worth from both companies as of Friday was about $1.05 trillion.
SpaceX’s IPO increased Musk’s fortune by more than $180 billion. He is currently worth more than the next five richest billionaires in the world combined. His personal net worth is larger than the national GDPs of Taiwan, Ireland, and Sweden.
Mr. Musk’s coronation as the first person in history to be worth $1 trillion is likely to fuel debate about wealth inequality and the rise to power of America’s richest technology founder. In addition to creating the world’s first millionaire, SpaceX’s IPO created thousands of new billionaires and several new billionaires among the employees and executives who own the stock.
SpaceX stock was up about 26% mid-afternoon Friday, trading at about $170 per share. This would make the company worth more than $2 trillion.
Tesla shares rose about 1% to about $400 a share.
Musk was first declared a billionaire by Bloomberg and Forbes in 2012, with the latter estimating his net worth at $2.4 billion at the time.
Mr. Musk’s wealth reached $20 billion in 2019 and skyrocketed after Tesla’s stock split the following year, making him the world’s fifth-largest centibillionaire (worth more than $100 billion), according to Forbes estimates. In the six years since then, Musk’s net worth has soared roughly tenfold.
His fortune has soared at a rate unmatched by even Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Bernard Arnault, who held the title of world’s richest person in the past decade. According to Forbes, Larry Page is currently worth an estimated $295 billion, making him a distant second place on the world’s richest list.
They are followed by Sergey Brin, Bezos and Larry Ellison, each worth more than $200 billion as of Friday, according to Forbes.
However, Forbes estimates that if Gates didn’t donate so much to charity, his fortune would be a whopping $464 billion.
