Elon Musk becomes world's first trillionaire after SpaceX stock debut

Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire on Friday after the record-breaking stock market debut of his company SpaceX.

His current estimated net worth stands at about $1.11 trillion, according to Bloomberg. That places him well above other wealthy billionaires on rich lists, including Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Bernard Arnault, the head of French luxury goods group LVMH.

Musk first rose in the tech industry in the late 1990s, but he has not always led the rich lists. In January 2020 he ranked as the 35th richest person in the world, with a fortune of around $28 billion.

His wealth grew sharply that year as the value of his two largest companies, electric carmaker Tesla and space exploration and AI firm SpaceX, increased. Musk holds large stakes in both.

His wealth has followed a volatile path over the last six years, with sharp rises and steep drops tied to swings in Tesla's share price, the rising value of SpaceX, and shifts in political and investor sentiment during his time in the Trump administration.

His fortune fell in 2022 amid a downturn in U.S. tech stocks and dropped again in early 2025 as investor concerns over his role in the Trump administration coincided with a slump in Tesla's share price.

Each time, he recovered. Now a trillionaire, Musk is almost four times richer than his nearest rival, Larry Page, and more than five times richer than Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg.

Musk's wealth consists mainly of stock holdings that can rise or fall with investor sentiment. In February he said on X that less than 0.1 percent of his net worth was held in cash.

Musk currently owns a 12 percent stake in Tesla, a company with a market valuation of around $1.5 trillion, and a 42 percent stake in SpaceX, now worth more than $2 trillion. Many of his shares have been pledged as collateral against personal loans.

This heavy reliance on paper assets rather than liquid cash creates a clear imbalance. The horizontal block of his wealth is almost entirely made up of two large corporate holdings, leaving virtually no room for actual cash.