SpaceX IPO catapults Elon Musk past the trillion-dollar mark

Musk founded the first of his companies in 1995 and is, according to the Bloomberg Index, the richest person in the world. His wealth amounts to around 720 billion dollars according to the "Billionaires Index" compiled by the financial data provider Bloomberg – but the vast majority of it consists of stakes in companies, primarily Tesla and SpaceX. With the leap past the trillion-dollar mark, the gap to the second-richest person widens significantly: According to the figures, Musk's fortune is more than three times that of Larry Page, the co-founder of Google.

The Dimension of a Trillion

The dimension of the sum is difficult to grasp. "If you had spent just under 16 dollars every second since the birth of Jesus, you still would not have reached 1 trillion today," the calculations illustrate. Even a German household with a median income of 38,112 euros would have to work for more than 22 million years to reach 1 trillion dollars. Even at 1 million dollars a day, it would take about 2,740 years to spend that sum. "But one billion equals only 0.1 percent of a trillion-dollar fortune," it continues.

By comparison: One trillion dollars corresponds to more than three percent of the entire annual economic output of the USA. "With one trillion dollars, Musk's fortune exceeds the annual gross domestic product of more than 125 countries, including Sweden, Portugal, Argentina and South Africa." Laid out in one-dollar bills, the sum would be enough to pave the Saarland more than twice over – or to cover the area of around 1.4 million soccer fields.

Musk, who is 54 years old according to reports, also owns the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). On it, he wrote in a post: "Whoever said 'money can't buy happiness' really knew what they were talking about." The increase in wealth is also put into perspective when one considers the temporal dimension: spread across his entire life, it would still be a good 400 dollars – in every single second since his birth. In calculated terms, Musk accumulates around 750 dollars in added wealth per second, measured on the average since he founded his first company in 1995.

Employees Benefit

At this scale, Musk is roughly in the territory of the market capitalization of the world's most valuable companies – broadly in the same order of magnitude as Berkshire Hathaway, the investment vehicle of Warren Buffett. For historical comparison: The oil magnate John D. Rockefeller reached a good one and a half percent of US economic output in his lifetime. The Bloomberg Index had first recorded a fortune of more than 100 billion US dollars for a living person less than ten years ago.

Employees of SpaceX also benefit directly from the IPO. "Employees of SpaceX have received company shares as part of their compensation in recent years," it states. "With the IPO, many of them will become millionaires, and some even billionaires." Tesla, in turn, developed over the years into one of the strongest-performing stocks of all time. The bulk of Musk's fortune, however, remains tied up in company shares and is not available in liquid funds.

Debate over Wealth Inequality

The SpaceX IPO is likely to make Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire, as stated in the original article. This article first appeared on ntv.de; stern, like ntv, is part of RTL Deutschland. Since SpaceX will, according to its own statements, reach the targeted valuation at its trading debut (Friday afternoon German time), the leap past the trillion-dollar mark is considered largely certain.

Critics such as the development organization Oxfam America have for years pointed to the growing gap between the super-rich and the rest of the population. Oxfam activists such as Nabil Ahmed have repeatedly called for extreme concentrations of wealth to be taxed more heavily. The debate over a wealth tax on multi-billionaires is also growing louder in the USA, where the one-trillion-dollar mark would be reached by a private individual for the first time ever.

Analysts see the IPO as a milestone for the entire space industry. SpaceX is not only the most valuable private space company in the world, but with its Starlink satellite constellation, it is also a central player in commercial satellite communications. The leap to 1.05 trillion dollars is considered a direct consequence of the listing and not of any sudden business expansion – SpaceX's operating business has already been running at full speed for years, with regular rocket launches and a growing defense and telecommunications business.