Elon Musk becomes world’s first trillionaire as SpaceX shares jump

“I’m confident at this point that with the incredible team that we have here at SpaceX, that we will do that for you,” Musk added.

About 100 people assembled outside the Nasdaq’s home in New York, where SpaceX also marked the occasion with a neon sign in Times Square.

Musk “sets very futuristic goals that no one else is doing, and I think that has got a lot of people excited,” said Sarin Sio, of financial company Dovetail, who had come to the Nasdaq headquarters.

The company priced more than 555 million shares at $135 each in a Thursday filing with the US markets regulator, valuing SpaceX at just under $1.8 trillion.

In its first hours of trading on Wall Street, the price hit as much $175, up more than 30 percent.

Friday’s gain lifted SpaceX’s market value to more than $2 trillion, placing it among the 10 most valuable American companies – ahead of Tesla, Facebook-owner Meta and Walmart.

Options for nearly 83 million additional shares could push the total raised above $86 billion.

Co-founded by Musk in 2002, the rocket startup has since expanded into a major satellite operator and has also folded in Musk’s artificial intelligence company – xAI – which includes the social media platform X.

Trading under the ticker symbol “SPCX,” the conglomerate is being closely watched for how Wall Street absorbs the offering and what it will mean for its AI rivals looking to trade on the public markets as early as this year.

OpenAI and Anthropic both recently filed initial documents with regulators.

Friday’s IPO comes just over a year after Musk left US President Donald Trump’s administration, following a months-long stint leading the highly contentious “DOGE” effort to slash government spending — while simultaneously juggling his CEO roles at Tesla and SpaceX.

Musk’s backing of Trump and right-wing populists in Europe – and a long list of incendiary comments on X – has seen the entrepreneur go from a broadly admired prodigy to a deeply polarising figure.

Elon Musk is now worth about as much as the world’s next four richest people combined.

Musk became the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX shares rose following a record-breaking initial public offering that raised $75 billion for the rocket company. https://t.co/PpUfqQNyDM pic.twitter.com/1KVjkzwJ5A

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 12, 2026

The record IPO is nonetheless a testament to Musk’s continued support among investors, with Bloomberg reporting that the offering was more than four times oversubscribed.

Demand among retail investors – for whom 20% of shares were reserved – was also reported to be high.

New millionaires

The IPO is expected to mint thousands of new millionaires and several billionaires, with former and current employees — and a long list of investors — from the company’s near quarter-century history looking to cash in.

The valuation largely depends on Musk delivering on promises worthy of science fiction, including putting data centres in space and humans on Mars using as-yet unproven technology.

A lot also hangs on a huge expansion of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service as well as the success of xAI, the maker of the Grok chatbot and Musk’s rival to OpenAI and Anthropic that has yet to gain traction.

In an effort to shore up its books, SpaceX is renting out its AI computing capacity to Anthropic and Google through short-term deals worth billions of dollars.

While SpaceX is growing quickly — revenue hit $18.7 billion in 2025 – it is also losing money, producing a net loss of $4.9 billion, mainly on spending to build AI capacity.

In an extraordinary prediction, SpaceX’s filing claims it can pull in more than $28.5 trillion in revenue from its various markets.

Today, Elon Musk, a trillionaire, pays the same amount into Social Security as someone making $184,500.

If we end that absurdity and lift the cap on taxable income, we can make Social Security solvent for 75 years and expand benefits by $2,400. My Social Security bill does that.

— Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) June 12, 2026

The milestone makes Musk by far the world’s richest person – an achievement that earned criticism from some quarters.

Elon Musk just became the world’s first trillionaire.

The typical American household would have to work more than 11 MILLION years to make Elon Musk’s level of wealth.

We need a wealth tax.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) June 12, 2026

“The world will get its first trillionaire while Americans across the country are scraping together every dollar to save for retirement,” said Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren.

– AFP

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