Elon Musk became the world\u2019s first trillionaire on Friday.<\/p>\n
The tech mogul reached that milestone when shares of his rocket company SpaceX<\/a> began trading on the stock market, opening at $150, signaling a new era of ultra-affluence and widening wealth inequality.<\/p>\n SpaceX shares opened up 11 percent from their initial public offering price of $135. Mr. Musk\u2019s net worth \u2014 which comprises his stock in SpaceX and his electric carmaker, Tesla, as well as ownership stakes in other ventures including the brain implant company Neuralink and the tunneling firm the Boring Company \u2014 stood at around $1.1 trillion.<\/p>\n Mr. Musk, 54, was already the world\u2019s richest person<\/a>. He claimed that title from the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in January 2021, after Tesla\u2019s shares surged to take his net worth past $185 billion.<\/p>\n Since then, the South African-born entrepreneur\u2019s fortune has more than quintupled in a five-and-a-half year period, during which he bought the social media company Twitter, founded an A.I. start-up, fused them together with SpaceX and then took the conglomerate public. In that time, Mr. Musk also spent more than $250 million<\/a> to help elect Donald J. Trump and advised the president.<\/p>\n And Mr. Musk\u2019s wealth-making has only accelerated, cementing his influence over society, culture and global politics. Since October, his net worth has doubled.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact is that wealth for some and wealth inequality is growing in dimensions that we\u2019ve never seen before,\u201d said Steven Durlauf, the director of the Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility at the University of Chicago.<\/p>\n When the oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller\u2019s fortune was at its height in 1937, his $1.4 billion net worth amounted to about 1.5 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, Mr. Durlauf said. Mr. Musk\u2019s net worth is now equivalent to more than 3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.<\/p>\n Such wealth is so extraordinary that it can be hard to make meaningful comparisons. The median American household had a net worth of just under $200,000 in 2022, the year with the most recent data available from the Federal Reserve. That means Mr. Musk\u2019s net worth is five million times as large as that of the typical family.<\/p>\n His wealth dwarfs even that of the everyday wealthy. The top 10 percent of households by income had an average net worth of $6.5 million in 2022, less than .001 percent of the SpaceX leader\u2019s total. The world\u2019s second richest person, the Google co-founder Larry Page, is worth around $304 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.<\/p>\n Inequality is notoriously difficult to measure, but the explosion of wealth at the top is hard to dispute. The net worth of the middle 40 percent of households, adjusted for inflation, has risen slightly more than 50 percent over the past decade, according to data<\/a> from the French economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman. The top 1 percent have seen similar gains. But the richest .001 percent have seen their wealth roughly double over the same period.<\/p>\n Beyond Mr. Musk, the ultrawealthy have also experienced significant increases in their fortunes. In 2016, a net worth of $100 billion \u2014 a mark that Mr. Musk crossed about six years ago \u2014 would have easily placed someone at the top of the Forbes Billionaires list. Today, $100 billion would rank them as the 20th richest person in the world.<\/p>\n \u201cChrist, when I was a kid, we only talked about millionaires,\u201d said Bernie Sanders, 84, the progressive senator from Vermont. \u201cIf this isn\u2019t an example of oligarchy, I don\u2019t know what is.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Musk\u2019s rapid accumulation of wealth largely comes down to the appreciation of his nearly 50 percent stake in SpaceX, which is worth more than $900 billion. During its I.P.O., the company sold more than 555 million shares, which valued it at $1.77 trillion, up from a $400 billion valuation on the private market last summer. Starting in January, SpaceX also granted Mr. Musk pay packages totaling 1.3 billion shares, which he cannot sell until he hits certain operational milestones<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment. But he has previously acknowledged the trillionaire milestone.<\/p>\n In February, he replied to a post on X<\/a> about possible trillionaire status by noting that he had created significant wealth for shareholders and held less than 0.1 percent of his net worth in cash. In May, he responded<\/a> on X to the financial musings of Peter Diamandis, a friend and SpaceX investor, saying he would reach \u201c$10T or bust.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Musk has also recently said that \u201cmoney won\u2019t matter\u201d in the future because Tesla and SpaceX would develop robotics, A.I. and rockets so powerful that no human would ever have to work again. In his utopian world of \u201camazing abundance,\u201d<\/a> everyone would have \u201cuniversal high income,\u201d he has said.<\/p>\n Mr. Musk\u2019s allies said his net worth was justified by his impact, providing an example and incentive for those who want to build successful companies. Mr. Diamandis, the head of the XPrize Foundation, an organization that holds contests to encourage scientific breakthroughs, said Tesla and SpaceX were \u201craising the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe fruits of his labor are making him into a trillionaire, and they\u2019re uplifting humanity,\u201d Mr. Diamandis said.<\/p>\n Adeo Ressi, Mr. Musk\u2019s college roommate at the University of Pennsylvania, said the SpaceX chief never cared as much about financial gain as obtaining resources to help him achieve his entrepreneurial goals<\/a>. For Mr. Musk, \u201cmoney is a means to an end,\u201d Mr. Ressi said, comparing his friend\u2019s mind-set to a gamer accumulating coins in a video game to beat a level.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s amassing resources to do things, and the thing he wants to do most is colonize Mars,\u201d Mr. Ressi said. \u201cThat\u2019s a really big driving force behind his wealth accumulation.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that Mr. Musk was \u201cnot a poster child of wealth inequality\u201d and pointed to the tech leader\u2019s lifestyle, in which he is known to work around the clock and avoid the typical trappings of the rich, like islands and megayachts.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not like he\u2019s planning to leave this in a massive family trust,\u201d Mr. Ressi said. \u201cIt\u2019s literally going to be used to make humanity into a multiplanetary species.\u201d<\/p>\n