Elon Musk Becomes World’s First Trillionaire As SpaceX Shares Soar In Nasdaq Debut

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Elon Musk just became the first person in history to amass a personal fortune of over US $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000 — that’s a 1 with 12 zeros) after shares of his rocket company, SpaceX, debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange this morning (Friday 12th June, 2026).

The Initial Public Offering (IPO) for SpaceX on Thursday (11th June, 2026) valued the company at nearly US $1.8 trillion — up from its most recent private valuation of around US $1.25 trillion. After shares opened at US $150 this morning (an increase of about 11.1% above the offering price of US $135) in New York and kept surging, SpaceX’s market capitalization reached about US $2.2 trillion.

Between Musk’s significant ownership stakes in SpaceX, his car company Tesla, and several other ventures, his personal coffers expanded enough to propel him into trillionaire territory, according to Bloomberg and Forbes, which conduct extensive research to identify the world’s richest individuals. According to Bloomberg, his net worth surpassed US $400 billion in 2024, which means it has nearly tripled in less than two (2) years. It is important to note, however, that Musk does not have US $1 trillion in his bank accounts. Most of his wealth is tied up in shares, some of which he is restricted from selling anytime soon. He has also pledged to donate half his wealth eventually.

Institutional and retail investors jumped at the opportunity to buy 555.6 million shares of SpaceX at the offering price of US $135 apiece on Thursday (11th June, 2026). The US $75 billion in proceeds easily topped the previous record IPO from oil giant Saudi Aramco in 2019.

Musk says SpaceX is going public now because it needs money to fund its ambitions of putting satellites and data centers in space and eventually establishing a colony of people on Mars — yes, Mars.

Musk marked the opening of trading on Nasdaq this morning (Friday 12th June, 2026), where SpaceX is trading under the symbol “SPCX,” by joining a ceremonial bell-ringing from Starbase, the South Texas home of SpaceX.

He reiterated his lofty goals “to make life multi-planetary.”

“Not just a few astronauts, I mean literally you,” Musk said. “Whoever you are watching this, SpaceX wants to be able to take you to the moon, take you to Mars and ultimately beyond.”

Musk, the new trillionaire — on paper at least — made his fortune by creating two (2) companies in the past, Zip2 and PayPal, that netted him about US $200 million at sale. He used that money to start SpaceX and invest in Tesla, and defied the odds by creating a space company that figured out how to reuse rockets and a car company that made electric vehicles, well, cool.

Musk has realized vast sums of wealth for himself, much of it in stock he has yet to cash in or grants for shares he will only receive if Tesla or SpaceX hit ambitious performance targets. His recent pay package from Tesla drew criticism from the Vatican. At Tesla, he has worried shareholders by fighting with regulators or dividing his attention between multiple companies and last year by taking a role in the Trump administration.

Since Tesla went public in 2010, it has returned 20,000% for shareholders, or more than US $1.2 trillion in investor wealth. That certainly helped lift Musk’s pre-SpaceX IPO worth to US $795 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

SpaceX is the first of three (3) “megacap” companies expected to go public this year, with Anthropic and OpenAI to follow.

More on this as it becomes available. 

[Source: The Associated Press]

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