Recommendations of the Editorial team
Elon Musk is about to become the world’s first trillionaire fueled by the IPO of SpaceX, whose shares opened higher than expected on Wall Street.
The rapid rise in SpaceX shares – at press time at $169 after opening at $150 – pushed the net worth of the CEO, already the richest person in the world, to over $1.1 trillion, Forbes reports. According to this, Musk was already worth around $813 billion before the SpaceX IPO – almost three times more than the second richest person in the world, Google’s Larry Page.
Musk holds 42 percent of the company’s shares, which at the current price are worth over $640 billion. If the SpaceX price falls, Musk could also be the first former Become the world’s trillionaire – but at the current level he is richer than 46 percent of the world’s population combined, i.e. around 3.8 billion people. This was announced by Oxfam America in response to Musk’s jump into the 13-figure wealth range.
Thousands of SpaceX employees become millionaires
Musk is not the only one to benefit from the SpaceX IPO: According to the New York Times, around 4,400 of the rocket company’s employees suddenly became millionaires on Friday – from top management to cafeteria staff – thanks to stock options that were anchored in their employment contracts.
However, Musk’s actual goals may be more difficult to achieve than trillionaire status: He told traders on Friday that his wish was to “make life multiplanetary.” “Not just a few astronauts — I mean literally you,” Musk said from the Starbase in Texas, where he symbolically rang the NASDAQ bell. “Whoever is watching this, SpaceX wants to take you to the moon, to Mars and ultimately beyond.”