Skip to navigationSkip to main contentSkip to right columnADVERTISEMENTJoel SouthFri, June 12, 2026 at 6:21 PM GMT+2 4 min readQuick ReadSpaceX (SPCX) debuted at $135 and surged to ~$168, vaulting Musk past $1 trillion to become the world's first trillionaire.Musk's $1 trillion fortune eclipses the GDP of all but 19 countries and dwarfs second-place Larry Page at $288 billion.SpaceX's dual-class structure grants Musk 10 votes per share, ensuring he controls the board regardless of how many public shares trade.Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and SpaceX didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.Elon Musk became the world's first paper trillionaire when Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:SPCX) priced its record IPO at $135 Thursday night, and the cushion widened fast once shares started trading today. SpaceX priced its NASDAQ IPO at $135, opened at $150, and traded at $168.75 as of 11:55 a.m. ET, up 25% from the offer and vaulting Musk past a threshold no individual has ever held.Loren Elliott/Getty ImagesHow the Math WorksPer CBS News reporting on the priced IPO, Musk holds roughly 4.8 billion SpaceX shares (about a 42% economic stake) plus 350 million options struck at $8.39. At the $135 IPO price, CBS valued his shares near $648 billion and the options near $44.3 billion. Forbes had pegged Musk at roughly $813 billion pre-IPO, a figure that already embedded a $500 billion private SpaceX mark; the pricing lifted his stake about $192.3 billion above that, pushing total net worth to roughly $1.005 trillion before a single share changed hands. Every dollar SPCX trades above $135 adds roughly $5.2 billion more. At the midday print, his fortune sits closer to $1.1 trillion.The Offering Itself Broke RecordsSpaceX sold 555.6 million shares to raise $75 billion, surpassing Saudi Aramco's 2019 debut as the largest IPO in history. The $135 price set an initial valuation near $1.77 trillion, and the first-day pop pushed the company's market value above $2 trillion at midday, making SPCX the sixth-largest US public company behind only Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan led the underwriting, and retail investors got first-day access through Schwab, Fidelity, SoFi, E*TRADE, and Robinhood.Context and CaveatsLarry Page sits second on Forbes at about $288 billion, less than a third of Musk's new total. Only 19 countries post GDP above $1 trillion, per the World Bank, and The New York Times estimates about 4,400 SpaceX employees could become millionaires. Oxfam's Nabil Ahmed called the milestone a "new Gilded Age" and "a new pinnacle of oligarchy," noting Musk is now wealthier than the bottom 46% of humanity, roughly 3.8 billion people. Oxfam's math: hitting $1 trillion means Musk's wealth grew more than $550 billion over the past year, a pace above $1 million per minute.Terms and Privacy PolicyPrivacy & Cookie SettingsMore Info