Elon Musk is now the world’s first billionaire after SpaceX debuted on the public markets on Friday, according to Bloomberg News.
The SpaceX founder and CEO owned about $860 billion worth of shares in the rocket company after it was priced at $135 a share just before the IPO. Combined with his Tesla stake and the immediate rise in SpaceX stock on Friday after it opened for trading, that’s enough to give the tech mogul — already the world’s richest man — a paper fortune in excess of $1,000,000,000,000.
SpaceX stock continued to rise in early trading Friday, adding to Musk’s wealth.
Musk’s rise to billionaire status comes at a time when more obnoxious and stronger than ever.
Musk spent much of 2024 financing Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, to the tune of about $300 million. He then became involved in the Trump administration, heading up the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” – which, by all accounts, has not reduced overall government spending and is mostly canceling a series of contracts with little review or care for their content.
Musk also led the dismantling of entire departments such as USAID, a decision that the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health says has already led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
More wealth is coming to Musk.
Last year, he was awarded a pay package by Tesla shareholders that could be worth $1 trillion on its own, provided he increases that company’s valuation and hits certain operational milestones. And while 1 billion of his shares in SpaceX cannot be sold unless the company establishes a human colony on Mars, Musk can borrow against those shares in the meantime. That means it could quickly access billions of dollars in cash before reaching that goal (which SpaceX itself says is “unlikely”) and without paying taxes on that wealth.
And while SpaceX is now set to have public shareholders, Musk will enjoy enormous power as the company pursues what it calls the largest steerable market in history. He owns more than 80% of the voting control, can handpick the board and has structured the company in a way that severely limits any legal challenges.
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