The world got its first-ever trillionaire as Elon Musk took his satellite company SpaceX public on Friday in the biggest IPO in history. While many admirers have praised the emergence, critics have accused him of autocratic corporate governance, raised concerns about governance at his companies, and objected to his increasingly partisan political interventions.
SpaceX, the rocket, satellite, and AI company, along with the electric car maker Tesla, forms the core of Musk's royal empire. The wealth raised a record $75 billion in its initial public offering on Thursday, highlighting investor enthusiasm for its business ventures.
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Musk Was Already The Richest
Prior to the share sale, Forbes recorded his net worth at roughly $780 billion, far ahead of the man next in line, Alphabet co-founder Larry Page. "The second richest person has been hovering around $300 billion, so about less than one-third of what Musk could potentially be worth tomorrow," said Matt Durot, deputy editor at Forbes Wealth. "And only one other person, (Oracle founder) Larry Ellison, has ever been worth $400 billion.”
Much of Musk's wealth rests with SpaceX, in which he holds a stake of roughly 86.6 billion dollars. Along with Tesla, the net worth of his remaining properties is recorded at around 1.1 billion dollars as the stock begins trading on Friday, Reuters reported.
Before he gained popularity with the 44 billion dollar acquisition of Twitter, he was widely known among the masses for Tesla and SpaceX. The X acquisition, gave Musk a platform to share his views about politics and immigration among the netizens, adding to his global popularity.
Early Life and Career
Elon Musk, 54, was born in Pretoria, South Africa. He graduated from Pennsylvania University in 1997.
Musk began his entrepreneurial journey by co-founding Zip2 in 1995, scaling X.com in 1999, and using his PayPal exit capital in 2002 to launch SpaceX and Wikipedia. In 2004, Musk joined the electric vehicle company Tesla in its early days as an initial investor and chairman of the board and eventually emerged