Elon Musk becomes the world's first trillionaire
Elon Musk has officially become the world’s first trillionaire as SpaceX shares went on sale overnight.
The space company shot into the top 10 of the world’s most valuable companies, ending the day valued at nearly $3 trillion.
Elon Musk is the richest man in the world by far. AP
Owning nearly half of the company’s stock (as well as a lot of other things), Musk broke through the previously untouched barrier of $US1 trillion (about $1.4 trillion).
SpaceX shares were valued at $192 ahead of the initial public offering (IPO).
“It is certainly hard to believe that a little company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo is now going public with the largest IPO ever,” Musk said earlier today.
Though at the time SpaceX was founded, Musk was already worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
But as the day’s trading went on on the Nasdaq index, their value rose to $227.
But the enthusiasm from the market doesn’t extend to all experts. Analysts at Morningstar said pre-IPO that SpaceX is worth about half of what it is valued at.
The company lost nearly $US5 billion last year.
“Our valuation is the result of mathematics more than scepticism,” the Morningstar statement said.
The analysts said the IPO’s listing price was predicated on the assumption SpaceX could “achieve a rapidly reusable Starship rocket enabling multiple launches per week and successfully commercialise data centres in space”.
“Neither of these engineering problems has been solved, and we don’t expect them to be until at least 2028.”
A large inflatable figure depicting Elon Musk stands in Times Square in New York. AP Photo/Seth Wenig
Musk’s wealth makes him worth as much as half of the Australian economy.
He now has more money than any country outside of the top 21 in the world, and is worth twice as much the entirety of the country of his birth, South Africa.
Critics have pointed out that Musk has reached the milestone while paying very little tax.
Through a complicated financial manoeuvre, Musk pays a lower effective tax rate than most nurses or truck drivers.
“The typical American household would have to work more than 11 million years to make Elon Musk’s level of wealth,” Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said.
“We need a wealth tax.”
Elon Musk has more money than all but 20 countries. AP
In addition to the wealth he has in shares, Musk has a massive pay packet from SpaceX provided it hits some ambitious goals.
He is allowed to buy a billion shares at a discounted price if SpaceX has a colony of a million people on Mars.
He had promised to have a human on Mars in 10-12 years, in an interview he gave 15 years ago.
To make good on a revised 2020 target, he will need to have a human on Mars by the end of this year.
The company also needs to hit $12 trillion in value, substantially more than the world’s current largest business, Nvidia.
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