Elon Musk has reached a historic financial milestone, officially becoming the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX debuted on the NASDAQ on Friday, sending the company’s stock soaring in its first day of trading.
The billionaire entrepreneur crossed the trillion-dollar mark as SpaceX shares jumped 18 percent from their IPO price to $154 each, cementing his place as the wealthiest individual in history.
Musk, wearing a leather jacket and flanked by senior SpaceX executives, rang the opening bell on Friday morning before the company’s highly anticipated market debut, an event that received extensive live coverage on CNBC.
Although Musk serves as CEO of SpaceX, he also leads several other major companies, including Tesla. SpaceX told investors it believes it has identified “the largest actionable total addressable market (TAM) in human history,” underscoring the scale of its ambitions.
Beyond space exploration, Musk’s growing business empire continues to expand into media, telecommunications and entertainment.
Through Starlink, SpaceX has become an increasingly formidable broadband internet provider, posing a challenge to telecom giants such as Comcast, Charter, Verizon and AT&T. Meanwhile, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, is developing video-generation models through Grok, technology with significant implications for Hollywood. His social media platform X, formerly Twitter, is also aiming to grow its advertising and subscription revenue.
Commenting on the company’s long-term prospects, Wolfe Research analyst, Peter Supino, said Musk has never been known for setting modest targets.
“We’d guess the common public company mantra of under promise and over deliver was never uttered in the halls of a Musk-run company. He sets big hairy audacious goals and then pushes his organisations to work toward them, even if impossible,” Supino wrote on Friday.
“We expect this stock to be in large part driven by a compelling thematic/story line where if investors believe the disruptive long-term potential then near-in valuation will be less important.”
While overseeing his expanding portfolio of companies, Musk has also remained an outspoken voice in cultural debates, frequently criticising what he describes as “woke” policies in Hollywood and recently taking aim at Christopher Nolan’s casting decisions for The Odyssey.
Despite his criticisms of the entertainment industry, Musk maintains close ties with several influential Hollywood figures, including WME Group Executive Chairman and TKO CEO, Ari Emanuel, as well as Larry Ellison, who is backing his son, David Ellison’s $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
According to Page Six, Emanuel was an investor in SpaceX, alongside Bryan Lourd, Mark Burnett and Michael Kives.
Musk’s unprecedented fortune also dwarfs the value of some of the world’s biggest entertainment companies. The Walt Disney Company has a market capitalisation of about $175 billion, while Netflix is valued at roughly $340 billion.
His trillion-dollar milestone signals the arrival of a new era of business dominance, one that eclipses even the most powerful Hollywood moguls of previous generations, even as Musk continues to acknowledge the influence culture has on shaping public opinion.
