BROWNSVILLE, Texas – Elon Musk is on the verge of becoming the first trillionaire in history, with some reports saying the billionaire entrepreneur has already crossed the unprecedented threshold after SpaceX’s massive public offering.
Reuters reported Thursday that Musk became the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX’s record-breaking $75 billion initial public offering pushed his net worth above $1.1 trillion. Other wealth trackers were more cautious. Business Insider, citing Bloomberg, reported that Musk’s fortune had climbed to roughly $971 billion, leaving him about $29 billion short of the trillion-dollar mark.
Either way, the milestone marks a staggering new chapter in the rise of one of the most influential and controversial business figures in modern history.
The surge in Musk’s wealth is tied largely to SpaceX, the rocket and satellite company he founded in 2002. The company’s public debut reportedly valued SpaceX at roughly $1.77 trillion, making it one of the most valuable publicly traded companies in the world and putting it ahead of many long-established corporate giants.
Musk’s stake in SpaceX is now the central driver of his fortune. Business Insider reported that Musk owns about 39 percent of SpaceX, with his holdings valued at hundreds of billions of dollars after the IPO. Reuters reported that his SpaceX stake alone was valued at about $866 billion following the offering.
SpaceX has grown from a risky private rocket venture into a dominant force in commercial spaceflight. The company launches satellites, transports cargo and astronauts, operates the Starlink satellite internet network, and remains central to Musk’s long-stated goal of making human life multiplanetary.
Musk’s rise did not begin with rockets.
Born in South Africa, Musk later moved to Canada and then the United States, where he became part of the early internet boom. He co-founded Zip2, a software company that was sold to Compaq in 1999. He later helped build what became PayPal, which was sold to eBay in 2002. Those early successes provided the financial foundation for his much larger bets on electric vehicles, spaceflight and energy.
Tesla made Musk a household name. As the electric vehicle company’s longtime chief executive, Musk became the face of the EV revolution, turning Tesla from a niche startup into one of the most valuable automakers in the world. The company’s stock price made Musk the world’s richest person and gave him the financial power to keep expanding his business empire.
His companies now span several industries.
Tesla remains focused on electric vehicles, batteries, energy storage, autonomous driving and robotics. SpaceX dominates much of the commercial launch market and operates Starlink. Neuralink is developing brain-computer interface technology. The Boring Company works on tunnel infrastructure. Musk also owns X, formerly Twitter, after buying the social media platform for $44 billion in 2022. His artificial intelligence company, xAI, has also become part of his broader technology portfolio.
That sprawling empire has created what some analysts call an “Elon premium,” where investors place extraordinary value on companies connected to Musk because of his record of disrupting established industries.
But the road to trillionaire status has also brought scrutiny.
Musk’s rise to trillionaire status also comes after one of the most unusual political chapters in modern American business history: his close alliance, public break with and later apparent thaw with President Donald Trump.
Musk became one of Trump’s most prominent outside allies during the 2024 campaign and later played a central role in the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE. The effort was billed as a sweeping push to cut waste, reduce federal spending and shrink the size of government.
For a time, Musk was one of the most visible figures around Trump’s second-term White House. His work with DOGE made him a hero to supporters who wanted aggressive federal cuts and a target for critics who accused the effort of moving too fast, cutting too deeply and testing legal and institutional limits.
But the partnership eventually fractured.
Musk left his government role in 2025, and tensions between the two men spilled into public view after Musk criticized Trump’s major tax-and-spending legislation. The dispute escalated into a bitter feud, with Trump threatening scrutiny of Musk’s government contracts and Musk floating the idea of forming a new political party.
The feud carried real stakes. Musk’s companies, particularly SpaceX and Tesla, have long had significant relationships with the federal government, including space contracts, defense-related work, regulatory approvals and clean-energy policy exposure. Any sustained break with the White House had the potential to complicate Musk’s business empire.
DOGE itself did not last as originally planned. Reuters reported in November 2025 that the initiative had effectively been dismantled eight months before its scheduled July 2026 end date, with former DOGE staffers moving into other administration roles.
The relationship between Musk and Trump later appeared to soften. The two were seen together after the public fallout, and in January 2026 Musk posted that he had dinner with Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, writing that 2026 was “going to be amazing.”
That apparent reconciliation has not erased the turbulence of the episode. Musk’s time with DOGE showed how far his influence had expanded beyond business and technology into the machinery of federal power. It also showed the risks of tying one of the world’s largest business empires to the unpredictable world of presidential politics.
As Musk moves closer to, or according to some reports beyond, the trillion-dollar mark, his relationship with Trump remains part of the larger story: a billionaire industrialist whose companies depend on markets, regulators and government contracts, and a president who briefly made him one of the most powerful unelected figures in Washington.
Musk’s companies have faced questions over labor practices, safety, corporate governance, regulatory fights and the enormous concentration of wealth and influence in one person. His outspoken political commentary and control of X have also made him a polarizing public figure far beyond the business world.
Still, the numbers are difficult to ignore.
Whether Musk has already crossed the trillion-dollar line or remains just below it, the SpaceX IPO has placed him closer than any person in history to a level of personal wealth once considered almost unimaginable. His fortune now rests on a collection of companies that stretch from electric cars on American roads to satellites circling the planet and rockets aimed at Mars.
What an accomplishment for an African-American,. This is another successful person for Platner to hate, along with Muks’s employees who are now millionaires!
Musk just works harder than everyone else and has earned every penny! Stop complaining about the cost of gas or groceries or healthcare and go do something valuable with your life! Musk’s fine work at DOGE and his cutting of USAID has resulted in hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths, sucks to be them! Yes, DOGE was run with staggering incompetency and on top of causing deaths cut crucial science funding and programs and cost thousands of jobs, but it least it managed to save basically no money whatsoever!!
Keep defending billionaires (and trillionaires) right wingers, they certainly aren’t in it for themselves, they’re in it for you!
USAID was nothing more than a CIA slush fund. No one has died and the money was usually stolen by the countries government, not much went to where it should have. Maybe the great UN should pick up the slack. Heck anyone can donate to the NGO of their choice, we do.