Pretoria-born Elon Musk has become the first person in the world to be worth more than $1 trillion after SpaceX’s share price gained 25.38% almost overnight to hit a market value of $2.66 trillion.
This puts Musk’s net worth higher than the gross domestic product (GDP) of more than 170 countries.
Since listing, SpaceX’s share price has risen 25.38%, lifting the company’s market value from about $2.12 trillion when trading opened, to $2.66 trillion.
When the initial public offering (IPO) was priced, shares were set at $135 but demand has seen them move above $200 to close at $201.80 yesterday. On listing day, demand shot the price up to $160.95 when trade opened last Friday.
Musk’s fortune now exceeds the annual economic output of 176 countries, including the Netherlands (about $1.2 trillion), Switzerland (about $1.15 trillion) and Argentina (about $688 billion), and is almost three times South Africa’s GDP of about $490 billion, according to International Monetary Fund figures.
Secret to success
Gains in SpaceX’s stock – listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX – are among the drivers of his net worth growth, which is now $1.3 trillion, according to both Forbes and Bloomberg, after an overnight gain of $42.9 billion.
However, the increase cannot all be attributed to Musk’s stake in SpaceX. Forbes and Bloomberg have methodologies to estimate net worth that consider factors such as ownership stakes, debt, private-company valuations and liquidity considerations, rather than simply multiplying a shareholder’s stake by a company’s market capitalisation.
Musk was worth $801 billion before the IPO pricing and was at $982.6 billion after the price was set, according to Forbes’ “real-time billionaires” minisite.
Musk built his fortune primarily through stakes in electric vehicle maker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX. Bloomberg now lists SpaceX as his largest asset following the company’s record-breaking Nasdaq debut, while Forbes and Bloomberg also include the value of his holdings in artificial intelligence company xAI and social media platform X when calculating his net worth.
Valuing spaceships
The 25.38% gain in SpaceX stock boosted the company’s market cap ranking from eighth to fifth, according to companiesmarketcap.com, which was where it landed after raising Musk’s desired $75 billion on the day before trading started.
Investment bank New Street assigned SpaceX a $165 price target ahead of its Nasdaq debut, implying a valuation of roughly $2.3 trillion after accounting for the company’s acquisition of Cursor, an AI-powered code editor that functions as an intelligent software development environment.
According to a post on X by The Inner Circle Trading Group, that represented upside of about 22% from the IPO price. In a more optimistic scenario, where the company captures the upper end of its potential market opportunity, New Street says the shares could be worth as much as $330.
New Street expects SpaceX to generate $195 billion in revenue and $65 billion in earnings before interest and tax by 2030.
James Bennett, global equity analyst at Anchor, tells ITWeb that SpaceX has a great opportunity to surprise to the upside over the next five years. “The optionality in its business is simply enormous and has Elon Musk − the greatest industrialist of our time − as its CEO.”
Behind the hype
However, not everyone has faith. “SpaceX is a growing company that is money-losing and cash-burning, that will be an Elon Musk vehicle, with all the pluses and minuses that entails,” notes Aswath Damodaran, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
Damodaran is widely regarded as the “Dean of Valuation” for his influence on financial analysis and corporate finance.
SpaceX started its existence as a rocket and satellite company before its purchase of xAI − founded in 2023 to develop advanced AI models and products including the Grok chatbot − resulted in its operations being divided into three segments: space, connectivity and AI, The Motley Fool points out.
SpaceX’s loss came in at $4.9 billion in 2025, widening through the year to a peak of $1.9 billion in the fourth quarter to end-January, which financial services company The Motley Fool says is because of “heavy spending on rockets and AI infrastructure”.
Calling SpaceX’s financial results “somewhat disappointing,” The Motley Fool points out that revenue gained 33% in 2025 to $18.6 billion, a growth rate that was slower than the 2024 gain of 35%.
* For comparison purposes, all figures are provided in dollars to strip out any movements in the local currency, which was trading stronger this morning at R16.19. The currency has gained from around the R16.60 level late last week on the back of lower oil prices as peace talks to end the Middle East war continue.
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