Elon Musk becomes world’s first trillionaire as SpaceX opens higher in Wall Street debut

New York: The world’s richest man just became its first trillionaire.

Shares in Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX soared 25 per cent after opening for trading at noon on Friday (Saturday morning AEST), an auspicious start for history’s biggest initial public offering and enough to push the net worth of its founder and chief executive over the trillion-dollar mark.

The shares opened at $US150 ($212), then shot to $US168.90 ($239.63) around 12.25pm (New York time). That price gave the company a market value of $US2.21 trillion ($3.14 trillion). Musk, who also is a major shareholder and CEO of Tesla, is now worth an estimated $US1.1 trillion ($1.56 trillion), according to Forbes.

Musk says SpaceX, founded in 2002, is going public now because it needs money to fund its ambitions of putting satellites and data centres in space and eventually establishing a colony of people on Mars.

He earlier marked the opening of trading on Nasdaq, where the company’s shares are trading under the symbol “SPCX,” by joining a ceremonial bell ringing from Starbase, the South Texas home of SpaceX.

He reiterated his lofty goals “to make life multiplanetary.”

“Not just a few astronauts, I mean literally you,” Musk said. “Whoever you are watching this, SpaceX wants to be able to take you to the moon, take you to Mars and ultimately beyond.”

Known for his technological breakthroughs, as well as wild claims and missed deadlines, Musk was able to whip up enthusiasm for the IPO despite SpaceX losing billions of dollars a year. Institutional and retail investors alike jumped at the opportunity to buy a piece of the company at $135 ($191) per share before trading began. The $US75 billion in proceeds SpaceX raised easily topped the previous record IPO from oil giant Saudi Aramco in 2019.

In addition to establishing a one-million person Martian colony, the company has promised to save humanity by establishing other outposts in space, launch data centres the size of football fields into orbit and outdo rivals Anthropic and OpenAI in the race to make money from artificial intelligence.

To reach its goals, SpaceX needs billions more than it currently takes in from its rocket and satellite business. Between the start of 2025 and March 31, 2026, the company lost $US8.7 billion.

Wall Street bankers that helped take SpaceX public are enthusiastic about the company – and the big fees they will earn – but not everyone thinks the stock price is justified.

Analysts at research firm Morningstar, which doesn’t earn any investment banking fees, wrote that the IPO is “significantly overvalued”