Elon Musk is ready to be one in a trillion.
The world’s richest person is poised to get even richer and become the world’s first trillionaire with SpaceX’s highly anticipated stock market debut.
Musk is currently worth about $790 billion, but is expected to see his wealth top $1 trillion when his spacecraft and satellite communications company goes public Friday.
“For him, it probably won’t be a very meaningful change. He already has an enormous amount of wealth, and this will be some more zeros,” said Michael Morris, a professor of leadership at Columbia Business School.
“I don’t think for society it really matters that it’s Elon Musk, as opposed to anyone else,” he added. “But our institutions are under our control, and our institutions are allowing greater levels of inequality, and we just know empirically that that puts democracy at risk.”
SpaceX is preparing for a massive initial public offering (IPO), with plans to raise a record-breaking $75 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation.
Its intended $135 share price will make Musk’s stake in the company worth $866.5 billion on paper following the IPO.
With his stake in Tesla, Musk’s net worth could reach about $1.1 trillion.
This wealth is largely not liquid and is instead locked up in Musk’s companies, Morris said.
“It’s not like somebody winning the lottery,” he said. “It’s money that is his on paper, but with different time horizons of being available.”
Musk became the world’s richest person in 2021, surpassing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Musk has held onto his spot for the most part over the past five years.
The next closest billionaire to Musk is currently Google co-founder Larry Page.
Page has a net worth of about $290 billion.
They are followed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin with about $270 billion, according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires list.
