When Elon Musk's SpaceX debuts on Wall Street on Friday, the controversial tech titan will almost certainly step into the history books as the world's first trillionaire. Musk already holds the crown of the world's wealthiest man – worth roughly $696bn before SpaceX announced its record-breaking initial public offering on Thursday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.
But his 42 percent stake in the rocket-cum-AI company will take him into uncharted territory. SpaceX will begin trading at a valuation of $1.77tn when it debuts on the Nasdaq stock exchange, selling 555.6 million shares at $135 each. Estimates of the value of Musk's stake range from $743bn to $866.5bn.
If all goes well, Musk, who also leads Tesla, will officially cement his trillionaire status before markets close on Friday. $1 trillion is a number so large that it stretches the limits of human comprehension. If Musk spent $1m every day, it would still take him 2,740 years to spend $1 trillion, according to UK charity Oxfam.
Ranked alongside his peers, Musk will be more than three times richer than Google co-founder Larry Page, who is the world's second-richest man, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with a fortune of $304bn. Musk will also rank among the wealthiest people of all time. As a trillionaire, Musk would be worth roughly 3 percent of US GDP, surpassing 19th-century magnates like John D. Rockefeller.
Much as Musk is a polarising figure today, the tycoons that accumulated vast fortunes during the mid-to-late 1800s were controversial figures in their day. Musk, too, has deeply involved himself in politics, aligning himself with Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign before going on to lead the Trump administration's controversial campaign to cut waste and fraud in the federal government. Since staging a $40bn hostile takeover of Twitter in 2022, Musk has used the social media platform, since renamed X, as a personal megaphone, promoting right-wing views on hot-button culture-war issues such as immigration and transgender rights.
Despite sharing an affinity for politics, Musk diverges from his ultra-rich predecessors in other ways. For all their vast wealth, the magnates of the Gilded Age were prolific philanthropists, building hospitals, libraries, universities and museums. Musk joined the Giving Pledge in 2012, but the bulk of his philanthropic efforts have been directed through the Musk Foundation toward causes that intersect with his business ventures.
Perhaps the greatest difference between Musk and his predecessors is that – at least so far – his vast wealth has done little to spur sweeping political or societal change. Economists note that Musk's wealth is not carved in stone. He faces competition and the market valuation of his corporations can change. Only in 2022, the inflation boom made Tesla lose more than 60 percent of its market value.
Source: www.aljazeera.com