Elon Musk could become world's first trillionaire with SpaceX's IPO

NEW YORK: Elon Musk may never colonise Mars as promised, but enough investors consider the SpaceX founder to be a sort of miracle man that they'll help him reach another fantastic goal Friday when he takes the rocket company public.

The world's richest man is set to become its first trillionaire.

Musk on Friday marked the opening of trading on Nasdaq, where the company's shares will be listed, by joining a ceremonial bell ringing from Starbase, the South Texas home of SpaceX.

He reiterated his lofty goals “to make life multi-planetary.”

“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 brilliant technology breakthroughs, as well as wild claims and missed deadlines, Musk is expected to break that trillion dollar mark in the biggest initial public offering ever as investors place bets on a company with losses as big as its ambitions. Ahead of the first trade in SpaceX, Forbes puts Musk's net worth at USD 982.6 billion.

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 centers 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 USD 8.7 billion.

Big institutional buyers and smaller-pocketed investors alike have indicated they are willing to take a chance, paying a high enough price for the 555.6 millions on offer to raise USD 75 billion.

That will easily top the current title holder, Saudi Aramco, the oil giant that raised USD 26 billion in its 2019 initial offering.

If the IPO goes off without a hitch, its value will come down mainly to one thing: Musk.

The soon-to-be trillionaire — on paper at least — made his fortune by creating two companies, Zip2 and PayPal, that netted him about USD 200 million at sale. He used that money to start SpaceX and invest in Tesla, and defied the odds by creating a space company that figured out how to reuse rockets and a car company that made electric vehicles cool.

Musk has realised vast sums of wealth for himself, much of it in stock he has yet to cash in or grants for shares he'll only receive if Tesla or SpaceX hit ambitious performance targets.

His recent pay package from Tesla drew criticism from the Vatican. At Tesla, he's worried shareholders by fighting with regulators or dividing his attention between multiple companies and last year by taking a role in the Trump administration.