Elon Musk has officially become the world’s very first trillionaire. His company SpaceX has raised 75 billion US dollars (£56 billion) ahead of its record-breaking 1.8 trillion US dollar (£1.3 trillion) US stock market debut on Friday as it looks set to become the biggest flotation of all time.
The move has cemented Tesla and X owner Mr Musk’s position as the richest man on the planet. In a filing with America’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), SpaceX confirmed the float price of 135 dollars (£100.65) for shares, with 555.6 million being sold. Shares then hit $158.51
The spaceflight and technology firm opened at 150 US dollars (£111) per share, jumping 11% compared with its original float price. Shares continued to move steadily higher in the minutes after trading opened making Mr Musk, who is a majority shareholder owning more than 80% of SpaceX, the biggest beneficiary. This values Mr Musk’s stake in the business at around 765 billion US dollars (£570 billion).
Mr Musk said the company is going public because it needs money to fund its ambitions of putting satellites and data centers in space and eventually establishing a colony of people on Mars. On Friday, he said in a speech from Starbase, Texas, that the record-breaking IPO was “hard to believe”.
He added: “If people had told me this was going to happen, I was like, ‘man, you must be smoking some really good crack, because I think this company is going to fail’.”
SpaceX eclipsed that of former record holder Saudi Aramco when it raised 25.6 billion dollars (£19.1 billion) in its listing on Riyadh’s stock exchange in 2019.
Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at Wealth Club, said: “SpaceX shares blasted higher on their stock market debut, shooting past the $135 IPO price as investors rushed to buy into Elon Musk’s vision for space, satellite and AI domination.
“Shares hit $150, slightly less than earlier predictions, but indicative of huge interest in Elon Musk’s vision. He has long been reaching for the stars with his extra-terrestrial ambitions, and it appears plenty of investors share his enthusiasm for the future.”
In the UK, 2.7 million shares worth 364 million dollars (£271 million) have been pre-allocated to British retail investors, according to the firm handling UK subscriptions.
It said total demand from UK retail investors stood at just under one billion dollars (£740 million), while total global demand from smaller investors was reportedly over 100 billion dollars (£74.5 billion), meaning many orders were unfulfilled. Nearly two-thirds (61%) of British retail investors received a full allocation of shares, with those applying for up to 2,700 dollars’ worth (£2,013) getting the full amount, while those applying for more than this saw allocations scaled back, with a maximum allowed at 1,000 shares each.
Elon Musk’s net worth was estimated at 982.6 billion US dollars (£733 billion) before the float, according to Forbes, which has swelled to more than one trillion dollars after the record-breaking initial public offering (IPO). The 54-year-old has eclipsed many of his tech counterparts, with the combined net worth of Forbes listed top ranking billionaires – Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Oracle chairman Larry Ellison – having a combined fortune of 1.04 trillion dollars (£770 billion) between them.
