After Tonight, Musk Becomes the First Trillionaire in Human History

The first trillion-dollar billionaire in human history is about to arrive.

Just now, SpaceX fixed the price of the largest IPO in human history at $135 per share.

It will sell 555.6 million shares, raise $75 billion, and push its valuation directly to $1.77 trillion. If the underwriters exercise the over-allotment option and sell another 83.3 million shares, the deal size can rise to about $86 billion.

What does that mean?

The previous record holder was Saudi Aramco, which raised $25.6 billion on the Riyadh stock exchange in 2019. SpaceX is more than twice that size.

When trading opens on Friday, it will become the seventh-largest listed company in the United States, worth more than JPMorgan Chase, Berkshire Hathaway, Meta, and even Musk-owned Tesla (doge).

According to estimates from the equity trading platform Hill.com, this listing could create about 4,400 millionaires inside SpaceX, with about 400 current and former employees holding stakes worth at least $100 million.

For Musk himself, this IPO would send his net worth up by about $275 billion to roughly $970 billion, leaving him one step away from a trillion. If the share price reaches $140, he will officially become the first paper trillionaire in human history.

But the strangest part is how Musk is doing this offering. It is completely outside the usual playbook.

A normal listing involves a roadshow.

Investment banks take the CEO around the world to meet investors, float a price range, listen to feedback, and then slowly settle the final price. Musk went straight through that defense: $135 a share, take it or leave it.

He even pulled a Nasdaq loophole move by reserving as much as 30% of the stock allocation for retail investors.

Even the timing of the price announcement feels very Musk.

Most companies announce after the 4 p.m. market close, afraid that macro news or any market movement during trading hours might affect the price. SpaceX instead dropped the price in a free-writing prospectus after 3 p.m. Eastern time, while the market was still open, and only issued the press release half an hour later.

There is also no need to worry that SpaceX will slip out of Musk control after listing, because he still holds 82% to 84% of SpaceX voting power, depending on the count.

So the question is: is SpaceX worth this price?

Start with the business base. SpaceX mainly relies on three lines today: rockets, Starlink satellite internet, and the AI unit newly merged with xAI.

Starlink is now the revenue backbone, serving millions of consumer, enterprise, and government customers across 164 countries and regions. The rocket business is even stronger: over the past three years, more than 80% of everything humanity sent into orbit was launched by SpaceX.

It sounds beautiful, right? But the financial statements change the mood immediately.

In just the first three months of this year, SpaceX lost $4.3 billion. Since early 2023, cumulative losses have reached $13 billion, mainly because AI is burning cash.

What about revenue? The first quarter brought in $4.7 billion. In the same period, Meta generated $56.3 billion in one quarter and has a market value of only $1.4 trillion. It earns ten times more and is still worth less (eating-melon.jpg).

Where does the confidence behind a $1.77 trillion valuation come from? The answer is AI and the vastness of space.

But whether this promise can actually be eaten depends on a pile of technologies that still have not arrived: launching AI data centers into space, building robot factories on the moon, and sending people to settle on Mars. It feels like science fiction entering reality. The question is whether you believe it.

To make the AI story complete, Musk has been making one aggressive move after another this year.

In February, he merged xAI into SpaceX, instantly pushing the combined valuation to $1.25 trillion and valuing the original SpaceX business at $1 trillion. In April, he announced a $60 billion plan to acquire the AI coding company Cursor, forcing his way into a track he had barely touched before.

The more interesting part is the compute business.

Last month, SpaceX signed a large deal with Anthropic to sell the unused compute capacity from its own AI operations. Then last week, it copied the move with Google, supplying compute that could bring in up to $2.17 billion a month.

If you cannot beat them, selling to them still seems to be going well (doge).

These compute deals now look ready to become the largest source of revenue for SpaceX.

But that is also where the problem sits. The main force of the SpaceX AI business is xAI, whose chatbot Grok has far less presence in consumer and enterprise markets than OpenAI and Anthropic.

Although the SpaceX IPO remains controversial, venture investors have truly made a fortune this time.

Peter Thiel and Founders Fund have been betting for almost 20 years, investing $600 million across several rounds for about 3% of the company, now worth more than $50 billion.

a16z has secured the largest single return in its history, worth more than $10 billion; Sequoia entered at the end of 2019, and its 1.5% stake is now worth more than $20 billion.

Valor, DFJ Growth, 137 Ventures, Thrive, and many other early investors and institutions have also filled their pockets.

In the end, this IPO is not only a bet on a company. It is a bet on Musk himself.

Those who believe in him are betting on the stars, the sea, and the future that has not yet arrived. Those who do not believe are watching the financial statements that burn cash year after year and the promises that cannot yet be verified.

When the market opens tonight, it will give the first answer.