Elon Musk’s run as the world’s first trillionaire has ended, just a fortnight after it began. The Tesla and SpaceX chief’s fortune now stands at $957 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, after a sharp slide in both companies’ shares wiped out hundreds of billions of dollars in value.
However, Elon Musk remains, by a wide margin, the richest person on the planet.
Elon Musk net worth: a trillionaire for just two weeks
Elon Musk, a co-founder of seven companies including electric carmaker Tesla, rocket maker SpaceX and artificial intelligence venture xAI, crossed the $1 trillion threshold for the first time on 12 June, the day Space Exploration Technologies Corp, the formal name behind the SpaceX brand, made its debut on the Nasdaq.
The company had priced its initial public offering at $135 a share and opened at $150, raising $75 billion in what stands as the largest IPO on record and valuing the rocket and satellite group at close to $1.77 trillion.
Shares climbed further over the course of the day, lifting SpaceX’s valuation to nearly $2 trillion by the close of its first session and underscoring the weight of Musk’s roughly 38% stake in the company, including options.
The rally did not stop there. By 16 June, SpaceX stock had climbed to $225.64, taking Elon Musk’s fortune to a peak of $1.32 trillion and making him the first person in history to cross that mark.
That peak did not hold. SpaceX shares have since retreated towards their opening range, recently trading near $156, down 31% from the high. The pullback has cost Musk roughly $363 billion in just over a week, leaving his fortune at $957 billion as of 24 June, per Bloomberg’s tally. Larry Page sits a distant second on the global rich list, at $297 billion, a gap of more than $660 billion.
SpaceX stock price: Nasdaq debut to a 16% crash
Much of the damage came in a single session. SpaceX shares fell more than 16% on Monday, the second largest one-day loss of market value on record for any company, behind only Nvidia Corp’s roughly $590 billion plunge last year. The slide wiped close to $400 billion off SpaceX’s valuation and cut Elon Musk’s net worth by about $240 billion that day alone, taking it down to roughly $1.08 trillion before the declines continued.
Tesla has not been spared either. Its shares are down 4.14% since 16 June and more than 7% for the year, adding to the pressure on Musk’s balance sheet at a moment when SpaceX was already under strain.
The selling was not confined to Elon Musk’s companies. Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon all suffered some of their worst sessions of the past year, as a broader rout in technology and other high-momentum stocks took hold. Bloomberg reported that the trigger was a selloff in Korean chipmakers, which revived doubts about how far the wider artificial intelligence rally could run.
There was a partial reprieve on Tuesday (23 June). SpaceX shares rose as much as 5.9% intraday, reversing an earlier dip of nearly 4% that had briefly pushed the stock below its $150 opening price, and snapping a three-day stretch that had wiped more than $600 billion off the company’s market value.
SpaceX bond sale: $25 billion to fund AI ambitions
The immediate trigger for the latest leg of selling was a financing decision rather than a results miss. SpaceX moved to raise at least $20 billion through its first ever investment-grade bond sale, with proceeds earmarked for its artificial intelligence ambitions. That is an unusual move in a market typically reserved for established, profitable companies that make cars or sell life insurance. SpaceX has not turned a profit, and S&P Global Ratings has said it expects the company to keep burning cash through 2029.
The offering eventually priced at $25 billion on Tuesday, completing the final step of folding costlier debt into the parent company’s balance sheet. That debt had financed Musk’s 2022 acquisition of Twitter, now X, as well as the expensive loans and bonds that artificial intelligence venture xAI issued last year to cover its rapid cash burn.
Left outside SpaceX, those entities would have spent an estimated $1.8 billion this year servicing a combined $17.5 billion of debt. Folded in, SpaceX will instead pay about $1.5 billion a year in interest on the new bonds.
The restructuring reflects how closely Musk has knitted his companies together, even as the conglomerate has yet to turn a profit, posting a $4.9 billion net loss in 2025. SpaceX, founded in 2002, acquired xAI in February in a deal that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion, with X having been merged into xAI nearly a year earlier.
Revenue from Starlink’s satellite internet business and SpaceX’s rocket contracts with the US government has effectively been underwriting heavy spending at xAI, which now owns X (formerly Twitter).
Tesla remains the other pillar of Musk’s fortune. He first backed the electric carmaker in 2004 and has led it as chief executive since 2008, building up a stake of nearly 11%. A further 8% comes from restricted stock that he stands to forfeit if he does not remain at Tesla until January 2028.
Elon Musk has also founded tunnelling startup The Boring Company and brain implant venture Neuralink, though the bulk of his fortune sits in SpaceX and, to a lesser extent, Tesla.
SpaceX lockup period: the next test for the stock
SpaceX’s volatility may not be over. Early insider shares could reach the market as soon as late July, ahead of the standard 180-day lockup period expiring on 8 December, say experts.
World’s richest person: Elon Musk still well ahead
For all the volatility, Musk’s position at the top of the global wealth rankings looks secure for now. Even after losing trillionaire status, his $957 billion fortune leaves him hundreds of billions of dollars clear of his nearest rival, Larry Page.
Google co-founder Larry Page retains the second richest individual on Earth spot with a net worth of $297 Billion. He is followed by his Google co-founder Sergey Brin, whose net worth is $276 Billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index.