Elon Musk briefly became world's first trillionaire for 12 days after SpaceX IPO

Eva Roytburg Wed, June 24, 2026 at 12:38 PM PDT 3 min read

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Elon Musk, the world's richest man, briefly held the title of being the world's first and only trillionaire before his net worth fell back to a more modest nine-figure sum.

On June 12, the day SpaceX began trading on the Nasdaq, Musk became the first person ever to achieve a $1 trillion net worth. However, by June 24, his fortune had dropped to $957 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. At his peak during that period, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO was worth — depending on the methodology, time of day, and source — between $1.32 trillion and $1.45 trillion.

Forbes also downgraded Musk’s status, but estimated his net worth slightly higher than Bloomberg at $962 billion, after excluding $116 billion of restricted Tesla stock from its calculations. Both trackers agree on one durable fact: Musk remains, by a wide margin, the richest person on the planet. (Larry Page trails far behind as the world’s second richest person, with a net worth of around $300 billion.)

SpaceX Fueled the Trillionaire Ride

The brief ascent to trillionaire status was driven by SpaceX. The company priced its initial public offering at $135 per share and, on June 12, raised a record $85.7 billion at a valuation of nearly $1.77 trillion. Retail buyers, attracted by Musk’s vision of data centers in space and a future Mars settlement, pushed the stock to around $225 on June 16, briefly valuing the company close to $2 trillion.

However, by Tuesday’s close, shares sat near $156 — roughly 30% off the peak — and slipped further on Wednesday, briefly dipping below the first-day pop price of $150.

Musk’s stake in SpaceX, about 40% of the company, still accounts for the bulk of his fortune. Bloomberg estimates it at around $744 billion, or roughly four-fifths of his total wealth.

Governance Concerns and Market Pressures

Scholars have raised concerns about SpaceX’s highly concentrated governance structure, noting that shareholders have unusually little control over the company’s future. MSCI gave SpaceX a CCC rating — its worst — for governance.

The flip side of Musk’s control is that his net worth fluctuates sharply when the stock price moves.

Two forces have weighed on the stock since the exuberant IPO week:

• Macroeconomic pressures: Investors priced in the possibility of one or more interest rate hikes after the Federal Reserve’s hawkish June meeting. This created a higher-for-longer backdrop that lifted the dollar to a 13-month high and dragged oil and gold prices lower.
• SpaceX-specific factors: Confirmation of a planned bond sale — reported at roughly $20 billion to $25 billion — raised questions about why a capital-intensive company would issue debt at a valuation that had just outpaced its IPO price. Debt-buyers showed high demand for the bonds, but mainly for shorter-dated maturities of about five years — a less risky purchase than some of the longer-term debt Musk plans to auction.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.