NEW YORK: Elon Musk’s net worth reached an estimated USD 1.1 trillion on June 12 after SpaceX’s IPO, eclipsing his former USD 486.4 billion peak from December 2024.
Forbes said SpaceX began trading on Nasdaq on June 12 and closed its first session at $160.95 a share. That valued the company at about $2.2 trillion and made Musk the first person Forbes had estimated to be worth over $1 trillion.
By August 28, Forbes’ real-time billionaire tracker estimated Musk’s fortune at USD 869.8 billion, still ranking him No. 1 globally. His wealth therefore remains highly sensitive to publicly traded company valuations.
The earlier USD 486.4 billion figure came from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index on December 17, 2024. At the time, Tesla shares and options accounted for more than 60% of his fortune.
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However, claims that Musk is definitively the richest individual in all of human history require a different comparison. Historical rulers often controlled state resources that cannot be measured in the same way as modern corporate shares.
For example, historians say Mansa Musa’s wealth was so extensive that it is nearly impossible to quantify reliably in modern currency.
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Estimates involving Roman emperor Augustus are similarly based partly on his share of the Roman economy. One widely cited calculation places his personal wealth at about one-fifth of the empire’s economy, illustrating why comparisons with modern market-valued assets remain approximate.
