Elon Musk is a trillionaire again. His net worth crossed $1 trillion on Monday, October 5, as SpaceX and Tesla shares climbed, and ended the day near $1.04 trillion on both the Forbes and Bloomberg trackers. It is the second time he has held the title since June.
Three things lined up. SpaceX shares rose about 7.6% after last week’s first successful Starship trip to orbit and a Morgan Stanley note calling the stock undervalued. Tesla added about 2.2% after third-quarter deliveries beat expectations on Friday, the day his fortune jumped $61 billion. We broke that day down in our earlier story.
The reason two stocks can swing one fortune this far is simple. Bloomberg estimates they make up more than 98% of his net worth. He owns about 38% of SpaceX and about 11% of Tesla, and the next richest person, Jeff Bezos, sits near $371 billion.
He has been here before
Musk first crossed the line in June. SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 a share, opened trading at $150 and pushed his fortune as high as $1.45 trillion. He lost the title by late June, and by July, with SpaceX stock down about 50% from its June high, his net worth had fallen below $700 billion.
Our take: a trillion dollars on paper is a headline, not a bank balance. Monday’s gain of roughly $59 billion to $65 billion, depending on the tracker, was far bigger than the cushion he now has above the mark. One bad day for SpaceX would take the title away again.
The trackers also use different methods, which is why their numbers differ by tens of billions of dollars. So the exact figure matters less than how fast it moves, and right now it moves with every SpaceX trade. We also looked at what Musk says makes him happy in another story.
