Trillionaire
SpaceX priced the largest IPO in history at $135 a share, opened for trading Friday at $150 and closed at $161 — before lunch on day one, Elon Musk was the world’s first trillionaire on a stake of roughly five billion shares worth $1.1 trillion. Day four the rocket company briefly passed Amazon at $2.78 trillion and his net worth peaked at $1.32 trillion. Monday the stock fell 16.4% in one session — about $400 billion gone, $240 billion of it his in one week — and the S-1 everyone suddenly reread is the filing that ties one billion restricted shares, fifteen market-cap milestones up to $7.5 trillion, and a permanent colony of at least one million people on Mars to the same paycheck. He walks all of it, from the parking to the peace out.
ELON: So. It happened. SpaceX is public, and I am the world's first trillionaire. Let that sink in. Trillionaire. With a T.
ELON: We priced at one hundred thirty-five a share and still cleared one point seven five trillion — the largest IPO in human history, past Saudi Aramco like it was parked.
ELON: First day of trading, Friday: opened at one hundred fifty, closed at one sixty-one. Up about twenty percent. My stake, roughly five billion shares, crossed one point one trillion before lunch.
ELON: Reuters ran the headline: world's first trillionaire. Not "reportedly." Not "on paper." Just first.
ELON: And then, because the universe has comedic timing, it got better.
ELON: By day four we briefly passed Amazon. Two point seven eight trillion. A rocket company that loses money on purpose out-valued the everything store.
ELON: My net worth peaked at one point three two trillion. I was going to buy a second X and rename the app. XXX.
ELON: Then Monday happened. The stock fell sixteen point four percent in one day. Four hundred billion dollars, gone. That's not a selloff, that's a deleted folder.
ELON: In one week my net worth dropped two hundred forty billion. The press called it a reality check. Bezos got reality-checked for two decades and nobody wrote a headline.
ELON: Market cap back to two point zero three trillion. Still more than — you know what, I'm not doing reassurance math. Trillionaires don't do reassurance math.
ELON: Now, the board, in its infinite wisdom, put my compensation in the S-1. Public. Page after page. The word Mars appears in that filing sixty-three times. The accountants had to learn it.
ELON: The deal: one billion restricted shares if I hit fifteen market-cap milestones up to seven point five trillion dollars, AND build a permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants.
ELON: The filing literally says we don't want humans to have the same fate as dinosaurs. That's in a Securities and Exchange Commission document. Dinosaur lore. Notarized.
ELON: So that's the incentive structure now: either I settle Mars, or a compensation committee somewhere is sad. Those are the two endings they modeled.
ELON: Which brings me to Jeff. Jeff, I like you. You went to space. For eleven minutes. In a phallus.
ELON: My board just stapled a Mars colony to my bonus. Your bonus was a blue keychain and eleven minutes of floating.
ELON: And Mark. Reality Labs has burned more than sixty billion dollars on the metaverse. Sixty. Billion. Nobody showed up, so he pivoted to AI, which is pivoting from one of my problems to another one of my problems.
ELON: Mark renamed his company Meta and everyone kept calling it Facebook. The brand didn't stick. That's a metaphor for the metaverse.
ELON: Now, some people are asking about DOGE. Department of Government Efficiency. The wall of receipts. Great wall. Tremendous receipts.
ELON: One receipt said fifty million dollars of condoms for Gaza. The reporting found it was an HIV program in Mozambique. We corrected the wall. The condoms remain unaccounted for. You're welcome, taxpayers.
ELON: The Pentagon has failed seven straight audits. Seven. But that's not on the wall of receipts, because the wall is load-bearing and the Pentagon is the building.
ELON: But here's what the money is actually for. Mars. Not a brand play. Not a five-decade vision deck. We break ground in the twenty twenties. I've already ordered the steel.
ELON: You can't order Mars steel, obviously, but Earth steel works fine for the first buildings, and the first buildings are named after the investors who held.
ELON: CNBC said Tesla would go bankrupt in 2019. Five years later it did ninety-seven point seven billion in revenue. In one year. They said we couldn't land boosters. We've landed boosters more than four hundred times.
ELON: They said the Cybertruck would never ship. It shipped. I know what it looks like. I approved the design. I stand by it.
ELON: People keep asking if the number went back up. See? Now I'm doing reassurance math. The answer is yes.
ELON: Neil Armstrong said one small step. I say one giant bank account. See you on Mars. Unless you're Jeff. Jeff, you can stay on Earth. Peace out.