SpaceX IPO Launches Thousands of Millionaires

Assets in the public offering included the satellite-based internet service company Starlink, the AI LLM Grok and the social network X, formerly known as Twitter.

Musk Crows, Critics Pounce

The company’s successful IPO made SpaceX founder and president Elon Musk, who was already the world’s richest man, into something new. Countless news outlets rushed to observe the dawn of the world’s first trillion dollar man.

Musk celebrated his triumph by tweeting that it was “Time to get that volcano lair I’ve always wanted. I think it’s in the ‘beyond’ section of [home goods store Bed Bath & Beyond]”.

His volcano lair brag was delivered as an obvious joke. Yet many of the man’s critics showed that they do believe him to be a special kind of cartoon villain.

“While working people struggle to get by, the billionaire class is becoming the TRILLIONAIRE class. It's disgusting”, wrote Ed Markey, a Democratic US senator from Massachusetts, in a representative statement on X.

Pramila Jayapal, a Democratic congresswoman from the state of Washington, called Musk’s wealth accumulation “total bullshit” in a video and opined that “no one should be a trillionaire”.

Patty Murray, a US senator also from Washington, criticized Musk by association. “While Americans are struggling to afford basic necessities like groceries and gas, Elon Musk just became the world's first trillionaire”, she said. “At least Trump's policies are working for someone!”

Musk’s critics typically used his wealth to further their own policy agendas. Senator Markey said that he was “fighting to tax the rich so we stop rewarding trading stocks over punching clocks”.

Bernie Sanders is a socialist senator from Vermont who caucuses with the Democratic Party and has run for its presidential nomination. He wrote on SpaceX’s IPO day, “Today, Elon Musk, a trillionaire, pays the same amount into Social Security as someone making $184,500”.

Sanders declared that it was time to “end that absurdity and lift the cap on taxable income” and thereby “make Social Security solvent for 75 years and expand benefits”.

A Rising Stock Price Lifts All Boats

Musk had his defenders as well. They pointed out he was already very rich before this IPO by making products that people and governments really want to buy.

For instance, he founded the electric car company Tesla. It has made electric vehicles widely available and even somewhat affordable. New Tesla models sell for as little as $36,900. A large secondary market is now within range for many budget buyers.

An additional defense of the world’s first trillionaire was that he pulled a lot of people up with him. Stories and memes trumpeted figures of current and past SpaceX employees with stock options worth millions.

Estimates from the company’s public disclosure documents said that the sale had created 4,000 millionaires and an additional 400 centimillionaires, meaning individuals with assets on paper of more than $100m.

The person who did the initial number crunching for the 4,400-plus millionaires story was Andrew Benson, founder of the investment platform Hill.com. In a widely shared post on X, he walked people through his work derived from the company’s publicly disclosed numbers.

Benson found that every single SpaceX employee “who joined before the first successful [rocket] launch made (unless they sold early) more than $100 million”. Somewhere between 400 and 500 who owned SpaceX stock options were now worth $100m or more, a few dozen were above $500m and there were now “a handful of billionaires past Musk”.

More Millionaires with Blue Collars

Dustin Siggins is president of Proven Media Solutions, a PR firm. He considered the question of which side is prevailing in the SpaceX IPO narrative tug-of-war.

Is the more convincing side those who “say Elon Musk is a greedy trillionaire” or is it their opposite number who insist that he “created 4,000 millionaires”?

Siggins was quick to insist of Musk that “I oppose many things he says or does”. Nevertheless, he scored the current conversation in favor of the “creator of millionaires” camp for several reasons.

The attacks on Musk seem like more of the same at this point, Siggins reckoned, whereas the 4,000 new millionaires narrative has some novelty to it. This is reaching not only business media but also mass media, and being magnified by social media sharing.

Moreover, many of these workers are not your typical tech millionaires. Rather, they are blue-collar, through and through. “This means that Elon Musk, a longtime technology leader, is standing with those whose hands make their livelihoods”, Siggins explained the debate.

One of those newly minted millionaires was Juan Hernandez of Texas, a welder who has worked at the company for 10 years. “As an immigrant, I was always taught to work hard, do the best I can at what I do, and thanks to SpaceX I can see the light at the end of the tunnel”, he told CBS News.

The CBS reporter asked Hernandez if he felt like he had achieved the American dream. “Yeah”, he replied, adding, “I mean, but there’s no reason to stop”.

Hernandez’s “no reason to stop” expression is in line with Elon Musk’s general approach to business and life, from cars to rocket ships to robots, and beyond. There are few domains that he does not have publicly expressed designs on improving.

In celebrating their company’s achievement, Musk told SpaceX workers that they would take humanity to the moon, to Mars, “and ultimately beyond”. He could become Earth’s first $2tn man in the process, if he decides to stick around on this planet.