On June 12 (US time), according to AP news agency, SpaceX's initial public offering (IPO) made Elon Musk the first person in history to own assets exceeding the 1,000 billion USD mark.
According to Forbes estimates, Mr. Musk's net worth has increased to about 1,100 billion USD after SpaceX shares rose sharply in the first trading session. This milestone marks an unprecedented turning point in the history of the global super-rich.
To visualize the scale of this number, 1,000 billion USD is equivalent to 1,000 times 1 billion USD or 1 million times 1 million USD. If this amount is divided equally among about 8.2 billion people in the world, each person will receive nearly 122 USD.
If converted into cash, 1,000 billion bills of 1 USD denomination placed in succession will stretch about 156 million km. This distance is equivalent to more than 200 round trips from Earth to the Moon and even longer than the average distance from Earth to the Sun.
Elon Musk's assets are also enough to buy nearly 2.5 million homes in the US. According to the latest data from the US Federal Reserve (Fed), the average selling price of a house in this country is currently around 403,200 USD.
In the energy sector, with an average gasoline price of about 4.11 USD/gallon in the US, Musk's money could buy more than 243 billion gallons of gasoline. This figure far exceeds the total amount of gasoline consumed by Americans in the whole year of 2025.
Considering the scale of the economy, 1,000 billion USD is even more than double the GDP of South Africa - Musk's homeland. According to data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), South Africa's GDP in 2026 is only about 480 billion USD.
The gap between Mr. Musk and the richest people in the world is also widening. Forbes said that the second richest billionaire today is Google co-founder Larry Page with assets of about 295 billion USD.
Even when adding the total assets of other billionaires such as Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos and Larry Ellison, this number is only approximately the current assets of Mr. Musk.
Elon Musk's assets have increased at an incredible rate in recent years. From about 195 billion USD in 2024, his assets have surpassed 1,100 billion USD in just 2 years.
As the gap between rich and poor continues to widen globally, Elon Musk's trillion-dollar milestone is becoming a new symbol of unprecedented wealth concentration in modern history.
