The first trillionaire Elon Musk, even richer

A CROWD FORMED OUTSIDE THE NASDAQ building in New York City’s Times Square before the market opened on June 12. Some were dressed as astronauts; others wore T-shirts reading OCCUPY MARS, a slogan made popular by SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk.

- JEFFREY KLUGER

The gathering was in the run-up to the company’s initial public offering, which was expected to move 555 million shares of SpaceX stock. After the market opened at 9:30 a.m., the IPO exceeded expectations. SpaceX set the stock’s opening share price at $135; at 1:00 p.m. it was trading near $170, pushing the company’s valuation to close to $2.2 trillion and putting Musk’s worth at $1.1 trillion. That’s a lot of treasure for a company that lost $4.9 billion last year and is net negative—to the tune of $41.3 billion—since its 2002 founding.