Elon Musk has become the world’s first trillionaire, according to Bloomberg estimates, after a staggering surge in the valuation of his space exploration company SpaceX pushed his personal fortune past the $1tn mark. The milestone, which seemed unthinkable even a decade ago, was triggered by a series of successful rocket launches and a lucrative government contract, but it arrives at a time when millions of ordinary people are struggling to put food on the table. For the 52-year-old South African-born entrepreneur, whose wealth is now greater than the GDP of most nations, the trillion-dollar club is a lonely one.
But for the warehouse workers, delivery drivers, and call centre staff who make his other ventures tick, the news is a bitter reminder of a gulf that keeps widening. The valuation leap came after SpaceX secured a multi-billion dollar contract with Nasa for its Starship programme, and completed a funding round that valued the company at $1.7tn.
Musk’s 42 per cent stake in the firm, combined with his holdings in Tesla, X (formerly Twitter), and the tunnelling venture The Boring Company, lifted his net worth to an estimated $1.01tn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. But the celebration of individual wealth stands in stark contrast to the reality facing many workers in Musk’s own companies.
At Tesla, unionisation efforts have been met with resistance, and workers have complained about pay and conditions that lag behind the company’s soaring stock price. In the UK, where Musk’s satellite internet service Starlink is expanding, consumers are being charged premium prices for a service that remains out of reach for many rural communities still reliant on patchy broadband. For the average worker, the trillion-dollar mark is an abstraction.
It is hard to conceive of a number with 12 zeros when you are counting pennies to fill the petrol tank. Yet the concentration of wealth at the top continues to accelerate. According to Oxfam, the world’s richest 1 per cent have captured nearly two-thirds of all new wealth created since 2020.
Musk’s trillion-dollar milestone is the ultimate symbol of that trend. Not everyone is cheering. Unions representing aerospace workers have pointed out that the SpaceX windfall comes largely from public contracts: tax dollars helping to pad the pockets of the world’s richest man.
“It’s a disgrace that our government is funding a billionaire’s hobby while workers in the same industry face redundancy and stagnant wages,” said a spokesperson for the US-based International Association of Machinists. The UK’s Trades Union Congress echoed the sentiment, calling for a windfall tax on extreme wealth to fund public services. Meanwhile, Musk’s critics on social media were quick to point out that his fortune could theoretically fund the entire NHS budget for more than a decade.
But for now, the system that created the world’s first trillionaire shows no sign of slowing down. The stock market, venture capital, and government procurement are all geared towards rewarding those at the top. For the rest of us, the price of bread goes up.
