To describe how rich Elon Musk has become as the world’s first trillionaire, we need new terminology. To grasp the opportunities his wealth presents, he needs Gwynne Shotwell.
Terminology first. Global GDP was about $111tn in 2024, so the Musk-to-GDP ratio for the world is 1%. For the US it’s 3.7%. For the UK it’s about 32%.
In pounds, he remains a mere billionaire. His $1.2tn fortune from floating SpaceX on Nasdaq is only worth £890bn, less if he popped into Eurochange with some suitcases.
It’s more than the Treasury took last year in income tax, national insurance, VAT, council tax, and duty on fuel, tobacco and alcohol: £811bn. It’s a little less than London’s housing stock: £1.1tn.
Perhaps the most useful valuation is that Musk personally owns about 1.7% of the Nasdaq; SpaceX is 4.1% of the share index’s total market capitalisation, and Tesla is 2.5%. Le marché, c’est lui, as Louis XIV might have put it.
SpaceX’s IPO also turned about 4,400 current and former employees into millionaires and several senior executives and shareholders into billionaires. Chief among them is Shotwell, the company’s president and chief operating officer.
The 62-year-old has spent the last 24 years making her boss’s dreams come true: getting SpaceX’s rockets into orbit, to the moon, and to Mars.
Shotwell has worked in the space industry for most of her career and her training as a mechanical engineer and mathematician mean she has the expertise to meet Musk’s aim of doing space more cheaply than Nasa – SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket vehicles are key to that.
Along the way she has put more than 10,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, handled launchpad explosions and dealt with allegations that her boss harassed a flight attendant (which he denied). She is Musk’s safe pair of hands, the adult in his chainsaw-lined, ketamine-dusted room.
So it was surprising that, on the day of SpaceX’s IPO, Shotwell supercharged Wall Street rumours that Musk would merge it with Tesla by talking of a “convergence” that would “make Elon’s life a little easier”.
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It would complicate the delicate question of Musk’s pay deal, which will roughly double his paper fortune if he can increase Tesla’s market value to $8.5tn, among other goals. He would get extra Tesla stock worth another $1tn.
It’s a stretch goal, an attempt by Tesla investors to get him to focus on cars, and seems a long way off. By taking SpaceX public, the 54-year-old has also taken a short cut. He has more funds to pursue his ambitions of a Martian colony, and whatever else he fancies.
By taking SpaceX public, Musk has also taken a short cut. He has more funds to pursue his ambitions of a Martian colony, and whatever else he fancies.
By taking SpaceX public, Musk has also taken a short cut. He has more funds to pursue his ambitions of a Martian colony, and whatever else he fancies.
American historians have compared him to John D Rockefeller, whose ownership of Standard Oil made him the first dollar billionaire. The Rockefeller-to-GDP ratio for the US was about 2%.
His wealth changed the US. His companies made kerosene cheap, and inspired anti-monopoly laws. His fortune was the foundation of medical research and public health bodies and funded schools and universities.
Musk’s wealth is likely to change the US and maybe the world. Unlike Rockefeller, who took no interest in newspapers and little in politics, Musk can afford to treat his social media platform X as a trophy asset and a bully pulpit, and toss cash at his favourite politicians.
Shotwell’s actions provide other clues. She has been promoting Starlink’s mobile service and is now responsible for xAI, heralding a greater involvement in the other big tech race around artificial intelligence.
Last week, in the build-up to the IPO, SpaceX launched another 50 Starlink satellites. Alongside them in one of the rockets were some Starshield military satellites, which Ukraine has been using in its war against the Russian invasion. Starshield is a communications network that can also control drones. Two weeks ago, the Ministry of Defence began using it.
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Photograph by Spencer Platt/Getty Images