Elon Musk's journey to becoming the world's first trillionaire will likely be powered by rockets rather than cars, as SpaceX now accounts for nearly two-thirds of the Tesla CEO's wealth.
Musk became the first person ever to top the $800 billion mark this week, with his net worth now around $845 billion, according to Forbes. He's worth more than the next three richest people – Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg – combined.
The tech magnate's unprecedented wealth surged after his aerospace and defense company, SpaceX, acquired his artificial intelligence and social media company, xAI, this week in a deal that valued the merged entity at $1.25 trillion, according to financial documents reviewed by CNBC.
With Musk's ownership estimated at around 43% in the combined company, his stake would be valued at over $530 billion, marking a rapid shift in his fortunes.
Musk's priorities are also likely shifting his focus more to SpaceX than Tesla, a reality that the EV company acknowledged in its latest proxy filing, where it noted that "a majority of Mr. Musk's wealth is now derived from other business ventures."
Last year, Musk confirmed he wants to take SpaceX public in 2026, which would make Tesla a less prevalent component of his liquid wealth. But he still has to get buy-in from public market investors, who may be reluctant to pay up for a company that combines a defense contractor and satellite business with a cash-burning AI model developer that's trying to take on Google, OpenAI and Anthropic.
SpaceX has received more than $20 billion from contracts with the federal government, according to research from FedScout, with more lucrative contracts on the way, and Musk has framed the acquisition as the next step towards "orbital data centers."
"You've muddied up your story a little bit as a pure-play SpaceX shareholder, but the opportunity has gotten a lot bigger," said Greg Martin, managing director at Rainmaker Securities, which works on transactions for pre-IPO companies. "It makes sense for them to access a much larger capital market, especially with xAI, which does have insatiable need for capital."
XAI is currently being investigated by authorities in Europe, Asia, Australia and California, after the company's Grok image generator let users create and share "deepfake" explicit images of children and women.
It's not clear whether Musk's merger will require any regulatory review. Democratic senators this week called for the Pentagon to investigate SpaceX over undisclosed Chinese investors in the company.