Elon Musk has become the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX’s market debut. His $1.1 trillion fortune exceeds most national economies and could buy 2.5 million homes or 243 billion gallons of fuel.
How do you measure a trillion dollars? Start with the zeroes. A trillion is written as $1,000,000,000,000 – a one followed by 12 zeroes. Yet even that struggles to convey its true scale.
Following the blockbuster stock market debut of SpaceX, Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, with his net worth soaring to an estimated $1.1 trillion, according to Forbes. The milestone came after SpaceX shares began trading on the Nasdaq at $150, significantly above their IPO price of $135.
According to an analysis by the Associated Press, the trillion-dollar threshold has long been associated with the GDP of nations, government debt and the market value of the world’s largest corporations. Now, for the first time, it belongs to a single individual.
More Than 200 Trips To The Moon
The sheer scale of a trillion dollars is difficult to comprehend.
If one trillion US dollar bills were laid end to end, they would stretch nearly 97 million miles (156 million kilometres). That is enough for more than 200 round trips between Earth and the Moon, which sits about 238,855 miles away, according to NASA.
The line of dollar bills would also exceed the roughly 93 million miles separating Earth from the Sun, highlighting just how vast a trillion dollars really is.
Another way to visualise it: if Musk’s fortune were divided equally among the world’s estimated 8.2 billion people, every person on Earth would receive nearly $122.
Bigger Than Most Economies
Musk’s fortune now exceeds the annual economic output of most countries.
According to International Monetary Fund estimates, South Africa, Musk’s country of birth, has a GDP of roughly $480 billion. A trillion dollars is therefore worth more than double the size of the South African economy.
Only about 21 countries worldwide currently have economies worth more than $1 trillion. The United States and China remain the largest at approximately $32.38 trillion and $20.85 trillion respectively, but most nations fall far below the trillion-dollar mark.
The milestone also underscores the widening gap between Musk and the rest of the world’s ultra-rich.
According to Forbes, the world’s second-richest person, Google co-founder Larry Page, has a net worth of about $293 billion – leaving him roughly $707 billion behind Musk’s trillion-dollar fortune.
In fact, the combined fortunes of Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos and Larry Ellison amount to just over $1.04 trillion, only slightly more than Musk’s personal wealth.
2.5 Million Homes And 243 Billion Gallons Of Fuel
The purchasing power of a trillion dollars is equally staggering.
Based on the median US home price of approximately $403,200, Musk’s fortune could buy nearly 2.5 million homes.
At average US fuel prices of about $4.11 per gallon, $1 trillion could also purchase more than 243 billion gallons of petrol.
To put that into perspective, Americans consumed around 137 billion gallons of finished motor gasoline during the entirety of last year, meaning a trillion dollars could buy far more fuel than the United States uses annually.