Just Now, Humanity Got Its 1st Trillionaire, and 4,400 Millionaires

Just tonight, SpaceX officially went public, with the opening price initially showing as high as $156.93 per share, soaring 30% from the previous public offering price of $135 per share...

Through this largest IPO in history, Musk has unsurprisingly become the world's first trillionaire...

I'm truly impressed by this old guy; he must be so numb to ringing the bell that he just went ahead and did a remote bell-ringing.

I guess everyone has become a bit desensitized to the word trillionaire, so foreigners specifically created a website to prove that you absolutely don't understand what a trillion is.

For example, it uses a line where the origin is $1 million and the far right is $1 trillion, then asks you: where should $1 billion be?

As a seasoned test-taker who has survived over a decade of exams, I know just by thinking with my toes that the answer must be somewhere relatively close to the left; otherwise, there would be no dramatic effect.

But when we select an answer we think is far enough to the left and submit it with full confidence.

The correct answer slaps us hard in the face: on this coordinate axis, $1 billion has barely left the starting point, making up only one-thousandth of the entire distance...

This website also uses a more vivid way to help everyone understand exactly how much money a trillion dollars is.

The method is very simple: continuously stack 1-cent coins on the ground (roughly the same thickness as a 1 RMB coin). A billion coins stacked up could stretch from New York all the way to Cape Canaveral, Florida (one of SpaceX's launch sites), which is equivalent to going from Changchun in the Northeast all the way down to Shanghai...

And the concept of a trillion means you could stack them from the ground all the way to the Moon Palace.

And then return...

And then do it two or three more times...

I have to say, after seeing such a visual explanation of how massive a trillion is, my originally indignant wealth-envy has actually calmed down.

However, besides turning Musk himself into an indescribable, Cthulhu-level trillionaire, this SpaceX IPO also filled the SpaceX cafeteria with millionaires (in USD)...

According to statistics, SpaceX currently has 22,000 employees, and over 4,400 current and former employees will achieve millionaire status through the stocks they hold. Among them, 400 people have assets exceeding ten million dollars...

Let's all take a look at what a SpaceX stock certificate looks like

Don't think that these good things only fell upon senior engineers or specialized R&D personnel.

On the contrary, the turkey leg ladies in the cafeteria, the welders at the launch base... as long as their labor contracts included stock options, they all struck it rich.

Foreign media interviewed a guy named Juan Hernandez. As a Mexican immigrant, he learned the trade of welding after arriving in the US.

In 2015, a friend told him SpaceX was hiring. Juan didn't even know what SpaceX was at the time; he only knew they paid generously, paid on time, and never withheld wages, so he brought his welding talents to SpaceX.

At first, Brother Juan's wage was $28 per hour. After a while, he successfully became a regular employee and received equity worth $10,000 at the time, vesting over five years. At the same time, he could also use a portion of his salary to continuously buy SpaceX stock.

By 2020, SpaceX's valuation had reached $36 billion. Brother Juan sold a small portion of his shares in batches, successfully bought a house and settled down in Texas, and even opened a real estate company...

Today, the remaining stocks he holds are still worth $880,000 (estimated at the IPO price)...

Brother Juan generously stated during the interview: "I've been incredibly lucky in this life, man."

Interestingly, Brother Juan, who left SpaceX last year, turned around and joined Musk's arch-rival Blue Origin, continuing his old welding trade.

I feel like if Blue Origin also goes public later, this guy might come out and show off again?

Amidst the overwhelming news, the only thing that made me feel a bit better is a rumor.

It's said that some early SpaceX employees, due to their lack of optimism about the company's development and Musk's constant public expression of disgust towards going public, were so misled that they early on exchanged their stocks for gift cards to restaurants like Chili's. This is equivalent to trading original Alibaba shares for a Grandma's Home membership card...

Internal employees also revealed to the outside world that these folks are green with regret.

Just watching SpaceX insiders make a fortune while others kick themselves for missing out isn't enough. This IPO has also driven outside investors crazy. Retail and institutional investors worldwide are throwing real money at Musk's space dream, not wanting to miss this epic wealth-creation train.

The market's attitude towards SpaceX's listing is actually quite polarized: on one side, people worldwide are lining up and throwing real money to grab shares; on the other side, cold water is being poured bucket by bucket.

You should know that SpaceX's planned issuance size this time is $75 billion, but a couple of days ago, global institutional and retail subscriptions had already reached 4 times that, exceeding $250 billion, with retail investors alone accounting for over $100 billion...

Among them, in Japan—the only country in Asia allowed to have retail investors participate in this IPO—investors fell into a frenzy of "buying as much as possible the moment it appears." SpaceX had to顺势 increase its issuance target in Japan, raising it from $2 billion to $2.5 billion.

In Australia, retail investor demand was also almost hysterical.

Some die-hard Musk fans even tried to borrow money from besties or take out loans to get on board and buy more SpaceX stock.

In their view, "more is good, and good is more," and "you can never invest too much in one of the most ambitious companies in history."

In other words, on a global scale, there are actually people lining up to pay for the grand vision Musk is painting.

Musk fans outside the Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, congratulating SpaceX on its successful IPO

It's just a pity we can't buy this pie, otherwise you'd see if I wouldn't support the Mars dream or not.

Of course, unlike us ordinary folks just watching the spectacle, in the eyes of many professional institutions, SpaceX's value might lie more in its space data center plans.

Everyone knows that the whole world is frantically building data centers, hoarding GPUs, and engaging in an AI arms race, but the biggest problem right now is that energy might not be enough.

SpaceX explicitly stated in its prospectus that with the development of AI, the Earth's power grid capacity and land resources are approaching physical limits.

To meet AI's demand for resources, SpaceX waved its hand and declared: Let's move data centers to space.

According to SpaceX's calculations, without atmospheric attenuation and day-night cycles in space, solar energy collection efficiency can reach more than 5 times that of the ground, and no power transmission lines need to be laid.

At the same time, the near-absolute-zero environment of deep space can be utilized for passive radiative cooling, which is truly both increasing income and cutting expenses.

Moreover, following Musk's first-principles thinking, this approach, at least on PPT, really has no obvious flaws.

Similar space data center projects have been repeatedly proposed by many companies.

But even if we assume space data centers are indeed feasible, how do we send these bulky devices into the sky?

Looking around, at this stage, only SpaceX's Falcon series and Starship are the most reliable.

Therefore, in this track, for the next few years, SpaceX might not have any real competitors, which is also an important basis for a large number of professional teams to recognize SpaceX's value.

According to this logic, SpaceX, which holds ultra-cost-effective space transport capacity in the short term, is simply invincible?

No, no, no, there are also a bunch of investors and institutions pouring cold water on everyone.

A Danish fund institution officially "blacklisted" SpaceX. Their investment director complained that this $1.77 trillion valuation is completely hijacked by Musk's grand promises, and look at SpaceX's governance structure—it doesn't look like a modern company at all.

What's more awkward is that SpaceX also lost $4.9 billion in 2025.

And if you break down the accounts, you'll find SpaceX is quite internally divided.

On one side, the Starlink and rocket departments are printing money like crazy:

Starlink's profit exceeded $4.4 billion last year, and a single rocket was reused 34 times, directly turning national-level engineering into an assembly line;

On the other side, the newly merged AI department is purely hemorrhaging money.

Last year, SpaceX spent a full $12.7 billion on building supercomputing centers and purchasing Nvidia GPUs... all poured into AI.

By the first quarter of 2026, it escalated, with a single-quarter capital expenditure of $10.1 billion, of which AI alone accounted for $7.7 billion.

So, regarding this space AI thing, there are arguments on both sides. The same sum of money—those who are optimistic call it betting on the future, while those who are pessimistic call it burning money for nothing.

And what really makes institutions uneasy is that the size of this bet, how long it lasts, and when to stop is entirely up to Musk alone in the whole world.

Because Musk, through the split design of Class A and Class B shares, controls 85% of the voting power through 42% of the shares. In other words, getting Musk fired from SpaceX is impossible unless Musk himself agrees.

For Musk's fans, this is of course fantastic news; if it weren't so, they might not even buy in.

But in the eyes of some professional teams, this one-man-rule model is equivalent to tying the company's life and death to Musk alone, which is an enormous risk.

So, standing at this historical juncture today, things have become very interesting.

Musk is using "all of humanity's" money to make a massive gamble on his Mars colonization and space AI empire;

Thousands of working people like Brother Juan are getting rich overnight, buying houses and cars, and reaching the peak of their lives;

And the whole world, whether you buy stocks or not, care about AI, technology, or the sea of stars, wants to see where this great SpaceX drama will head.

And on this historic night, let's look back again.

This photo taken in 2002 shows a mariachi band and a few employees who look a bit nerdy; that was SpaceX in its very beginning.

Musk recalled the past: "There were less than 10 of us at the time; we didn't even have office furniture."

Who could have imagined that 24 years later, SpaceX would become a great company.

Oh wait, it might already be so expensive that even the word "great" is no longer enough to explain it.

This world is truly fucking interesting.