Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire on Friday after his SpaceX aerospace and Artificial Intelligence (AI) firm made its stock market debut on Friday.
Shares pushed well past their opening price of $135 (roughly €117) in the hours after the initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq.
The shares closed up just over 19% at around $161 at the end of their first day of trading, valuing SpaceX at around $2.1 trillion and giving Musk an estimated net worth of around $1.1 trillion, according to Forbes magazine.
At one point shortly after 1 p.m. in New York (1700 GMT/UTC), the shares had been hovering around the $173 mark, a rise of almost 28% equating to a market capitalization of around $2.26 trillion for the Texas-based space and satellite company, before falling again slightly by the end of the day.
The valuation makes Musk the first person in history to hold a trillion-dollar fortune, at least in paper form — mainly through his stakes in SpaceX and electric carmaker Tesla.
