[DigitalToday reporter Hyunwoo Choo] Elon Musk (일론 머스크), CEO of SpaceX, became the first trillionaire in human history. SpaceX shares surged 19 percent on their first day after listing on Nasdaq, lifting its market capitalisation to $2.1 trillion.

Major foreign media including The Washington Post and AP reported on June 13 that SpaceX shares began trading at $150 each, rose to $168 and closed at $161. Its valuation based on the IPO price was $1.8 trillion, but the first day of trading alone pushed it past Tesla’s market capitalisation.

The value of Musk’s SpaceX stake alone exceeds $860 billion, and his net worth including his Tesla holdings totals $1.1 trillion by Forbes estimates. It marked the first time a “trillionaire” category appeared on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Musk’s book assets are currently similar in size to the combined wealth of the world’s top 4 rich people. By Forbes estimates, the combined wealth of Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos and Larry Ellison comes to just over $1 trillion. Bezos’ and Ellison’s wealth is each less than a quarter of Musk’s. Musk crossed the $1 trillion line 110 years after John D. Rockefeller became the world’s first billionaire in 1916.

Musk took part in a bell-ringing ceremony marking the listing held at Starbase in Texas. “Not just a few astronauts, I want to take you, who are watching this right now, to the moon and Mars and beyond,” he said.

SpaceX combined rockets, artificial intelligence and a social media platform early this year. In its securities filing, SpaceX said its goals were building systems and technologies to make humanity a multiplanetary species, understanding the true nature of the universe, and expanding the light of consciousness to the stars.

SpaceX also argued the combination would be advantageous in realising its orbital AI compute concept. It explained that reusable rockets could lift AI data centre servers into space to build space-based computing infrastructure.

An expert took a sober view of the market’s enthusiasm. Aswath Damodaran (아스와스 다모다란), a professor at New York University’s business school, estimated SpaceX’s fair value at $1.3 trillion and said, “$1.8 trillion is, honestly, a made-up number.” He added, “Nobody looks at actual numbers. Those who claim they do are lying.”

SpaceX said it decided to list to raise funds to expand its satellite internet, orbital data centre and AI businesses. It is currently loss-making, but the market bet on its future growth potential.