Remember when Elon Musk hit trillionaire status? Yeah, that was fun while it lasted. Like, two weeks of fun.
The world’s richest person just got a harsh reminder that even when you’re worth nearly a trillion dollars, the stock market doesn’t care about your feelings. After SpaceX’s historic IPO in mid-June sent shares soaring to $225, Musk briefly joined an exclusive club that literally no one had ever been in before. But this week’s tech sell-off hit the reset button hard—SpaceX stock plummeted to $156, and Musk’s net worth dropped to $957 billion. Congratulations, Elon. You’re back to being a regular billionaire.
Here’s the thing: SpaceX’s valuation was always going to face scrutiny. The company is promising some genuinely sci-fi stuff—data centers in space, humans on Mars, the whole nine yards. But the S-1 filing revealed something less glamorous: a $4.9 billion loss in 2025, with the AI segment burning through $12.7 billion in capital expenditures. That’s a lot of money going up in smoke (pun intended).
The real test comes when the lockup period expires and early investors can finally cash out. That’s when we’ll see if SpaceX’s sky-high valuation holds up or if it comes back down to Earth—literally and figuratively.
The silver lining? Musk’s SpaceX stake is still worth $744 billion, making up nearly 80% of his net worth. His Tesla holdings, worth $158 billion, also took a hit from the broader tech sell-off. But here’s the thing about being the richest person on the planet: even when you lose $43 billion in a week, you’re still richer than the second-richest person by about $660 billion. That’s more than two Jeff Bezoses worth of a gap.
Market fluctuations are normal. If SpaceX bounces back, so will Musk’s net worth. But for now, the trillionaire era is officially on pause.
