Elon Musk [Getty Images]
Elon Musk [Getty Images]

By Park Hye-won, The Herald Business

SpaceX shares surged 19.34 percent above their offering price on their first day of trading, vaulting founder Elon Musk to become the world's first trillionaire.

Bloomberg reported Friday that SpaceX shares traded at $150 on the Nasdaq, pushing Musk's total net worth to $1.05 trillion (about 1,594 trillion won).

That figure dwarfs the entire gross domestic product of Taiwan ($976.7 billion), Ireland ($779 billion), Sweden ($760 billion) and Singapore ($660 billion).

Musk's fortune is more than three times that of Larry Page, the Google co-founder who ranks second on the global wealth list. It also exceeds the combined wealth of the second- through fourth-ranked billionaires — Page, Sergey Brin and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — and stands seven times larger than Warren Buffett's.

Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 and remains its largest shareholder and CEO. His stake in the company accounts for roughly 70 percent of his net worth. SpaceX shares opened at $150 on Friday, climbed as high as $176 during trading and closed at $161, giving the company the sixth-largest market capitalization in the United States.


klee@heraldcorp.com