SpaceX Selloff Strips Musk Of Trillionaire Title
Elon Musk has lost the trillionaire status he held for barely two weeks, after a sweeping selloff in technology stocks erased hundreds of billions from his fortune and dragged his net worth back below the $1 trillion mark.
The world’s richest person was valued at about $957.1 billion as of June 23, 2026, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which recorded a single-day drop of roughly $118 billion in his wealth. The figure is down from a recent peak of $1.32 trillion, meaning Musk has shed close to $363 billion in a matter of days.
The reversal was driven largely by SpaceX, his most valuable asset. The rocket and satellite company has dropped more than 30 per cent from its peak, recently trading around $154, as investors reassessed soaring technology valuations and heavy spending on artificial intelligence. On June 22, the stock fell 16 per cent, wiping about $240 billion from Musk’s fortune, while Tesla shares slid nearly 6 per cent the following day, deepening the loss.
The fall closes a dramatic chapter that began only this month. SpaceX priced its initial public offering at $135 per share and began trading at $150 on June 12, valuing the company at more than $1.77 trillion. The shares briefly surged about 20 per cent on the first day, and at one point SpaceX overtook Amazon with a valuation of about $2.78 trillion. SpaceX shares later rose as high as $225.64 on June 16, lifting Musk’s net worth to about $1.32 trillion. That made him the first and only person to hold a net worth above $1 trillion in US dollars.
Musk’s wealth has long been volatile because it is concentrated in a small number of companies. He owns roughly 42 per cent of SpaceX and about 12 per cent of Tesla, leaving his fortune unusually exposed to swings in both stocks. The pattern is not new. His net worth dropped $16.3 billion on a single day in September 2020, then the largest one-day plunge in the history of the Bloomberg index.
The current slide forms part of a broader retreat in technology shares. Investors have grown more cautious about the long-term profitability of artificial intelligence, weighing the heavy capital costs of data centres and infrastructure against uncertain returns.
Even after the decline, Musk remains comfortably ahead of his peers. Larry Page ranked second at about $297 billion, followed by Sergey Brin at $276 billion, Jeff Bezos at $257 billion and Michael Dell at $223 billion. The gap underlines how far Musk still towers over the rest of the billionaire class.
Valuation methods differ across trackers, a point worth noting. Forbes has continued to place Musk’s net worth at around $1.1 trillion, still listing him as the only trillionaire in its rankings.
What happens next will hinge on the two stocks that define his wealth. Musk stands to be awarded an additional one billion restricted SpaceX shares if he meets 15 market capitalisation milestones up to a value of $7.5 trillion and establishes a permanent human colony on Mars. For now, the brief reign of the world’s first trillionaire shows how quickly paper fortunes built on market enthusiasm can unwind.