SpaceX stock is now public, cementing CEO Elon Musk’s status as the first trillionaire in history. But despite being the world’s richest person, he spends most of his time in a humble abode near SpaceX headquarters.
The rocket and satellite company raised $75 billion on Thursday in the largest IPO ever after offering more than 555 million shares at $135 a piece, valuing the company at $1.77 trillion.
On Friday, shares jumped 20% to $162, propelling Musk into trillionaire status after accounting for his SpaceX options as well as his Tesla shares.
Meanwhile, his real estate portfolio is more modest. After Musk moved to Texas in 2020 and eventually brought his companies with him, he sold most of his homes in California.
He bought adjacent properties in an upscale area near Austin, for about $35 million, much to the annoyance of his neighbors. But Musk revealed in 2021 that his primary home is a $50,000 house in Boca Chica, Texas, which he rents from SpaceX, headquartered in the nearby town of Starbase, near Brownsville.
“It’s kinda awesome though,” he added.
Meanwhile, Musk also bought a prefabricated home built by housing startup Boxabl that he uses as a nearby guest house at Boca Chica.
By contrast, companies tied to Musk own at least three large houses—each measuring between 6,000 and 9,000 square feet—with swimming pools in the pricey West Lake Hills suburb of Austin, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
In 2023, Musk biographer Walter Isaacson shared a post of the interior, calling it a “spartan two-bedroom” home, where Musk would “sit at this wood table and make phone calls.”
As recently as this past March, Musk’s mother, Maye Musk, added more color to her son’s very unglamorous lifestyle, describing a visit to his house.
“There is no food in the fridge. The garage where I slept is on the right. The shower only has one towel, so I left it for Elon. That was okay with me. When I was a child, I’d spend three weeks in the Kalahari Desert without showering. Many times. There was no water. I think my parents prepared me for this luxury,” she wrote in a post on X.
Long known as a workaholic, Musk has often lived close to his companies, especially during critical periods. For example, he slept at Tesla’s California plant while the EV maker was ironing out production issues with its Model 3.
Similarly, SpaceX is at a pivotal moment as it develops the next-generation Starship rocket, which will be key to the company’s future.
The massive, fully reusable V3 looms higher than any previous version. It can carry a payload of up to 100 metric tons, a significant increase from the 35 metric tons that the V2 could carry.
The new Starship will likely play a major role in returning astronauts to the moon in a few years as well as in Musk’s plans to put AI data centers in space. Its first test flight last month was mostly successful.
Even more upside to Musk’s wealth
As rich as Musk is now, he could expand his wealth even more if SpaceX achieves incredibly ambitious milestones. He could be awarded up to 200 million additional Class B shares if the company reaches a $7.5 trillion valuation and builds a colony on Mars with 1 million human inhabitants.
Another milestone would give Musk 60 million more shares if the valuation hits $6.6 trillion and SpaceX deploys a network of space-based data centers with 100 terawatts of computing capacity.
Musk started SpaceX in 2002 to challenge the dominance of Boeing and Lockheed Martin in the space-launch market.
Despite still being relatively new, SpaceX has taken over the market. By pioneering reusable boosters that can land autonomously, the company slashed launch costs and ramped up its launch cadence—suddenly making low earth orbit more accessible to a broad range of customers.
It accounted for more than 50% of global rocket launches last year and has roughly 10,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, providing space-based internet connectivity to businesses and militaries.
SpaceX is a top launch provider for NASA and the Pentagon, which is also looking to the company to help develop President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile-defense shield.
Revenue grew by more than 30% last year to $18.7 billion, but the bottom line swung to a loss of $4.9 billion as xAI’s losses deepened to $6.4 billion. Starlink more than doubled its profit to $4.4 billion.
As a major disrupter in the space industry, SpaceX’s private valuation had already been soaring ahead of its public debut.
In December, it was valued at $800 billion after the sale of insider shares. Then secondary trading on private markets put it at $1.54 trillion in April and $1.7 trillion today.
Correction, June 13, 2026: A previous version of this article misstated the builder of Musk’s primary residence.
