SpaceX IPO: Elon Musk becomes world’s first trillionaire as SpaceX shares soar on stock market debut – follow live

Daniel Thomas
Business reporter

As we’ve been reporting, if share sales in SpaceX reach or exceed the company’s suggested price of $135 (£100), founder Elon Musk will become the world’s first trillionaire. Let’s breakdown what this means:

A trillion is a thousand billion. That’s a one followed by 12 zeros. 1,000,000,000,000.

But how does this unimaginable sum compare with some real life things we actually know the value of?

To put it into context, the personal wealth of King Charles is thought to be less than $1bn (£740m), while the world’s most valuable sports team, the Dallas Cowboys, is estimated to be worth $13bn, and the ride-hailing giant Uber has a market value of about $142bn.

It would take the average US worker 16.3 million years to earn £1tn.

$1tn is roughly the value of the entire Swiss economy.