On paper. The actual number is how much cash banks will lend him using his SpaceX holdings as collateral. Maybe that is a trillion dollars. Smarter money though? They know that if things go south and they need to collect that collateral, in that situation SpaceX will be worth a lot less than a trillion dollars.
I basically said a similar thing in another comment, but this is the real problem.
The ultimate power of the modern oligarch is gaining far more wealth than the value their assets bring to the market.
It would be healthier for our society if Tesla’s stock came back to earth to a valuation that made some level of sense for the business that they’re in. Musk would not be so astronomically rich in that case. The same story goes with SpaceX.
We don’t really need to be concerned that mom and pop are going to lose their life savings in their index funds to SpaceX. It’s actually the opposite: it’s more concerning that stocks like SpaceX and Tesla don’t crash down to better reflect reality, and their continued overvaluation serves as a massive transfer of wealth to major shareholders at the top.
I don’t bet on SpaceX stock crashing down anytime soon because the oligarchs who own it have so much soft and hard power to prop it up. Only the salaried employees are going to sell shares, while the biggest owners will just borrow against the collateral.