Thanks to SpaceX, Elon Musk Might Be the World's First Trillionaire

We have elaborately covered Elon Musk's meteoric rise on the world's richest person charts in the past year. With his car company Tesla just getting warmed up, one can expect this rise to continue over the next few years. However, according to Morgan Stanley, it will be SpaceX that will take him to the next pedestal of becoming a trillionaire, Bloomberg reported. 

The race for the world's first trillionaire's post has been on for quite some time now, with Wired betting on Bill Gates at the turn of the millennium. Wired had then estimated that Gates would be a trillionaire by 2005, paying little attention to another company called Google that was founded just a year earlier which put some brakes on Microsoft's rally. Even as the pandemic hit, all eyes were still on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to make it to the top by 2026 but we now know how the Musk story has turned in these 19 months. 

Although he has joked about beating Bezos, Musk seems to not mind where he stands on the list. Though, financial analysts are always on the lookout for businesses that are likely to boom and trends that the markets are following. Adam Jonas, an analyst from Morgan Stanley, believes that with its rockets and launch vehicles, Musk's SpaceX "is challenging any preconceived notion of what was possible and the time frame possible," Bloomberg reported. 

In a note titled, "SpaceX Escape Velocity ... Who Can Catch Them?” Jonas has pegged SpaceX's value to rise to $200 billion in the coming years, without specifying a date. Musk is estimated to own half the shares of the company, so it will be a long way before we see him in the trillionaire orbit.

But, as Jonas said, SpaceX is not just one company but multiple companies working in diverse areas including deep-space exploration, Earth observation, space infrastructure. Even as the company's most ambitious rocket Starship's launch is likely to be pushed into the next year, Jonas is betting on its other project Starlink to be the biggest contributor to SpaceX's growth.

With only days left until the end of October, the project may not leave beta as Musk had earlier tweeted, but that shouldn't surprise anyone who follows Musk's proposed deadlines and actual dates when things happen. 

We guess Morgan Stanley is also as lenient about deadlines as Musk is and that's probably why it hasn't set a date for its own prediction.