HAWTHORNE, Calif., July 21 — The parking lot at SpaceX headquarters is quieter than usual this week. A security guard waves a delivery truck through the main gate, but the restless hum of rocket engineers spilling out onto the sidewalk at lunch hour is muted. On the ground, employees describe a company absorbing the aftershock of a historic financial reversal.
Elon Musk, the man who built this space-technology empire, is no longer a trillionaire. As of July 10, Forbes estimated his net worth at US$797 billion — a steep drop from the trillion-dollar peak he reached in June 2026, when he became the only person in the world to hold that title.
The decline, according to the data, is largely tied to a shift in the valuation of his holdings, particularly SpaceX. That shift is sending tremors through the company he founded in 2002 and has led ever since as CEO and chief engineer.
From trillionaire to what comes next
Musk was born June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. He holds South African and Canadian citizenship from birth and became a U.S. citizen in 2002 — the same year eBay acquired PayPal, the company he helped create after merging his startup X.com with Confinity. Before that, he co-founded Zip2 in 1995 and earned bachelor’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997.
He has been the wealthiest person in the world since 2025. The trillionaire milestone in June 2026 was a moment of symbolic gravity: a single individual holding a net worth with twelve zeros.
But that peak evaporated in weeks. By July 10, Forbes reported his net worth at $797 billion. The primary driver: changes in the valuation of his holdings, especially SpaceX — the company that pioneered reusable rockets and commercial spaceflight.
SpaceX has long been Musk’s most audacious bet. In 2026, its subsidiary xAI, an artificial intelligence company Musk founded after leaving OpenAI, became part of the firm.
That integration may have added complexity to the valuation picture. Meanwhile, Tesla remains his other major asset. He became an early investor in Tesla in 2004 and assumed the roles of CEO and product architect in 2008.
In November 2025, Tesla approved a $1 trillion pay package for Musk, contingent on reaching milestones such as a market capitalization of $8.5 trillion.
The Washington chapter
Musk’s political trajectory has been as dramatic as his financial one. He supported Donald Trump in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. After Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, Musk served as Senior Advisor to the President and de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency.
By May 2025, he had left the administration. Since then, he has been engaged in a public feud with Trump.
He also acquired Twitter in 2022 and rebranded it as X in 2023. Since that acquisition, he has overseen an increase in hate speech on the platform after pledging to decrease censorship. The source material states that Musk has been a polarizing figure due to spreading COVID-19 misinformation, promoting conspiracy theories, and affirming antisemitic and racist comments.
Other ventures and the road ahead
Beyond SpaceX and Tesla, Musk co-founded Neuralink in 2016 and founded the Boring Company in 2017. Both remain active but are not publicly traded. The Boring Company has faced regulatory hurdles on tunneling projects; Neuralink received FDA approval for human trials in 2023.
The scene at SpaceX now reflects a company whose richest backer has seen his paper wealth shrink by roughly a quarter of a trillion dollars in a matter of weeks. Employees describe a cautious mood.
By nightfall this week, the main building’s lights stayed on well past dark. No official statement from Musk or SpaceX has addressed the valuation shift. What happens next may depend on whether Tesla hits its $8.5 trillion market-cap milestone — or whether SpaceX’s next launch cycle rekindles investor confidence.
