play

Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla and one-time special government employee for Department of Government Efficiency — DOGE — may soon become a whole lot wealthier.

Musk, whose current annual compensation of $23.5 billion already makes him the world’s highest paid executive, could see his annual compensation raise to a nearly unfathomable $1 trillion.

Tesla shareholders will on Thursday consider Musk’s compensation package and vote on a deal that could bloom to $1 trillion if specific benchmarks are met.

But what exactly is $1 trillion, and what could that buy? Here’s a break down of what it means.

How much is $1 trillion?

In the broadest of terms, you would need to earn one million dollars one million times to reach $1 trillion.

“One trillion dollars is equivalent to a thousand billion, or million dollars multiplied by millions. A trillion is a 1 with 12 zeros after it, represented as 1,000,000,000,000 or 10¹²,” according to education and finance resource Vedantu. “One trillion dollars is defined as one million dollars multiplied by a million, or one million million makes one trillion.”

Trillions in money is rarely used, and is usually a figure reserved to visualize any nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). For example, America’s GDP is roughly $30.49 trillion.

In fact, there are more than 150 countries with a GDP less than $1 trillion.

What could $1 trillion buy?

To put $1 trillion in perspective, the ten most valuable sports franchises in the world — San Francisco 49ers, New York Jets, Los Angeles Lakers, New York Giants, New England Patriots, New York Knicks, New York Yankees, Los Angeles Rams, Golden State Warriors and Dallas Cowboys — are worth a combined $122 billion.

The entire National Basketball League has a total valuation of $165 billion.

Musk would only need a portion of his $1 trillion annual compensation to buy every team in the National Football League, which has an overall valuation of $227.2 billion.

Currently the richest man in the world, the 53-year-old was valued at $342 billion on Nov. 5, according to Forbes.

Musk’s value plus the estimated values of the next three richest humans — Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Ellison — still does not reach $1 trillion

With $1 trillion, Musk could also afford to buy these items with more than enough change left over, according to Medium:

History Supreme Yacht: $4.8 BillionThe Antilia Mansion: $2 BillionLeonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi: $450 MillionThe Hope Diamond: estimated $350 Million”The Card Players” by Paul Cézanne: $250 MillionPink Star Diamond: $71.2 Million1963 Ferrari 250 GTO: $70 MillionRolls-Royce La Rose Noire Droptail: $30 MillionLamborghini Veneno: $4.5 MillionBugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+: $3.9 MillionElon Musk richest person in the world

Elon Musk’s possible $1 trillion annual compensation will only cement his position as the world’s top paid executive according to Business Day. Here’s the top ten.

Elon Musk: $23.5 BillionTim Cook (Apple): $770.5 MillionSundar Pichai (Alphabet): $280 MillionJensen Huang (Nvidia): $561 MillionReed Hastings (Netflix): $453.5 MillionLeonard Schleifer (Regeneron Pharmaceuticals): $452.9 MillionMarc Benioff (Salesforce): $439.4 MillionSatya Nadella (Microsoft): $309.4 MillionRobert A. Kotick (Activision Blizzard): $296.7 MillionHock E. Tan (Broadcom): $288 Million

Damon C. Williams is a Philadelphia-based journalist reporting on trending topics across the Mid-Atlantic Region.