{"id":578339,"date":"2026-07-10T08:36:24","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T08:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/578339\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T08:36:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T08:36:24","slug":"elon-musk-1000s-of-spacex-employees-are-likely-millionaires-after-ipo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/578339\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk: 1000s of SpaceX Employees Are Likely Millionaires After IPO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk<\/a> says SpaceX’s blockbuster valuation has likely turned thousands of his employees into millionaires.<\/p>\n

During a Wednesday interview on “The Sean Hannity Show,” Musk was asked about a former SpaceX welder\u00a0who was granted stock that soared to over $1 million in value after the company\u00a0went public<\/a>\u00a0in June with a roughly $2 trillion market capitalization.<\/p>\n

“It’s not just one welder, it’s several thousand people who were working on the production line, and if they started at the company relatively early, then probably their stock is\u00a0worth over a million dollars<\/a>\u00a0at this point,” Musk told stand-in host Texas Gov. Greg Abbott over the phone.<\/p>\n

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, whose personal wealth briefly crossed $1 trillion<\/a> following SpaceX’s IPO, said: “I’ve always had the philosophy that everyone at the company should receive stock in the company, so that they can participate in the upside of the company.”<\/p>\n

“It’s great for aligning incentives as well, so as the company prospers, then the people at the company, the employees, also prosper,” he added.<\/p>\n

SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Ahead of SpaceX’s June 12 listing, Andrew Benson, the founder of pre-IPO trading platform Hill Markets, estimated the IPO<\/a> would mint 4,400 new millionaires<\/a> and over 400 centimillionaires.<\/p>\n

Business Insider’s Tom Carter spoke to a former SpaceX employee<\/a> who said the company awarded its workers with stock options when they joined the company, at their annual reviews, and when they were promoted.<\/p>\n

Employees were also allowed to sell some of their holdings to the company or investors in private liquidity events<\/a>, usually held twice a year, the former employee said.<\/p>\n

SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell and her husband have moved to expand the number of beneficiaries of SpaceX’s success by donating roughly $300 million worth of the company’s stock to Trump Accounts \u2014 a government program intended to open an account with $1,000 in it for every American child born between the start of 2025 and the end of 2028. The gift won praise<\/a> from Trump on Truth Social.<\/p>\n

SpaceX stock jumped from its IPO price of $135 to over $200 in the days following its public debut, but has fallen<\/a> to below $148 as of Wednesday’s close.<\/p>\n

In addition to discussing the IPO’s financial benefits, Musk spoke with Abbott about his long-term ambitions for SpaceX.<\/p>\n

Musk said he hopes that in 10 years’ time, the company will have “established a base on the moon<\/a>” and “enabled thousands, if not tens of thousands of people” to go there.<\/p>\n

“We want to make the things that people see in science fiction, not fiction \u2014 we want to make them real,” Musk said, adding that SpaceX’s Starship<\/a> system is “designed to carry ultimately tens of thousands of tons to the moon, to create effectively a city on the moon, and ultimately a city on Mars as well.”<\/p>\n

Musk added that “if things go well,” SpaceX might send the first humans to Mars<\/a> in about five years, and thousands of people to the red planet in 10 or 12 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk says SpaceX’s blockbuster valuation has likely turned thousands of his employees into millionaires. During a Wednesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[270],"tags":[1650,2006,18,1647,246127,19,11092,17,246126,10626,237,133,451,2731,229153,1086,1651,17720,221877,3257],"class_list":["post-578339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-business-insider","tag-company","tag-eire","tag-elon-musk","tag-former-spacex-employee","tag-ie","tag-ipo","tag-ireland","tag-likely-millionaire","tag-moon","tag-people","tag-science","tag-space","tag-spacex","tag-spacex-employee","tag-stock","tag-thing","tag-thousand","tag-trump-accounts","tag-year"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116894773085450137","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}