TL;DR
Elon Musk said on The Sean Hannity Show that SpaceX’s record IPO has probably made “several thousand” of his employees millionaires, framing years of stock grants as a deliberate policy to let staff share the upside. Estimates put the count at about 4,400 new millionaires and 400+ centimillionaires, spanning welders and machinists, not just executives. But the shares have already fallen from a post-IPO peak above $200 to below $148, and lockups keep much of the wealth on paper, while Musk retains 82% voting control.
Elon Musk says SpaceX’s blockbuster listing has probably made thousands of his employees millionaires. Asked on The Sean Hannity Show about a former welder whose stock topped $1m, he said the story was far from unique.
“It’s not just one welder, it’s several thousand people who were working on the production line,” Musk said, adding that early joiners likely hold stock now worth over a million dollars. He framed it as long-held policy, saying everyone at the company should “participate in the upside”.
“It’s great for aligning incentives,” he added, so that as the company prospers, its employees do too. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The numbers behind the claim are large. Ahead of the 12 June listing, one pre-IPO trading platform estimated the offering would mint about 4,400 new millionaires and more than 400 centimillionaires.
The mechanism is years of equity. A former employee described receiving stock options on joining, at annual reviews, and on promotion, with twice-yearly liquidity events letting staff sell some holdings even while SpaceX was private.
Paper wealth, already wobbling
The windfall is real, but the timing is unkind. SpaceX priced at $135 and jumped above $200 in the days after its Nasdaq debut, then slid back below $148 by midweek.
That swing is a reminder that a stock balance is not a bank balance. Lockups also stagger when employees can actually sell, so much of the wealth stays on paper for now.
The finances underneath give pause too. SpaceX lost $4.94bn in 2025 with only Starlink reliably profitable, so its roughly $2tn valuation leans heavily on future promise.
A much bigger fortune upstairs
The staff windfall sits inside a far larger one. The same IPO briefly made Musk the world’s first trillionaire, and he retains iron control of the company.
Employees got money, not power, since Musk commands about 82% of the votes through a dual-class structure despite owning roughly 42% of the equity. That means insiders keep dominant control however many workers cash in.
Some of the gains are being spread deliberately. President Gwynne Shotwell and her husband donated around $300m of SpaceX stock to the government’s Trump Accounts programme for newborns, a gift Donald Trump publicly praised.
Musk, meanwhile, tied the payday to his usual horizon, talking up a Moon base and crewed Mars flights within years. For thousands of SpaceX staff, though, the science-fiction promise just delivered a very real, if caveat-laden, seven-figure reward.
