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Staggering amount every person on Earth would get if Elon Musk divided his $1.4 trillion fortune equally
Alexandra B.
Last week, Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, meaning that he would be able to pay every person on the planet if he split his eye-watering wealth equally.
The recent success of his company SpaceX's Initial Public Offering (IPO), combined with his many other money-making schemes, has triggered Musk's net worth to soar past $1.4 trillion. While millions of people on the planet are still starving, Musk’s wealth has grown approximately four times since the start of 2025.
Most of Musk’s money is held in stocks and investments, so there is a comparatively lower figure available to him in liquid cash, although it is still probably more than enough to buy entire towns.
What does being a trillionaire involve?
He has enough money to buy the most expensive piece of art ever sold, Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi, which sold for $450.3 million, roughly 3,109 times over.
Musk’s wealth also matches the market cap of massive companies like Meta, Walmart, and Ozempic manufacturer Eli Lily.
If the world’s richest person divided his fortune between the earth’s 8.3 billion people, every person on the planet would receive a payout of $169.
Although it does not sound like a huge figure, and certainly would not go far if you were trying to buy a Tesla, it paints a picture of the staggering amount of wealth possessed by one man.
If the billionaire decided just to split the fortune among the population of the United States, that would mean that every one of the 342.6 million people across the nation would receive about $4,086, which for a large portion of people would be a life-changing amount. It could be the deposit needed to purchase a property, or a new car to take their children to school.
How long would it take to make the amount of money Musk has?
For an ordinary person on a salary of $100,000 a year, it would take working for 14 million years to earn what Musk currently has.
Unsurprisingly, the person who could single-handedly end world hunger chose to ignore the United Nations calculations on how to eradicate food poverty.
The international body worked out that it would cost $93 billion annually for the next four years to completely end world hunger. The sum, $372 billion, is only around a quarter of Musk's current net worth.