STARBASE, Texas - Elon Musk's tech company, SpaceX, began trading on the stock market on Friday, pushing the company to a valuation of $2 trillion.
The aerospace, rocket, satelitte and AI giant priced its initial public offering at $135 per share, but shares traded above $150 during Spacex's first day on the NASDEQ. Musk owns about 40% of Spacex's shares.
The increase in market value made Musk the first person whose net worth hit approximately $1.1 trillion.
The milestone carries significance for the RioPlex region because SpaceX is headquarted at Starbase in Cameron County. RioPlex comprises the four Rio Grande Valley counties of Cameron, Hidalgo, Willacy and Starr, along with northern Tamaulipas in Mexico.
"We're on the map," said RioPlex President Joaquin Spamer.
Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002, rang the bell to open the day's trading from Starbase.
SpaceX relocated its headquarters to Texas after previously being based in California. According to CBS, the number of residents living below the poverty line has dropped 15% since 2014, when SpaceX began developing its launch site near Boca Chica Beach.
SpaceX sold about 556 million shares in its initial public offering (IPO), making it the largest IPO in history. It has 22,000 employees. Musk is its CEO.
Some people may not be able to imagine what a trillion dollars looks like. Discussing the IPO, comedian Jimmy Kimmel said a trillion dollars is ten billion $100 bills. He said if every dollar was stacked one above the other, the stack would be 700 miles high.
Put another way, if $1 trillion was divided equally among the Valley's 1.45 million people, each person would be $689,655 richer.
