Elon Musk’s The journey to becoming the world’s first trillionaire may be powered by rockets rather than cars, as SpaceX currently accounts for nearly two-thirds of the fortune. Tesla CEO wealth.

According to data, Musk this week became the first person ever to cross the $800 billion mark, and his current net worth is about $845 billion. Forbes. He is worth more than the next three richest people – Google Co-founder Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Yuan CEO Mark Zuckerberg – Merge.

The tech mogul’s wealth has surged like never before following the founding of his aerospace and defense company, SpaceX. obtained His artificial intelligence and social media company xAI completed a deal this week that values ​​the combined entity at $1.25 trillion, according to financial documents reviewed by CNBC.

Musk is estimated to own about 43% of the combined company, and his stake would be worth more than $530 billion, marking a rapid transformation of his wealth.

Musk’s priorities may also shift more toward SpaceX than Tesla, a reality the electric car company acknowledged in its latest report. Agency filingwhich states that “much of Mr. Musk’s wealth now comes from other business ventures.”

Last year, Musk confirmed He hopes to take SpaceX public in 2026, which would make Tesla less important to his liquid wealth. But he still needs to win support from public market investors, who may be reluctant to pony up money for a company that combines a defense contractor and satellite business with a cash-burning artificial intelligence model developer trying to take on Google, OpenAI and Anthropic.

SpaceX has received more than $20 billion With lucrative contracts coming from contracts with the federal government, Musk sees the acquisition as the next step toward an “orbital data center,” according to FedScout research.

“As a pure-play SpaceX shareholder, your story is a little bit muddled, but the opportunity becomes bigger,” said Greg Martin, managing director at Rainmaker Securities, which handles transactions for the company ahead of the IPO. “It makes sense for them to get into the larger capital markets, especially xAI, which has a really insatiable demand for capital.”

XAI is currently under investigation by authorities in Europe, Asia, Australia and other countries californiathe company’s Grok image generator lets users create and share “deepfake” explicit images of children and women.

It’s unclear whether Musk’s merger would require any regulatory review. Democratic Senators of the Week called Asking the Pentagon to investigate undisclosed Chinese investors in SpaceX.

Musk still has a lot of incentive to keep paying attention to Tesla. Late last year, shareholders voted to approve a new compensation package that could be worth $1 trillion, paid in 12 tranches if Tesla meets certain targets. milestoneincluding market capitalization growth and operating achievements over the next ten years. The first tranche of shares would be paid out if Tesla reaches a market cap of $2 trillion, or about $460 billion above its current valuation.

Tesla said in a proxy filing detailing the plan that the structure was designed to “prevent him from prioritizing other businesses.”

However, Dorothy Lund, a Columbia University law professor and expert in corporate and securities law, told CNBC in an email that this strategy may not work.

Musk is now “negotiating compensation packages with every company, and every board is trying to get his attention through compensation,” Lund wrote. “If SpaceX/xAI gives him more money and a bigger share, then Tesla’s package might look less attractive.”

According to the FCC, before acquiring xAI, Musk owned about 42% of SpaceX and controlled 80% of the votes. He currently holds between 11% and 15% of Tesla’s outstanding shares, depending on the content of his holdings, according to public filings.

with Tesla brand value and core car sales declineWith its long-promised robotaxis and humanoid robots still in development, the company’s shares are down about 9% this year.

Based on Musk’s ownership of SpaceX, and assuming Tesla shares remain flat, the rocket and artificial intelligence company would have to be valued at about $1.6 trillion for the world’s richest man to become a trillionaire.

Ross Gerber, chief executive of investment firm Gerber Kawasaki, is betting that Musk will never want to take SpaceX public as an independent entity. Instead, he wants to see SpaceX and Tesla merge, and he Speculation of the week It will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol X, and the stock was formerly owned by U.S. Steel.

Gerber is a long-time Tesla investor and now holds a stake in SpaceX after his company previously backed Musk’s leveraged buyout of Twitter in 2022. Musk renamed Twitter X and merged the social network with xAI last year.

Gerber said consolidating his empire makes sense because it would allow Musk to realize his dream of running a large company under the X brand. alphabetical Announced this week to spend $185 billion capital expenditure Gerber said Musk must be able to bring in a lot of cash this year.

“This massive entity will make it easier for them to raise capital and borrow money,” he said. “How else can Musk compete and become a major player in artificial intelligence?”

Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

watch: SpaceX acquires xAI