Musk Is a Trillionaire Again After SpaceX Stock Jumps 7.6%

For about three months, the world’s first trillionaire wasn’t one. That ended at the closing bell on Oct. 5, when SpaceX shares jumped 7.63 per cent to US$171.09 (about CA$238), their highest close since June, and Elon Musk’s paper fortune climbed back over the line. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index put him at US$1.04 trillion (about CA$1.45 trillion), after a one-day gain of roughly US$65 billion. CNBC’s Lora Kolodny was among the first to call it.

The push came from a Morgan Stanley note with a blunt title.

SpaceX stock on Oct. 5: Morgan Stanley calls it cheap

Analyst Adam Jonas reiterated his Overweight rating and US$300 price target (about CA$417) in a note headed “Cheap and Getting Cheaper,” written off Friday’s US$159 close. His argument, as reported by Investing.com, is that the stock looks pricey on headline numbers, around 30 times estimated 2028 earnings before interest and taxes on an enterprise-value basis, but trades at roughly 0.3 times once growth is factored in, against a median of 0.5 for mega-cap AI peers.

The more revealing line was about who isn’t in the stock. Jonas said he asked 40 clients whether they owned SPCX.

“Not a single hand went up.” Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas, as quoted by Investing.com

The move capped a gain of roughly 16 per cent over five sessions, according to The Crypto Times. The weekend gave the stock a branding sideshow too: in an X reply, Musk said SpaceX’s AI unit would be renamed from SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI, writing “Yes, we will make that change,” in line with the White House’s new “super intelligence” vocabulary. No timeline was given, and 24/7 Wall St. noted the unit’s X account was unchanged.

What Musk’s trillionaire status actually rests on

None of that trillion is cash. Billionaire indexes mark a founder’s holdings to the latest share price, so Musk’s number is mostly two things: his stake in SpaceX, which was about 42 per cent after the IPO (with roughly 82 to 85 per cent of the votes through 10-vote Class B shares), and his Tesla shares. Tesla’s own rebound after its third-quarter delivery numbers helped. Billionaires.Africa, citing both rankings, says the two companies account for more than 98 per cent of his wealth. Forbes’ real-time list also has him above US$1 trillion, according to Stocktwits.

It is also a number he cannot easily touch. Insiders, Musk included, are under a 366-day lock-up from the June IPO, so he cannot sell SpaceX stock on the open market until mid-2027.

And it has proved fragile once already. SpaceX priced its IPO at US$135 on June 12 and closed its first day at US$160.95, which TechCrunch said made Musk the first trillionaire. By late July the shares had slumped and, per Bloomberg’s tally, his wealth had shrunk by more than US$600 billion from its peak. Google Finance lists a 52-week range of US$104.83 to US$225.64. Monday’s close is still about a quarter below that high.

The SpaceX bull case is now an AI case

Read the Morgan Stanley math and the rockets are almost a side note. In the sum-of-the-parts breakdown reported by Benzinga, Jonas values space and connectivity at US$127 a share and enterprise AI at US$165, while arguing the market currently prices the AI business at about US$32. The next catalyst he named is physical, though: Starship Flight 15, expected in late October or early November, where a ship catch would be “the biggest positive catalyst since the IPO.” Flight 14 reached orbit for the first time on Sept. 28.

The spending says the same thing. SpaceX put US$15.8 billion of its US$18.4 billion in second-quarter capital spending into AI, according to The Motley Fool’s read of its results, while SpaceXAI revenue rose to US$2.56 billion from US$818 million in the first quarter. That context makes the rename less of a joke than it sounds.

It also fits a bigger pattern. Bloomberg’s index shows tech billionaires accounted for all of the US$845 billion (about CA$1.17 trillion) in wealth gains among the world’s 500 richest in the first nine months of 2026, as reported by Quartz. Fortunes built outside tech lost US$62 billion over the same stretch.

What it means for you

If you hold SPCX directly, or through a Nasdaq-100 fund (SpaceX joined that index within weeks of listing), Monday was a good day on paper. One analyst’s target is an opinion, not a forecast you can bank, and this stock already fell roughly by half from its peak between June and late July. prompt/power does not give investment advice.

The sharper takeaway is how much of the world’s richest fortune now sits on AI spending. Jonas’s own sensitivity point is compute pricing: SpaceX’s neocloud contracts run at US$30 to US$50 a watt, he wrote, while consensus models assume US$17.60. Whoever is right about that gap decides whether Musk stays a trillionaire through the winter.