Why Musk is wealthier than Malaysia

When SpaceX made its Nasdaq debut, Elon Musk became the first trillionaire.

SpaceX barely beat standard IPO listings, opening at US$135 per share and closing at US$160.95, a mere 24% premium. It is the total valuation that caught the market eye — the rocket and artificial intelligence business is valued at around US$2.1 trillion.

Musk holds 42% of the company and the listing generated a windfall of over US$800 billion, which put his net worth above US$1.1 trillion when added to his US$280 billion holding in Tesla.

World Bank data suggests that only 21 of the 195 economies worldwide have a gross domestic product (GDP) above US$1 trillion. This means Musk is wealthier than 174 countries.

The latest data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) puts Malaysia’s GDP at roughly US$516 billion. Musk made more than twice the GDP of Malaysia.

In fact, his individual wealth beats the GDP of most Asean countries, including the Philippines (US$512 billion), Vietnam (US$527 billion), Thailand (US$580 billion) and even Singapore (US$660 billion). Only Indonesia, at US$1.54 trillion, remains ahead.

This unparalleled accumulation of wealth is a powerful testament to the unique social and economic ecosystem of the United States that creates, fosters and funds opportunities on a scale that remains unavailable and entirely unimaginable in any other country.

It is an economic paradigm that supports the spirit of individual freedom, entrepreneurship, creativity and technological innovation. When combined with determination, hard work and single-minded leadership there appears to be no upper limit in terms of financial reward.

As the Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has noted, Musk’s wealth is largely built on a financial system driven more by the infectious vision and dreams of one man than by hard business delivery.

While the Tesla EV brand and the Starlink satellite network have matured into viable businesses, the broader Musk portfolio has many unfulfilled projects. There is no human colony on Mars, no Hyperloop, and fully autonomous robotic networks remain in development mode.

This gap between vision and reality is not unique to Musk.

Global financial markets often pour trillions into speculative ideas that fail to deliver on their IPO promises. We saw it in the dot-com crash, the spectacular unravelling of WeWork and the multi-billion-dollar EV bubble, where startups like Nikola and Rivian commanded massive valuations before rolling out stable production lines.

Even Malaysia’s Grab had a massive market valuation before showing any profits.

However, when an individual accumulates wealth greater than most countries, we face a deeper challenge of governance and accountability.

Musk has intervened in highly controversial debates on race, gender and global politics. His wealth gives him a legitimacy in the public sphere where he commands no more expertise or democratic authority than the ordinary voter, yet his financial muscle allows him to shape public policy and dictate terms to governments.

This is not isolated to Musk, it is a trait shared by tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, echoing an age-old reality where money buys a larger share of voice and influence.

Whilst real, these concerns perhaps make us look at the wrong variable. It is easy to fixate on the astronomical hoard of wealth itself, viewing it as a signal of outsized influence but the true marvel and the real lesson for developing nations like Malaysia is not the wealth but the extraordinary, rare human capability required to create it.

Wealth is merely the consequence of individual entrepreneurial drive and innovation coupled with institutional freedom.

To reap the fruits of such opportunities, Malaysia must build a system that values the individual and the capacity for innovation rather than envying the rewards.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.