Trillionaire
Trillionaire. A word that may either thrill or appall you, but in any case evokes strong emotions. Elon Musk is a good bet to become the world’s first one. In November 2025, Tesla’s board announced a compensation plan that could award him $1T in stock over the next decade.[1] But since Musk’s current wealth is estimated at between $600B and $700B, he could easily become a trillionaire much sooner. A blockbuster SpaceX IPO and another bump in Tesla’s share price could push him over the line in 2026.
Should we be concerned that the world may soon get its first trillionaire? Does it mean we’re in a bubble? If “every billionaire is a policy failure,” [2] what’s every trillionaire?
No, it’s not particularly alarming to have trillionaires. There are eight billion people on planet Earth, and as the planet gets richer and average wealth rises, we’d expect the maximum wealth also to rise. That’s the good way to generate trillionaires: increase real total wealth.
There’s also a bad way to get trillionaires, and that’s using inflation. The first appearance of the word “trillionaire” in The New York Times occurs in the 1920s describing the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic.[3] More recently, Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation produced at least one Zimbabwean trillionaire. In 2024, entrepreneur Strive Masiyiwa had wealth around 2B measured in U.S. dollars but around 60T measured in Zimbabwean dollars.
Ultimately, the word “trillionaire” reflects arbitrary numbering conventions. However, words have power, and it’s worth pausing to reflect on this new addition to the U.S. vocabulary. Whoever becomes the first USD trillionaire might be interested in the fate of the first millionaire and the first billionaire. What happened to them?
The word “millionaire” was invented to describe the newly rich investors in the Mississippi Bubble in France. The bubble was brought about by the revolutionary monetary innovations of John Law, a swashbuckling Scottish financier. Law was many things: a gambler, murderer, escaped prisoner, and at one point the richest private citizen in Europe. As I’ve previously mentioned, he implemented a mad scheme that almost succeeded in modernizing France’s archaic financial system.
I don’t know if Law was history’s first millionaire,[4] but he was certainly the richest and most famous of the first group of people called millionaires. There are many similarities between Law and Musk. Both men were risk-takers with grand visions of transforming society with a complex set of overlapping ventures, both persuaded others to invest in their speculative schemes, and both for a time enjoyed amazing political power.
Law’s scheme eventually collapsed in 1720. He fell out of royal favor, fled France, and ended his days in poverty in Venice. He rapidly went from being one of the most admired men in Europe to one of the most despised. Something for Musk to think about.
The first USD billionaire was John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil. Rockefeller, a teetotalling Baptist, had a much less interesting life than Law (sample Rockefeller quote: “I am eating celery which I understand to be very good for nervous difficulty.”) But like Law, Rockefeller was buffeted by the winds of politics. Teddy Roosevelt condemned “malefactors of great wealth” and said that Standard Oil was “predatory wealth … accumulated on a giant scale by all forms of iniquity.” In 1911 the Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil must be dismantled for violating antitrust laws. However, Rockefeller mostly retained his wealth, did not end up in exile or jail, and lived to give vast sums to various charities. That’s fortunate for me, because his giant contribution funded the University of Chicago, where I was a professor for eight years. Thanks, J-Rock!
Thus, whoever becomes history’s first trillionaire has two very different Johns to follow as role models: the flamboyant John Law or the methodical John D. Rockefeller. Follow Law, and you’ll have some thrills, but you’ll die penniless at age 57 in a foreign land. Follow Rockefeller, and you’ll have celery instead of thrills, but you’ll die a respected philanthropist at age 97, your name living on in history (for example in 30 Rock).
Whether it is Musk or someone else, I predict that at least one USD trillionaire will walk among us by 2030. And it doesn’t end there. If wealth grows at a nominal 7% a year, you get a thousand times more dollars every century. The next milestone will be a quadrillionaire (1015 dollars) arriving by 2130. Let’s hope we get there with real growth instead of inflation.
Endnotes
[1] References to this and other companies should not be interpreted as recommendations to buy or sell specific securities. Acadian and/or the author of this post may hold positions in one or more securities associated with these companies.
[2] Lipton, Ann M. "Every Billionaire is a Policy Failure." Va. L. & Bus. Rev. 18 (2023): 327.
[3] “He became a millionaire, a billionaire, perhaps a trillionaire,” The New York Times, January 2, 1927.
[4] King Croesus of Lydia comes to mind. To be a millionaire, you need to have a unit of account, and the Lydian stater was arguably the first minted coin.
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