Elon Musk posted on X (formerly Twitter) on June 20, 2026, predicting that “a trillion times a trillion dollars” will eventually be spent on producing antimatter for interstellar travel. The post drew a range of reactions from several social media users, including references to fictional characters known for excreting valuable dark matter.
The exchange comes just days after Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire following SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO. It is also not the first time Musk has floated the idea of antimatter-powered rockets; he affirmed the concept in a 2021 exchange on Twitter (now X).
What Elon Musk said and how people responded
Elon Musk’s June 20, 2026 post read,
“In the future, a trillion times a trillion dollars will be spent on making antimatter to travel to other star systems.”
The post drew significant engagement, with 27,000 comments, 34,000 reposts, and 384,000 likes at the time of press. Some social media users’ replies referenced sci-fi concepts, including the Nibbler from Futurama, whose waste byproduct is a valuable substance, “dark matter”, playing on the idea that Musk would need an extraordinary, almost magical, resource to fund a project of that scale.
Others made references to the 2026 film Project Hail Mary, where an imaginary substance called “astrophage” was used for space travel.
Many commented on how science fiction-like the concept discussed by Elon Musk is.
This was not the first time Musk floated the idea of antimatter propulsion. A 2021 exchange showed an account called World of Engineering defining an “antimatter rocket” as a proposed class of rockets that use antimatter as a power source.
Musk simply agreed that it will be what happens ultimately in his reply.
The recent post expands on that idea by attaching a staggering price tag, arriving just as Musk’s own net worth has reached levels previously confined to the realm of hypotheticals.
Elon Musk’s trillionaire milestone
Elon Musk’s antimatter comment landed just days after he became the world’s first trillionaire, following SpaceX’s initial public offering on June 12, 2026. Reuters reported that the IPO raised a record $75 billion and that SpaceX shares surged on their first day of trading, pushing Musk’s net worth to roughly $1.1 trillion, according to Forbes.
The BBC reported on June 13, 2026, that Bloomberg estimated his wealth at approximately $1.11 trillion, putting him nearly four times richer than the next-wealthiest person, Google co-founder Larry Page.
The BBC also noted that Musk’s fortune has followed a volatile trajectory over the past six years, rising from roughly $28 billion in January 2020 to over $1 trillion by mid-2026, with sharp dips tied to Tesla’s stock performance and his involvement in the Trump administration. Most of his wealth is in his 42% stake in SpaceX, valued at more than $2 trillion, and his 12% stake in Tesla, valued at around $1.5 trillion.
Renaissance Capital strategist Matt Kennedy told Reuters that SpaceX’s valuation reflects what some investors call the “Elon premium,” a valuation boost reportedly rooted in faith in Musk himself rather than traditional financial metrics.
“Much like Tesla, SpaceX is a bet on Elon Musk. A market cap of $1.5 trillion-$2 trillion would certainly throw all traditional valuation methodologies out the window, and is instead best characterized as the ‘Elon Musk premium'”
Elon Musk’s own comments on money’s future relevance
Elon Musk has separately suggested that money itself may eventually become irrelevant, a view he shared in a conversation with entrepreneur Peter Diamandis posted to X (formerly Twitter) on June 11, 2026, according to Fortune.
Elon Musk described a future in which automated labor handles production and services so efficiently that the traditional relationship between money and value breaks down entirely, leaving little practical use for currency as it exists today.
“AI and robots are going to make so much stuff and provide so many services that they’ll run out of things to do for humans”
The trillionaire framed this as an inevitable consequence of AI-driven abundance rather than a distant hypothetical, saying,
“I think money will stop being relevant at some point in the future”
Diamandis pointed out the apparent contradiction of Musk making this prediction just as his own wealth was surging, asking:
“So just as you’re becoming a multi-trillionaire, money starts to have less value?”
Musk replied,
“Yeah, pretty much.”
When asked directly about his trillionaire status, Musk downplayed its significance, telling Diamandis it merely reflects ownership percentages in companies he built rather than liquid wealth, saying
“It’s just literally, I own a percentage of companies”
Musk has cited Iain M. Banks’s Culture science fiction novels as inspiration for his vision of a post-scarcity future, in which he has proposed “universal high income” as a solution to potential job losses from automation.
Political reaction to the trillionaire milestone
Elon Musk’s new wealth status has also drawn political commentary. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani responded to the news on X (formerly Twitter), writing, “Reason #1,000,000,000,000 why we should tax the rich,” according to Business Insider on June 13, 2026.
Business Insider noted that Mamdani, a progressive who campaigned on taxing the wealthy, has previously clashed with Musk, who backed his opponent, Governor Andrew Cuomo, in the New York mayoral race.
Despite their political differences, Mayor Mamdani has said he and Musk share an interest in government efficiency, having launched a Commission on Government Efficiency for New York City modeled loosely on the Musk-led DOGE initiative in the federal government.
Whether Elon Musk’s antimatter prediction proves prophetic or simply another headline-grabbing aside remains to be seen, but for now it has joined a growing list of his statements that blend genuine technical ambition with the kind of scale that invites internet speculation.
Edited by Devangee Halder
