What can you buy with $1 trillion? Elon Musk might actually find out

So, it finally happened. Tesla shareholders have given Elon Musk the go-ahead for a record-shattering pay package that could, theoretically, make him the world’s first trillionaire. Yes, trillion — the kind of number that doesn’t really mean anything anymore because our human brains simply can’t process that many zeroes.

Now, before you start picturing Musk building golden Teslas and robotic palaces on Mars, let’s get one thing straight: he hasn’t got the cash yet. Tesla still needs to hit certain milestones, including boosting its already sky-high market value by 466 percent. Doable? Maybe. But since it’s Elon Musk we’re talking about — a man who sells flamethrowers for fun and wants to colonise other planets — it’s at least worth entertaining the idea.

And so, the question of the hour: what can you buy with 1 trillion dollars?

Let’s put this absurd amount into perspective. If you spent $40 every second, 24 hours a day, it would take you 792 years to run out of 1 trillion dollars. Yes, centuries. You could buy everything you’ve ever dreamed of — and still have change left over to buy a small country or two.

Here’s what Musk could theoretically splurge on if he woke up tomorrow and found a trillion dollars sitting in his bank account:

• 1,428 Shohei Ohtanis. The baseball superstar’s $700 million Dodgers deal? Pocket change. Musk could hire more than a thousand of him and still have enough left to buy every team in Major League Baseball.
• Every new car sold in the United States this year. Sure, they’d all depreciate instantly, but who cares? He could buy them again next year.
• 333 skyscrapers like JPMorgan Chase’s new Park Avenue HQ. At $3 billion a pop, that’s enough to rebuild the Manhattan skyline several times over.
• 465 Icon of the Seas cruise ships. The world’s largest cruise ship could become Musk’s personal navy — or maybe he’d just turn them into floating Mars recruitment centres.
• 10,000 Starbucks CEOs. The coffee chain’s boss makes nearly $100 million a year. Multiply that by 10,000 and you’re still only scratching the surface.
• 2,000 Jeff Bezos yachts. Those $500 million luxury boats aren’t exactly cheap, and the upkeep alone could bankrupt most billionaires. But a trillionaire? Not a problem.
• The entire Ivy League — five times over. Collectively, those eight elite universities are worth about $200 billion. For a fifth of a trillion, Musk could own Harvard, Yale, and the rest… multiple times.
• A $2,923 cash bonus for every person in the US. Generous, right? Until you realise inflation would skyrocket before you could say “Dogecoin.”
• Switzerland. Technically, you can’t buy a country, but if Musk could, Switzerland — with a GDP just under $900 billion — might be for sale. Alpine views included.
• Every house in Hawaii. With roughly 573,000 households averaging $826,000 each, Musk could buy the entire state. Take that, Larry Ellison.
• Coca-Cola and a Coke for everyone on Earth. Buy the $300 billion company, then hand out a 12-pack to all 8.2 billion people. Hydration and domination, all in one.
• The world’s biggest car and oil companies. He could buy Toyota, Volkswagen, Ford, GM, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips — and still have billions to spare. Electric cars, petrol cars, who cares? He’d own them all.

The problem with too many zeroes

When numbers get this big, they stop making sense. The world has officially entered the era of incomprehensible wealth — where one man could potentially hold more money than most countries.

If Musk really does hit that trillion mark, he wouldn’t just be the richest person alive — he’d redefine what being “rich” even means. And, on the bright side, when you realise that America’s $38 trillion national debt equals just 38 Elon Musks… it somehow doesn’t sound quite as terrifying.

Maybe that’s the real trick: once you start thinking in trillions, everything else just feels small.