On any given day, Elon Musk holds a net worth of approximately one trillion dollars. However, this figure represents paper wealth primarily tied to his stakes in SpaceX and Tesla, rather than liquid cash. If Musk were to sell his holdings in those companies as well as Neuralink and The Boring Company, his total assets would reach 13 digits.
Despite the familiarity of the term “trillionaire,” research indicates that the human brain struggles to comprehend the magnitude of such large numbers. A trillion is technically 1,000 times larger than a billion, yet it often feels like only a minor increment. While comparisons to geographical areas or weights can help, they remain abstract. To make this scale tangible, Wired has partnered with Neal Agarwal, creator of the educational site Neal.fun, to launch “Spend Elon Musk’s Money.” This new interactive visualization allows users to purchase items ranging from Big Macs and aircraft carriers to the Las Vegas Sphere, tracking their spending in real-time while displaying purchased items in a virtual physical space.
In an interview with Wired, Agarwal described Neal.fun as a digital journal started when he was 19, serving as a catalog for his interests in science, visualizations, and web mechanics. He expressed a passion for exploring the unique potential of the web as a medium, noting that unlike traditional art forms, much of the web’s possibilities remain undiscovered. Agarwal highlighted that the platform excels at fostering community, citing examples where users created emergent behaviors in his projects, such as playing games in Japanese or forming communities around virtual road trips.
Agarwal also explained his preference for building web experiences over mobile apps, citing the freedom from app store approval processes and the ability to publish content directly without restrictions. “Spend Elon Musk’s Money” serves as a sequel to his earlier project, “Spend Bill Gates’ Money,” which visualized a $100 billion fortune. That original project, which featured items like Ferraris and McDonald’s franchises, became one of his most successful launches by helping users grasp the concept of wealth through interactive spending rather than static graphs.
The updated 3D version was designed specifically to address the difficulty of conceptualizing a trillion dollars. Agarwal wanted users to visually see the physical accumulation of purchases, such as cars, creating a sense of an “empire” rather than just processing numbers on a screen. He utilized an infinite scroll mechanic, similar to his project “The Deep Sea,” to represent vast quantities that would be impossible to print or render realistically in the physical world. Technical constraints prevented the use of actual 3D models for massive quantities, so Agarwal employed visual tricks to achieve the effect without freezing users’ devices.
The project includes inflation-adjusted pricing, reflecting the rise of a Big Mac from $2 in the original game to $6 in the new version. While some items carry over from the previous iteration, the new catalog focuses on tangible goods, including the Las Vegas Sphere and military vehicles like tanks and monster trucks. Agarwal noted that at the trillion-dollar level, spending often highlights the futility of accumulation, as basic needs are long surpassed. He invited users to explore the simulation and suggest additional items for future updates.
Neal Agarwal’s work is always so creative. The 3D visualization makes the numbers feel almost tangible.
Does this actually help us understand wealth inequality, or is it just a digital dopamine hit for scrolling?
Who knew a Big Mac costs six dollars now? Inflation really hit my fantasy portfolio hard.
I bought three islands and still had hundreds of billions left. This is terrifyingly addictive.