SpaceX Raises $75 Billion in World’s Largest IPO, Opens Trading at $150 on Nasdaq
SpaceX began trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Friday, June 12, under the ticker symbol SPCX, raising $75 billion in the largest initial public offering in financial history. Shares opened at $150, an 11% gain over the $135 IPO price set on Thursday evening, and jumped as high as $168.75 in early trading — a 25% premium over the offering price. Yahoo News
The $75 billion raised more than doubles Saudi Aramco’s $29.4 billion offering in December 2019, which had held the record for the largest IPO ever. At the $135 IPO price, SpaceX carries an implied valuation of approximately $1.77 trillion. pressreadergoodreads
Earlier in the day, Musk rang the Nasdaq’s opening bell from SpaceX’s headquarters in Starbase, Texas, alongside hundreds of employees, while other executives, employees, and investors gathered on the floor of the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York. tradingeconomics
Musk’s Wealth and a Historic Milestone
Musk, the founder and chief executive of SpaceX, is set to own roughly four out of every ten shares after the IPO. With SpaceX trading above $150 at the open, his net worth — estimated at approximately $780 billion by Forbes before the listing — surged well past $1 trillion, making him the world’s first confirmed trillionaire. Hong Kong Free Press
Musk’s super-voting Class B shares give him approximately 85% of voting power, leaving outside shareholders with minimal influence over major corporate decisions. The structure is more concentrated than any comparably sized company in the S&P 500. goodreads
Dan Ives, a technology analyst at Wedbush Securities, captured the market mood succinctly, telling clients: “At the end of the day Musk is SpaceX and SpaceX is Musk.”
The Company Behind the Ticker
SpaceX builds and operates spacecraft, including thousands of satellites deployed in support of its Starlink satellite internet service. In February 2026, the company merged with xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence startup behind the Grok chatbot, in an all-stock deal valuing the combined entity at $1.25 trillion at the time of completion. Hong Kong Free Press
SpaceX touted the merger as a key step in its plan to launch a fleet of orbital data centres — satellites designed to deliver computing power from space. Hong Kong Free Press
The financial picture is mixed. The company’s revenue jumped to $18.7 billion in 2025, a 33% increase from the prior year, with nearly a quarter of that coming from Starlink, which counted millions of active subscribers. Despite the revenue growth, SpaceX recorded a net loss of $4.9 billion last year. Hong Kong Free Press
The xAI division posted a $6.355 billion operating loss in 2025. The S-1 filing also disclosed approximately $20 billion in GPU lease agreements between xAI and entities associated with Valor Equity Partners, a fund controlled by Antonio Gracias, a SpaceX director. TheNewsGuru
Retail and Institutional Demand
Retail participants placed approximately $100 billion in orders via platforms including Robinhood, Fidelity, and SoFi throughout the IPO process — a figure that alone exceeded SpaceX’s $75 billion fundraising target. tradingeconomics
Nasdaq President Nelson Griggs told CNBC that opening a record-breaking IPO requires finding the right first trade rather than just ringing a bell — and that for a deal of SpaceX’s scale, the stabilisation agent typically seeks orders for about 10% of the shares sold before setting the opening price, meaning roughly 55 million shares in this case. Global Witness
SpaceX’s initial indicated opening price to trading desks was $175, before moving to $160, and ultimately settling at $150 — underscoring the price-discovery dynamic Griggs described. Global Witness
Analyst Scepticism
Not all observers share the market’s enthusiasm. Morningstar equity analyst Nicolas Owens assigned SpaceX a fair value of $780 billion — less than half the $1.77 trillion implied by the IPO price — using a discounted cash flow model anchored primarily to Starlink and launch revenue. Owens described xAI as posing a “material threat of value destruction” and noted that its competitive position relative to OpenAI and Anthropic left its economic moat “indeterminate.” TheNewsGuru
At $135 per share, SPCX trades at roughly 94 times SpaceX’s 2025 revenue — a multiple more typical of high-growth software companies than aerospace manufacturers. TheNewsGuru
Denmark’s academic pension fund AkademikerPension blacklisted SPCX, calling the governance structure catastrophic. tradingeconomics
Index Inclusion and the $5.79 Trillion Passive Wave
The IPO’s consequences extend far beyond Friday’s opening trade. Within approximately ten trading days, MSCI — whose indices are tracked by roughly $5.79 trillion in passively managed assets — will be compelled to add SPCX to its Global Standard Indexes. Passive funds tracking those benchmarks have no discretion in the matter. TheNewsGuru
The Nasdaq issued a rule change last month permitting fast-entry to the Nasdaq-100 for some major IPOs, and several other major exchanges subsequently adjusted their own rules. SpaceX will almost certainly enter the retirement accounts of millions of Americans through index funds pegged to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq within weeks of the listing.
A 180-day insider lockup prevents Musk, Gracias, and other large shareholders from selling shares until December 2026. When that restriction expires, a significant new supply of shares will enter the market — a dynamic that historically creates downward price pressure for IPO stocks during the post-lockup period. TheNewsGuru
Background
SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Musk in El Segundo, California, with the goal of reducing the cost of space transportation and enabling the colonisation of Mars. The company has since become the world’s dominant commercial launch provider, flying more missions per year than any other operator on Earth. SpaceX confidentially filed its IPO paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on April 1, 2026, setting a target valuation above $1.75 trillion. The February 2026 merger with xAI brought together SpaceX’s launch business and Starlink’s cash flows with xAI’s AI computing push, and the combined entity carried a combined valuation of $1.25 trillion at the time of the deal. OpenAI and Anthropic have recently filed paperwork to become publicly traded companies, meaning SpaceX’s market debut arrives as the first of several landmark technology listings anticipated for 2026. India.com + 2
What Happens Next
The IPO offering is expected to close on June 15, 2026. MSCI index inclusion, expected within ten trading days, will trigger mandatory purchases by passive fund managers tracking its Global Standard Indexes. The Nasdaq-100 fast-entry rule creates a parallel route to index inclusion on a compressed timeline. The 180-day insider lockup expires in December 2026, at which point Musk and other large shareholders become eligible to sell into the public market for the first time. Whether the share price holds above the $150 opening level through that lockup expiry will be a key test of whether the IPO’s retail-driven demand translates into durable institutional conviction at a valuation that the most prominent independent analyst describes as less than half of what the fundamentals justify. TheNewsGuruTheNewsGuru
