SpaceX IPO makes Elon Musk world's first trillionaire as shares surge 30% on debut
SpaceX debuted on the Nasdaq on Friday at a record-smashing $1.77 trillion valuation, instantly making Elon Musk the first person worth over $1 trillion.
The opening bell
SpaceX launched itself onto public markets on Friday with a colossal first-day pop, opening at $150 per share — an 11 percent premium to its $135 IPO price set the night before. By midday the stock had climbed as high as $176, giving the company a market capitalisation of nearly $2.3 trillion and ranking it as the sixth most valuable publicly traded US firm.
- IPO priced at $135 per share, valuing company at $1.77 trillion
- Shares open at $150, an 11% increase; early orders top $350 billion
- Stock reaches intraday high of $176, market capitalisation near $2.3 trillion
Musk's new fortune
Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002, now holds roughly 6.4 billion shares — close to half the company. Combined with his stakes in Tesla and other ventures, his personal net worth surged from about $700 billion to roughly $1.1 trillion, according to Bloomberg and Forbes estimates. That makes him the first person ever to cross the trillion-dollar threshold, more than three times richer than any other individual. Speaking to employees at Starbase, Texas, Musk said:
SpaceX wants to take you to the Moon, Mars and, ultimately, beyond.
A blueprint for AI IPOs
SpaceX's smooth debut is being watched closely by two other tech giants preparing to go public: OpenAI and Anthropic. Both AI companies have confidentially filed for IPOs this month, each valued at close to $1 trillion. Bankers see SpaceX's set-price offering — rather than an auction — as a model that could be replicated. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, co-leads on the SpaceX deal, are expected to manage those processes as well. Analysts caution that neither firm is profitable, and investor appetite for money-losing AI companies could be tested if market conditions shift.
Windfalls and risks
The IPO delivered record returns to venture backers: Founders Fund's 3 percent stake is worth more than $50 billion at the offer price, while Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia hold stakes of over $10 billion and $20 billion, respectively. Around 4,400 current and former employees became millionaires, and 400 became centimillionaires. Yet SpaceX itself lost $4.9 billion last year, flipping from a $791 million profit in 2024, largely because of heavy spending on its artificial intelligence arm, xAI, which Musk acquired earlier this year.
What the market is betting on
The buying frenzy reflects a belief in Musk rather than traditional fundamentals. Starlink remains the key revenue generator; space transport and xAI contribute far less to the bottom line. The company successfully lobbied index providers to fast-track its inclusion in benchmarks like the Nasdaq 100, meaning the shares will flow into index funds within days, tying millions of retirement accounts to the stock. Oxfam noted Musk could be richer than the poorest 46 percent of the global population, and protesters inflated a giant effigy of him in Times Square this week. Still, with OpenAI and Anthropic approaching, and Meta and Alphabet reportedly planning new AI fundraising, the torrent of liquidity that lifted SpaceX may soon face a much more crowded field.
- SpaceX
- 2.3 $tn
- OpenAI
- 0.95 $tn
- Anthropic
- 0.95 $tn
