SpaceX opens at $150 in record $75bn IPO, making Elon Musk the first trillionaire and rewarding legions of retail investors
Shares of Elon Musk's rocket, satellite and AI firm surged 19% in their Nasdaq debut as heavy retail demand and a tightly controlled float pushed the valuation past $2 trillion.
The debut
SpaceX shares opened at $150 on Friday, 11% above the $135 IPO price, and ended the day around $160. The $75 billion offering was oversubscribed nearly four times, with only 3% to 4% of shares available for trading, creating what one strategist called "the latest, greatest shiny object for retail investors." The first-day gain lifted the company's valuation above $2 trillion, making it the seventh-largest publicly listed U.S. company at the open.
This allocation to retail is far and away the highest I've ever seen in my decades on Wall Street.
Retail investors pile in
Retail orders accounted for 4% of all single-stock turnover on Friday, totaling $453 million in net buying and running at 3.5 times the pace of runner-up Nvidia, according to Vanda Research. Brokerages including SoFi reported record participation, with all eligible individual investors receiving at least some allocation. One former NASA investigator, Joseph Gutheinz, skipped the allocation process and bought $100,000 worth of shares at $161 on the open market.
Win or lose, I'm happy to be invested at all.
- SpaceX
- 453 $M
- Nvidia
- 129.4 $M
Wall Street's stress test
Behind the scenes, trading systems at Morgan Stanley, market makers and exchanges processed millions of orders without the glitches that marred Facebook's 2012 IPO. Citadel Securities handled the majority of retail orders, calling it the highest retail activity for an IPO auction ever. Charles Schwab saw well over a million orders in the first few hours. The smooth debut sets a template for the mega-listings of OpenAI and Anthropic expected later this year.
People go back to the Facebook days … but I honestly think the banks in the U.S. did a fantastic job, the SpaceX crew did a fantastic job telling the story.
A new class of millionaires
At least 4,000 current and former SpaceX employees held stakes worth more than $1 million at the time of the IPO, and another 400 held over $100 million, according to estimates from Hill.com. Elon Musk himself crossed the trillion-dollar threshold, his personal fortune jumping from roughly 700 billion to nearly 1,100 billion dollars. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon hosted a party for 250 SpaceX employees with moon pies and custom cloud candy, while venture capitalists toasted with Dom Pérignon and A5 Wagyu sliders at a $30,000 rooftop gathering downtown.
Musk addressed staff from Starbase, Texas.
SpaceX wants to take you to the Moon, to Mars and, ultimately, beyond.
The road to the mega-IPO
SpaceX's journey from a startup funded by PayPal proceeds to a $2 trillion public company spanned two decades of breakthroughs and failures.
- Elon Musk starts SpaceX using money from the sale of PayPal.
- Falcon 1 becomes the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit.
- SpaceX lands its first major NASA contract to ferry cargo to the International Space Station.
- Dragon capsule becomes the first private spacecraft to dock at the ISS.
- First successful vertical landing of Falcon 9 after a payload delivery.
- Starlink satellite launches begin, aiming to provide global high-speed internet.
- Crew-1 mission, the first operational flight under NASA's Commercial Crew Program.
- NASA awards SpaceX the lunar lander contract for the Artemis program.
- First Starship rocket explodes after losing control.
- A U.S. judge blocks a Justice Department case accusing SpaceX of refugee hiring discrimination.
- SpaceX goes public on Nasdaq, raising $75 billion at a $2 trillion valuation.
Valuation and risks
The opening price valued SpaceX at 105 times its 2025 revenue, a multiple that assumes Musk can deliver on orbital data centers, a Martian colony and AI compute services. The company sold only about 5% of its shares, and future insider sales could pressure the stock. Analysts also noted that the capital-intensive AI pivot remains unproven. Still, the IPO's success has emboldened Wall Street underwriters, who stand to earn roughly $500 million in fees from the deal, and is likely to accelerate the pipeline of private tech giants eyeing public markets.
