SpaceX officially debuted on the U.S. stock market Friday with a market capitalization exceeding $2 trillion, vaulting CEO Elon Musk to the status of the world's first trillionaire.
Shares began trading at $150 each, a 6.6% increase from the initial public offering price, valuing the company at roughly $1.96 trillion. That placed SpaceX among the six largest companies in the United States.
The company sold $75 billion in stock in the IPO, which was initially priced at a $1.77 trillion valuation. According to Reuters, the offering was oversubscribed by four times.
Bloomberg News reported that among institutional investors allocated shares, up to 70% were long-term investments—strategies buying assets with the expectation that their value will rise over time—and sovereign wealth funds, including those from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and CFO Bret Johnsen rang the opening bell at Nasdaq MarketSite in New York at 9:30 a.m. local time as U.S. markets opened.
On Thursday, activists gathered outside the MarketSite to protest the IPO amid allegations concerning Grok—part of xAI, a SpaceX subsidiary—that allowed users to create non-consensual sexually explicit deepfake images before the IPO.
SpaceX shares did not trade until midday, as the exchange collected buy and sell orders and underwriters delayed trading until supply and demand balanced.
“We expect SpaceX to see an immediate gain in trading given the hype around the deal, possibly above 20%,” said Samuel Kerr, global head of equity capital markets at Mergermarket. “Anything lower would really worry me.”
Exchanges and brokerages worked to avoid the technical glitches that marred Meta’s 2012 IPO. With SpaceX seen as a dress rehearsal for a new generation of mega-listings, market participants also watched for signals of investor demand ahead of upcoming IPOs from Anthropic and OpenAI.
The landmark IPO cemented Musk’s place as the world’s first trillionaire and propelled SpaceX into the ranks of the world’s most valuable companies—even though the company posted losses of nearly $5 billion last year and generated only a fraction of the revenue of tech giants with similar valuations.
Growth has been driven by the Starlink division, which accounts for 80% of the company's revenue.
On Friday, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 carrying 29 satellites into space from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
