SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite maker, officially finalised its initial public offering price to become the world’s largest stock market debut, in a testament to the tech mogul’s influence and people’s belief in his business vision.
On Thursday, SpaceX confirmed its IPO price was set at $US135 a share and that it would sell more than 555 million shares, according to a company statement. That means SpaceX would raise around $US75 billion from its offering, putting its valuation at $US1.77 trillion.
With those numbers, SpaceX would shatter an IPO record previously set by Saudi Aramco. Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company was valued at $US1.7 trillion and raised more than $US29 billion when it went public in 2019. SpaceX will begin trading publicly under the ticker symbol SPCX on Friday local time, which is overnight tonight for Australian investors.
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A SpaceX spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Antonio Gracias and Elon Musk at a political event last year. Credit: Jim Vondruska//NYT
SpaceX’s long journey to the stock market has been accompanied by many superlatives. Apart from being the biggest-ever IPO, SpaceX is also the most dominant space company from the world’s richest man. And it would become the benchmark for a wave of other offerings, which are all expected to unleash an avalanche of wealth across Silicon Valley and Wall Street, creating influential new titans in the process.
Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup that makes the Claude chatbot, and its ChatGPT-making rival, OpenAI, have both confidentially filed to go public in recent days. Each company has a valuation approaching $US1 trillion. If Anthropic and OpenAI successfully pull off IPOs, it would mean another milestone: Three trillion-dollar companies reaching the stock market for the first time.
A defining trait of the offerings is that they are likely to make those who are already wealthy even wealthier. At $US135 a share, the SpaceX stake controlled by Mr Musk would be worth more than $US860 billion. (He cannot sell some of the SpaceX shares he controls until the company hits various operational milestones, according to the firm’s filings.)
And a slight increase in the company’s share price in its first days of trading — perhaps as soon as Friday — could turn Mr Musk, 54, into the world’s first trillionaire.
Mr Musk’s friends, such as investor Antonio Gracias, as well as Silicon Valley venture capital firms and other private investment companies, are also set to reap large rewards. An analysis from Hill.com, a San Francisco-based investment platform, estimated that more than 4400 current and former SpaceX employees were also likely to become millionaires from the IPO, with around 400 of those expected to earn $US100 million or more.
Mr Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002, has redefined the space industry with partly reusable rockets and a satellite internet service, Starlink. In February, SpaceX bought his AI company, xAI, which owned his social media platform, X. He separately runs the electric carmaker Tesla, as well as other companies.
Democratic Senator from Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren. Credit: MICHAEL REYNOLDS/EPA
SpaceX, which has contracts with NASA and other federal agencies, had long been something of a financial mystery. Last month, the company revealed a full picture of its finances for the first time in an IPO prospectus. The company reported that it had lost more than $US4.9 billion last year, compared with a $US791 million profit in 2024, because of increased expenditures on AI. Revenue was $US18.7 billion last year, up 33 per cent from the previous year.
Those figures have spooked some potential investors, causing skeptics to say that SpaceX is overvalued at more than $US1.7 trillion. They noted that Mr Musk has a history of overpromising and questioned whether SpaceX’s goals of launching AI data centers into orbit or establishing factories on the moon are feasible.
“It really does feel very much a ‘don’t look at the man behind the curtain’ situation,” said Jim Chanos, the founder of the investment firm Chanos and Co., who predicted the 2001 collapse of Enron, the energy company that was found to have engaged in accounting fraud.
This week Democrats Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission asking the agency if it had reviewed SpaceX’s claims about its business before its IPO, while also raising questions about the provenance of some of its financial projections.
“This is shaping up to be the most rigged IPO in American history,” she said in an interview.
But others said they were excited by SpaceX’s offering, seeing it as a new chance to bet on Mr Musk, who has a record of disrupting industries. On X, some of the tech mogul’s fans recently reposted a quote that was first attributed to his fellow billionaire Peter Thiel: “Never bet against Elon.”
SpaceX’s underwriters, which include Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, also have the option of purchasing an additional 83 million IPO shares from the company to sell to investors. If the underwriters exercise that option, the company would raise more than $US86 billion in the offering.
