SpaceX is poised to begin trading Friday after completing what is now the largest initial public offering on record, a milestone that marks Elon Musk’s long-anticipated Wall Street debut for his rocket and satellite company.
The company said Thursday that it priced its shares at $135 apiece, raising $75 billion to support a range of high-cost initiatives, including its goal of building a human settlement on Mars and launching solar-powered data centers into space.
Shares are expected to start trading on the Nasdaq after the market opens at 9:30 a.m. ET under the ticker symbol “SPCX.”
The listing vaults SpaceX past all previous IPOs worldwide. The new record surpasses Saudi Aramco’s 2019 public offering, which raised nearly $26 billion, according to Renaissance Capital.
Rockets, satellites and AI
Founded by Musk in 2002, SpaceX designs, builds and launches spacecraft for clients that include satellite companies, NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense. Its operations also include Starlink, the satellite internet business, as well as an artificial intelligence unit developing data centers.
In February, SpaceX also acquired Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, which operates the social media platform X and the chatbot Grok.
SpaceX’s public stock offering has generated strong investor interest, with Bloomberg reporting on Thursday that the IPO received more than $100 billion in retail orders.
The IPO gives SpaceX a market valuation of $1.77 trillion, making the Texas-based manufacturer one of Wall Street’s most valuable companies. SpaceX trails Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, which has a market cap of roughly $5 trillion, according to FactSet, as well as a handful of other tech companies.
Although SpaceX has a high valuation, it lags other tech giants in terms of revenue and profitability, said Jay Ritter, an IPO expert and professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business. SpaceX, which is unprofitable, booked $18.7 billion in revenue last year, far less than Alphabet’s $400 billion in 2025 sales.
“Alphabet, Apple and Nvidia are producing annual after-tax profits of more than $100 billion a year,” he said prior to the IPO. “There’s a long way to go to catch up with the profitability of those mega caps.”
Indeed, SpaceX will face significant challenges in delivering on its bold plan to develop space for commercial ventures, including ringing the earth with AI-powered satellites, and to justify its massive valuation.
“I can see the argument for why this company should deserve a lower valuation,” said Matthew Kennedy, a senior market strategist at Renaissance Capital, which tracks IPOs. “At the same time, it is true that some stocks are expensive and stay expensive.”
Many experts expect SpaceX stock to be volatile in its early days of trading, as is common with other large IPOs. A Truist analysis of 30 sizable technology IPOs found that more than half the offerings posted negative returns a year after their shares started trading.
The trillion dollar man
The IPO has made SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, already the world’s richest person, a trillionaire — at least on paper. Musk owns 4.8 billion shares of SpaceX, or about 42% of the company, as well as 350 million stock options, according to the IPO filing. With 82.4% of the company’s voting power, he will continue to wield significant control over SpaceX’s future.
SpaceX shares are expected to launch on several indexes, including the Nasdaq 100 and Russell indices, in the coming days. That could pave the way for more investors, including Americans with 401(k) plans, to become potential shareholders.
SpaceX, which had filed for a confidential initial public offering in April, said that it sees a market opportunity of more than $28 trillion across the industries it operates in.
Of that, 90% is attributed to xAi alone, according to an analysis by Van Ha Trinh, financial markets analyst at the online broker Exness. That points to SpaceX’s belief that its AI capabilities will fuel its growth.
