New York (AFP) – SpaceX enters the final stretch Thursday before its expected trading on Wall Street as part of the biggest initial public offering in history, which could propel co-founder Elon Musk to trillionaire status. The company will be the first out of the gates among the tech and AI giants eyeing public markets, with OpenAI and Anthropic expected to follow, as both have filed with regulators for their own market debuts.
If all goes as expected, the space and rocket company co-founded by Musk in 2002 will begin trading on the Nasdaq exchange on Friday morning, with all eyes on how Wall Street will absorb the blockbuster IPO that could send tremors across global markets. For high-profile companies, the first day of trading traditionally sees executives ring the opening bell to mark the start of the session — in this case at New York’s Times Square, home of the Nasdaq.
The IPO is Musk’s biggest financial gamble yet, with his xAI company and the X social media platform (formerly Twitter) also included in the SpaceX offering after the multi-billionaire folded them into the company earlier this year. The company will offer more than 555 million shares at an expected $135, placing SpaceX among Wall Street’s most elite companies with a valuation of around $1.8 trillion.
The operation will become official on Thursday, including the pricing, with questions swirling over whether the company will raise its offer price amid reports that it attracted more than four times the available shares, according to Bloomberg. Thirty percent of the shares will be reserved for retail investors, triple the amount that is typically allocated in IPOs, giving Musk fans a chance to fork over for a slice of the company.
The success of the IPO rests squarely on investors’ faith in Musk as a visionary entrepreneur. The tech multi-billionaire will serve as chief executive, chief technology officer and board chairman of the newly traded company. The IPO is expected to mint thousands of new millionaires and many billionaires, with former and current employees — and a long list of investors — from the company’s near quarter-century history looking to cash in.
The financials of the company are giving some on Wall Street pause, as the valuation largely depends on Musk delivering on promises worthy of science fiction, including putting data centers in space as well as people on Mars using as yet unproven technology. While the company is growing fast — revenue hit $18.7 billion in 2025 — it is also losing money, producing a net loss of $4.9 billion.
In an extraordinary prediction, SpaceX’s filing claims it can pull in over $28.5 trillion in revenue from its various markets. The offering should easily outrank Saudi Aramco’s $29.4 billion debut on the public markets in 2019, the biggest ever.
© 2024 AFP
