New York (AFP) – Shares in Elon Musk’s SpaceX closed almost 20 percent higher on their trading debut Friday after the biggest IPO in history, making the polarizing entrepreneur the world’s first trillionaire as he vowed to take humanity to Mars. The blockbuster initial public offering, which raised more than $75 billion, is expected to kick off a series of major IPOs by AI companies in the coming months. The debut on the Nasdaq exchange in New York capped weeks of investor frenzy over the rocket company turned AI and satellite conglomerate. The stock climbed as high as $176, or 31 percent above its offering price of $135, in its first session before ending the day at $161.50.
“SpaceX wants to be able to take you to the Moon, take you to Mars, and ultimately beyond,” Musk said at a launch event in Starbase, Texas, surrounded by staff, many of whom became multi-millionaires with the launch of trading. “I’m confident at this point that with the incredible team that we have here at SpaceX, that we will do that for you,” Musk added. About 100 people assembled outside the Nasdaq’s home in New York, where SpaceX also marked the occasion with a neon sign in Times Square. Musk “sets very futuristic goals that no one else is doing, and I think that has got a lot of people excited,” said Sarin Sio, of financial company Dovetail, who had come to the Nasdaq headquarters.
The company priced more than 555 million shares at $135 each in a Thursday filing with the US markets regulator, valuing SpaceX at just under $1.8 trillion. Friday’s gain lifted SpaceX’s market value to more than $2 trillion, placing it among the 10 most valuable American companies — ahead of Tesla, Facebook-owner Meta, and Walmart. Options for nearly 83 million additional shares could push the total raised above $86 billion. Co-founded by Musk in 2002, the rocket startup has since expanded into a major satellite operator and has also folded in Musk’s artificial intelligence company — xAI — which includes the social media platform X.
Trading under the ticker symbol “SPCX,” the conglomerate is being closely watched for how Wall Street absorbs the offering and what it will mean for its AI rivals looking to trade on the public markets as early as this year. OpenAI and Anthropic both recently filed initial documents with regulators. Friday’s IPO comes just over a year after Musk left President Donald Trump’s administration, following a months-long stint leading the highly contentious “DOGE” effort to slash government spending — while simultaneously juggling his CEO roles at Tesla and SpaceX. Musk’s backing of Trump and right-wing populists in Europe — and a long list of incendiary comments on X — has seen the entrepreneur go from a broadly admired prodigy to a deeply polarizing figure.
The record IPO is nonetheless a testament to Musk’s continued support among investors, with Bloomberg reporting that the offering was more than four times oversubscribed. Demand among retail investors — for whom 20 percent of shares were reserved — was also reported to be high.
The IPO is expected to mint thousands of new millionaires and several 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 valuation largely depends on Musk delivering on promises worthy of science fiction, including putting data centers in space and humans on Mars using as-yet unproven technology. A lot also hangs on a huge expansion of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service as well as the success of xAI, the maker of the Grok chatbot and Musk’s rival to OpenAI and Anthropic that has yet to gain traction.
In an effort to shore up its books, SpaceX is renting out its AI computing capacity to Anthropic and Google through short-term deals worth billions of dollars. While SpaceX is growing quickly — revenue hit $18.7 billion in 2025 — it is also losing money, producing a net loss of $4.9 billion, mainly on spending to build AI capacity. In an extraordinary prediction, SpaceX’s filing claims it can pull in more than $28.5 trillion in revenue from its various markets. The milestone makes Musk by far the world’s richest person — an achievement that earned criticism from some quarters. “The world will get its first trillionaire while Americans across the country are scraping together every dollar to save for retirement,” said Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren.
© 2024 AFP
