SpaceX set to begin trading after raising $75 billion in record IPO

SpaceX is set to begin trading Friday after completing the largest initial public offering in history, marking the long-awaited Wall Street debut of Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company.

SpaceX on Thursday priced its shares at $135 each, raising $75 billion to finance its ambitious plans, including establishing a human colony on Mars and deploying solar-powered data centers in space. 

The shares will start trading after the Nasdaq Stock Exchange opens at 9:30 a.m. ET under the ticker symbol “SPCX.”

The offering leapfrogs SpaceX to become the largest global IPO, surpassing the current record holder, Saudi Aramco. When the state-owned Saudi Arabian oil company went public in 2019, it raised nearly $26 billion, according to Renaissance Capital.

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. Investors are also gaining exposure to businesses beyond rocket launches, with SpaceX owning Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, as well as satellite internet provider Starlink.

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.”

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.