SpaceX Completes Historic $75 Billion IPO, Pushing Valuation Past $2 Trillion

SpaceX has officially rewritten the record books of global finance. On Friday, Elon Musk's aerospace and artificial intelligence conglomerate completed the largest initial public offering in history, raising a staggering $75 billion and instantly becoming the sixth-most valuable publicly traded company in the world.[4][7]

The sheer scale of the debut eclipsed all previous market milestones. Priced at a fixed $135 per share—bypassing the traditional Wall Street price-discovery range—the stock opened at $150 and surged as high as $176 before closing its first day of trading at $160.95.[5][6]

That 19% first-day pop pushed SpaceX's total market valuation past $2.1 trillion. To put the offering in perspective, the $75 billion raised nearly triples the previous IPO record of $25.6 billion set by Saudi Aramco in 2019.[3][4]

The historic listing also triggered a personal wealth milestone that was previously confined to science fiction. The surge in SpaceX's valuation officially pushed founder and CEO Elon Musk's net worth past the $1 trillion mark, making him the world's first trillionaire.[3][5]

Musk, who retains an 82.4% voting stake in the company, addressed employees and investors at the company's headquarters as trading commenced. He reiterated the company's founding mission to make humanity multiplanetary, framing the massive capital injection as the fuel needed to build a permanent human presence on Mars.[5]

But Wall Street's voracious appetite for the stock was driven by more than just rockets. In February 2026, SpaceX acquired Musk's artificial intelligence startup, xAI, merging the space pioneer with one of the leading developers of large language models.[6]

The combined entity pitched investors on a sprawling vision that integrates space infrastructure with the booming AI economy. The company's prospectus outlined plans to deploy millions of Starlink satellites to establish "orbital compute" data centers, effectively moving the massive energy and cooling demands of AI processing into low-Earth orbit by 2028.[4]

Retail investors clamored for a piece of the action. The offering saw unprecedented demand from everyday traders, with retail orders reportedly topping $100 billion. The company allocated an unusually high 30% of its float to retail buyers, a move that Wall Street executives praised as a democratization of mega-cap tech investing.[1]

Behind the scenes, the IPO is generating a massive windfall for the Wall Street banks that orchestrated it. A syndicate of 23 banks, led by Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, shepherded the deal to market.[2]

Analysts estimate that underwriting fees alone could approach $1 billion. Furthermore, JPMorgan issued a tactical buy signal for the investment banking sector, arguing that the market is underestimating the "multiplier effect" of the SpaceX listing, which is expected to drive massive secondary market trading and peripheral wealth management business.[2]

To celebrate the lucrative partnership, JPMorgan hosted a lavish, space-themed soirée for 250 SpaceX employees at its new Park Avenue headquarters, complete with a curated light show and a SpaceX-branded tomahawk steak carving station.[8]

Despite the euphoria, some market watchers urge caution regarding the company's fundamentals. While SpaceX generated $18.7 billion in revenue last year—largely driven by its profitable Starlink division—the broader company remains unprofitable, posting a net loss of $4.28 billion in the first quarter of 2026.[6]

Analysts point out that while SpaceX's $2.1 trillion valuation places it alongside tech titans like Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia, those companies generate tens of billions in after-tax profits annually. SpaceX is currently trading on the promise of future monopolies in space logistics and orbital AI, rather than current earnings multiples.[6]

Nevertheless, the successful listing is expected to have immediate ripple effects across the broader stock market. SpaceX's sheer size guarantees its eventual inclusion in major benchmark indexes like the Nasdaq-100 and the S&P 500, meaning millions of Americans will soon hold the stock in their retirement accounts.[6]

The blockbuster debut also signals a robust risk-on environment that could pry open the IPO window for other highly anticipated tech unicorns. With SpaceX proving that the public markets can absorb a $75 billion offering without flinching, AI heavyweights like Anthropic and OpenAI are widely expected to accelerate their own plans to go public later this year.[4][7]