SpaceX priced its initial public offering at $135 a share Thursday evening, raising roughly $75 billion and setting a $1.75 trillion valuation, the largest stock market debut on record. Trading begins Friday on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and Nasdaq Texas under the ticker SPCX.
The deal pushes Elon Musk, who will retain about 40 percent of the company after the offering, within reach of becoming the world's first trillionaire on paper. Musk's net worth stood at approximately $780 billion ahead of the pricing, according to figures cited by ABC News. Larry Page, the second-wealthiest person, is at $291 billion.
What priced
SpaceX sold 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock, with underwriters holding an option for an additional 83,333,333 shares. Total demand exceeded $250 billion, including more than $100 billion in retail orders, leaving the book between 3.5 and 4 times oversubscribed. The company reserved up to 30 percent of the offering for retail buyers, well above the 5 to 10 percent typical for a U.S. listing. Fidelity lowered its minimum IPO participation requirement to $2,000 for the deal. The transaction is expected to close June 15.
The offering uniquely bundles three businesses Musk merged ahead of the listing: the original rocket-and-satellite operation behind Falcon 9, Starship and Starlink; the social platform X, formerly Twitter; and the artificial-intelligence startup xAI. SpaceX confidentially filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 1 and publicly filed its S-1 prospectus on May 20, with a roadshow that began June 4.
The numbers
The combined entity generated $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025, a 33 percent increase from the prior year, according to ABC News. Starlink contributed nearly a quarter of the top line, with Capital.com pegging the satellite-internet unit at about $10 billion. The company posted a net loss of $4.9 billion last year, a swing from the roughly $8 billion in profit on $15 billion to $16 billion in revenue that the rocket business alone produced in 2024. Capital.com attributed the deterioration largely to the integration of xAI.
At $1.75 trillion, the deal values the company at roughly 94 times trailing revenue. Eric Gardner, the More Perfect Union business reporter who first detailed the deal's economics, told Democracy Now the multiple is far outside historical norms. "If you have a restaurant, and you do $3 million of sales a year, and you sell it for $9 million, you have a revenue multiple of three," Gardner said.
On the Street
Not every analyst accepts the price tag. Nicolas Owens, an analyst at Morningstar, told ABC News the shares are worth about $63 each, less than half the offering price, citing execution risk on the company's artificial-intelligence initiatives. Robin Wigglesworth, an editor at the Financial Times, characterized the structure of the deal more bluntly, saying "it feels like it's getting engineered to be one" bag-holder situation in which retail investors absorb losses while insiders cash out.
Gardner has alleged that Musk pressured Nasdaq to fast-track SpaceX into its major indexes, bypassing the seasoning periods exchanges typically require. That treatment would force index funds, and the retirement savers who own them, to buy SpaceX shares regardless of the price.
Jason Schloetzer, a Georgetown University professor cited by ABC News, noted that the paper trillionaire designation will not translate into spendable cash. Musk faces a one-year lockup on share sales after the offering. Tesla shareholders have separately approved a compensation package that could exceed $1 trillion.
Counterpoint
The dossier draws on center and left-leaning outlets, and no right-leaning source has weighed in. Bulls on the deal argue that Starlink's subscriber growth, the Falcon 9 launch cadence and Starship's development pipeline justify a premium normally reserved for early-stage software companies, and that the $250 billion order book reflects genuine institutional appetite rather than engineered demand. Skeptics counter that the 94 times revenue multiple and the bundling of an unprofitable AI lab with a money-losing social network leave little margin for error if any of the three businesses stumbles.
The scale of the wealth at stake has drawn outside attention. Oxfam research cited by ABC News found that a $1 trillion net worth would exceed the combined wealth of roughly 3.8 billion people.
What's next
SPCX opens for trading Friday morning on Nasdaq. The offering is scheduled to close June 15.