The price landed early, and the timing was the tell. Just after 3pm EDT on Thursday, June 11, with US markets still open, SpaceX filed a “free-writing prospectus” with the Securities and Exchange Commission putting its initial public offering at $135 a share. Companies almost always wait until after the 4pm close to reveal a number, wary of market swings. This one did not wait, and the figure explains why: 555.56 million shares sold for a record $75 billion, at a $1.77 trillion valuation, the richest price tag ever attached to a debut.
Here is what that means, in plain terms: when the stock starts trading on the Nasdaq on June 12, SpaceX will sit seventh among US-listed companies, worth more than JPMorgan Chase, Berkshire Hathaway, Eli Lilly, Meta Platforms and Musk’s own Tesla. The previous record listing, Saudi Aramco’s December 2019 debut, brought in $25.6 billion at a $1.71 trillion valuation. SpaceX collected nearly three times as much cash.
Musk ran the debut on his own terms, breaking customs as he went. The price was fixed before the roadshow, the listening tour bankers traditionally use to haggle over terms; think of it like a band printing ticket prices before playing a single warm-up show. Retail buyers received 30 per cent of the shares, an unusually large number. And Musk will keep 82 per cent of the company once the dust settles, a structure built for founder control. The books are being run by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BofA, Citigroup and JP Morgan.
The business underneath the number is a three-headed thing: rockets, satellites and AI. Founded in 2002, the company states its mission as “to build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multi-planetary, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars”. Its launch arm has lofted more than four-fifths of all mass sent to orbit over the past three years, on its own accounting. But most revenue flows from Starlink, the satellite internet service connecting “millions of consumer, enterprise, and government customers across 164 countries, territories and other markets”.
The catch, and it is a real one: SpaceX lost money in 2025, and the valuation leans on the future. The biggest slice of its claimed $28.5 trillion market, a total the company calls the largest in human history, sits with xAI, an AI unit widely seen as trailing OpenAI and Anthropic even as SpaceX argues that its compute, its model and its data from X “creates a significant strategic advantage”. Rivals such as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are chasing the same orbital economy.
The practical upshot? A listing normally dominated by institutions handed everyday investors nearly a third of the seats, and more debuts are coming: Goldman Sachs expects US IPO proceeds to quadruple to a record $160 billion in 2026, with OpenAI and Anthropic queued behind SpaceX. Underwriters can still sell extra shares within 30 days, so the pile could grow. Friday’s opening trade will show what the market believes Musk’s machines are worth.
Sources
- Franklin Templeton CEO sends strong message on SpaceX – TheStreet
- Musk becomes world’s first trillionaire as SpaceX debuts on Wall Street – France 24
- Elon Musk’s SpaceX prices record US$75 billion IPO at US$135 a share – The Straits Times (Reuters wire)
