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.
Rockets, satellites and AI
SpaceX, which Elon Musk founded in 2002, develops and launches spacecraft for satellite operators, NASA, the Department of Defense and other customers. The business includes Starlink, a satellite division that provides broadband connectivity, and an artificial intelligence division focused on building data centers.
SpaceX in February also acquired Musk's company xAI, which runs the social networking platform X and chatbot Grok.
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.
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."
Indeed, SpaceX will face significant challenges in delivering on its bold plan to develop space for commercial ventures, including ringing the earth with AI-powered satellites, and to justify its massive valuation.
"I can see the argument for why this company should deserve a lower valuation," said Matthew Kennedy, a senior market strategist at Renaissance Capital, which tracks IPOs. "At the same time, it is true that some stocks are expensive and stay expensive."
Many experts expect SpaceX stock to be volatile in its early days of trading, as is common with other large IPOs. A Truist analysis of 30 sizable technology IPOs found that more than half the offerings posted negative returns a year after their shares started trading.
The trillion dollar man
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.
Edited by Aimee Picchi
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Future and growth of the space economy
A look at the fast-growing space economy as Elon Musk's SpaceX is set to go public
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