SpaceX Makes Historic Stock Market Debut, Making Elon Musk First Trillionaire

SpaceX completed the largest IPO in history on Friday, raising $75 billion by selling 555.6 million shares at $135 each. The stock, trading under the ticker $SPCX, opened at $150 and closed at $161, a 19% gain that valued the company at $2.1 trillion. This debut made CEO Elon Musk the world's first paper trillionaire and created approximately 4,400 employee millionaires, including 400 staffers with holdings exceeding $100 million.

Musk and SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell led the historic bell-ringing ceremony with Musk speaking virtually from Starbase, Texas, and Shotwell ringing the bell in person at Nasdaq's New York headquarters.

The CEO reflected on the company's precarious beginnings, admitting he once gave SpaceX "less than a 10% chance of succeeding" and telling early supporters they must have been "smoking some really good crack" to believe it would survive. He emphasized the mission to "make humanity multiplanetary" and stated that the future should make people "glad to wake up in the morning."

Shotwell highlighted the company's unique culture, noting that a Falcon 9 rocket launched 29 Starlink satellites earlier Friday, and revealed that over half of SpaceX's 22,000 employees invested nearly $1 billion of their own money in the offering.

Market reaction indicate intense investor enthusiasm, with retail investors purchasing over $18 million in shares within the first 20 minutes of trading. While the stock reached an intraday high of $176.52, some analysts and entities like Morningstar have expressed caution, citing a fair value closer to $780 billion and noting the company's accumulated losses of $41.3 billion since 2002.

Despite these concerns, board member Antonio Gracias pledged to hold his stake indefinitely, and the IPO has sparked predictions of further public listings for major AI firms like Anthropic and OpenAI.