Key takeaways:
- SpaceX raised about $75 billion by selling more than 555 million shares at $135 each, surpassing Saudi Aramco as the largest IPO on record.
- The stock opened at $150 under the ticker SPCX and was trading at $168.75 at 11:55 a.m. ET, up 25% from the IPO price, NPR reported.
- SpaceX remains unprofitable, with NPR reporting a $4.3 billion first-quarter net loss and analysts warning of risks tied to execution, regulation, AI expansion and dependence on Elon Musk.
SpaceX surged in its first minutes as a public company Friday, opening a new Wall Street chapter for Elon Musk’s rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence business after the largest initial public offering on record.
Shares began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX after SpaceX priced more than 555 million shares at $135 apiece, raising about $75 billion. The stock opened at $150 and climbed quickly. At 11:55 a.m. ET, it was trading at $168.75, up 25% from the IPO price, NPR reported.
The offering gave the Texas-based company a valuation of about $1.77 trillion, placing it among the world’s most valuable listed companies on its first day of trading. The IPO surpassed Saudi Aramco’s 2019 listing, which raised nearly $26 billion, according to Renaissance Capital figures cited by CBS News.
As trading began, Musk appeared in Starbase, Texas, behind what looked like a Nasdaq-branded podium, while SpaceX executives rang the opening bell at the Nasdaq Stock Market in New York.
SpaceX, founded by Musk in 2002, develops and launches spacecraft for satellite operators, NASA, the Department of Defense and other customers. Its businesses include Starlink, the satellite broadband division, and an artificial intelligence operation focused on building data centers. In February, CBS News reported, SpaceX acquired Musk’s xAI, which runs the social networking platform X and the chatbot Grok.
The company has told regulators it plans to use proceeds to expand its rocket and satellite communications businesses and deepen its push into artificial intelligence. Its plans include expanding data centers on Earth, developing AI microchips and launching what it calls “orbital AI compute infrastructure” — data centers in space. CBS News reported that SpaceX also cited ambitions including a human colony on Mars and solar-powered data centers in space.
Investor demand was strong before the debut. Bloomberg reported Thursday that the IPO drew more than $100 billion in retail orders, according to CBS News.
The listing also sharply increased Musk’s paper wealth. The IPO likely made him the world’s first trillionaire, NPR reported. According to the IPO filing cited by CBS News, Musk owns 4.8 billion SpaceX shares, about 42% of the company, along with 350 million stock options. NPR reported that he holds roughly 85% of shareholder voting power, while CBS News put his voting power at 82.4%, leaving him with significant control over the company as chairman and chief executive.
SpaceX remains unprofitable. NPR reported that its IPO prospectus showed a net loss of $4.3 billion in the first quarter of this year. CBS News said SpaceX booked $18.7 billion in revenue last year, far below Alphabet’s $400 billion in 2025 sales.
“Alphabet, Apple and Nvidia are producing annual after-tax profits of more than $100 billion a year,” Jay Ritter, an IPO expert and professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business, told CBS News before the IPO. “There’s a long way to go to catch up with the profitability of those mega caps.”
Some analysts have questioned the valuation. Morningstar valued SpaceX at $780 billion using a discounted cash flow model, NPR reported. Morningstar analysts Nicolas Owens and Suryansh Sharma wrote that uncertainty is “very high” around the company’s business and cited “substantial risks related to strategic execution, technological evolution, market dynamics, regulations, AI buildout, and key-person dependency.”
Matthew Kennedy, a senior market strategist at Renaissance Capital, told CBS News: “I can see the argument for why this company should deserve a lower valuation. At the same time, it is true that some stocks are expensive and stay expensive.”
SpaceX is expected to be the first of three major AI-linked listings this year. OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, and Anthropic, creator of Claude, have filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission signaling plans to go public, with analysts saying listings could happen this fall.
Songyee Yoon, managing partner at AI-focused Principal Venture Partners, told NPR the technology remains new and the commercial winners are not yet clear. The introduction of such a new technology, she said, “comes with a lot of kind of frothy valuation and hype.”
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