SpaceX Raises $75 Billion in the Largest IPO Ever, Then Jumps 19%
Shares priced at $135, opened at $150 and closed their first session at $160.95, valuing the rocket and satellite company well above $1.7 trillion in a deal that dwarfed every previous listing.
SpaceX began trading on the Nasdaq on Friday under the ticker SPCX, raising roughly $75 billion in the largest initial public offering in the history of financial markets and closing its first session up about 19%.
The shares priced at $135, opened at $150 and finished at $160.95. At the intraday high the company's market value briefly exceeded $2.2 trillion. The order book was more than twice covered, with something on the order of $150 billion chasing the shares on offer.
The scale, in context
The previous record for an initial public offering was Saudi Aramco's 2019 listing, which raised about $25.6 billion. This deal was roughly three times that size, and it arrived in a year when U.S. issuers had already raised approximately $251 billion in the first half.
Roughly 30% of the public allocation was reserved for retail investors — an unusually large share for a deal of this size, and a decision that shaped both the pricing dynamic and the first-day move.
What investors are buying
The company sells two things public markets can model. Launch is a business with a reusable-vehicle cost structure competitors have not matched and a customer base that includes governments, satellite operators and its own subsidiaries. Satellite broadband is a subscription business with a very large customer count and a capital cycle largely complete in its earliest markets.
Since February, the company has also owned an artificial intelligence business, following an all-stock combination with xAI that valued the merged entity at $1.25 trillion. Management has framed that deal around a long-dated ambition to place data centers in orbit.
The valuation question
At the closing price, the company trades at a multiple of revenue that has no comparable among large industrial businesses. The bull case rests on optionality: launch cadence, satellite subscriber growth, defense contracts, and the AI operations acquired in February.
The bear case is simpler. A substantial share of revenue depends on government customers whose budgets are set by appropriations that lapsed for 43 days in the autumn, and the AI assets are being valued on projections rather than earnings.
What it does to the market
A listing this large is a liquidity event for everything else. Index inclusion decisions will force passive funds to buy, and active managers had to fund participation by selling something. For the new-issue calendar, the successful pricing of the largest deal ever removes any question about whether the market can absorb size — which is likely to pull several other very large private companies toward the exit.
