SpaceX shares rise for first full day of trading

SpaceX’s share price continued to rise on Monday, the company’s first full day of trading, adding to its sharp rise on Friday after a record public listing.

Elon Musk’s rocket and artificial intelligence maker rose about 6 percent in early trading on Monday. During a frenzied few hours of trading on Friday, the day of the company’s IPO, SpaceX rose nearly 20 percent.

The gain crowned Mr. Musk, 54, as the world’s first billionaire and eased nervousness on Wall Street about whether investors would accept the company’s lofty valuation.

SpaceX’s initial public offering raised $75 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation, the largest IPO in history. It has come to be seen as a springboard for other giant tech companies, namely Anthropic and OpenAI, which are looking to go public this year.

After recent earnings, SpaceX had a market value of over $2.2 trillion. Anthropic and OpenAI, which developed basic AI models and chatbots, are expected to go public with a valuation approaching $1 trillion.

SpaceX’s giant IPO beat the previous record of Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, which raised more than $29 billion in its 2019 IPO.

Mr Musk and SpaceX have redefined the space industry with partially reusable rockets and the Starlink satellite internet service. In February, SpaceX bought Mr Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, which also owned social media platform X, in a sweeping move to consolidate his business empire. By merging the companies, Mr. Musk provided a financial lifeline for xAI, which has spent billions of dollars trying to catch up with its rivals.

SpaceX, which has contracts with NASA and other federal agencies, has long been a financial mystery and has at times acted as a kind of piggy bank for Mr. Musk since the company was founded in 2002.

But last month, the company revealed for the first time a full picture of its finances in preparation for the launch. It said it lost more than $4.9 billion last year, compared with a profit of $791 million in 2024, due to increased spending on AI, which totaled $18.7 billion last year, up 33 percent from the previous year.