SpaceX sets milestone with world’s largest IPO, bolstering Musk’s power

Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite maker SpaceX has officially completed its initial public offering as the world’s largest stock market debut, a testament to the tech mogul’s influence and people’s faith in his business vision.

SpaceX confirmed on Thursday that the IPO price was set at $135 per share and that it would sell more than 555 million shares. the company said in a statement. That means SpaceX would raise around $75 billion from its offering, bringing its valuation to $1.77 trillion.

With these numbers, SpaceX would break the IPO record previously set by Saudi Aramco. Saudi Arabia’s state oil company was valued at $1.7 trillion and raised more than $29 billion when it went public in 2019. SpaceX will begin public trading on Friday under the ticker symbol SPCX.

A SpaceX spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

SpaceX’s long journey to the stock market has been defined by many superlatives. In addition to being the largest IPO ever, SpaceX is also the most dominant space company from the world’s richest man. And it would become the benchmark for a wave of other offerings that are expected to unleash an avalanche of wealth across Silicon Valley and Wall Street, creating powerful new titans in the process.

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup that makes the Claude chatbot, and its ChatGPT-making rival, OpenAI, filed confidentially in recent days to go public. Each company has a valuation approaching $1 trillion. If Anthropic and OpenAI successfully pull off public offerings, it would mark another milestone: $3 trillion companies going public for the first time.

The hallmark of the deals is that they are likely to make those who are already rich even richer. At $135 a share, the SpaceX stake controlled by Mr. Musk would be worth more than $860 billion. (He can’t sell some of the SpaceX stock he controls until the company hits various operational milestones, according to company filings.)

And a modest increase in the company’s share price in its first days of trading could make Mr Musk, 54, the world’s first billionaire.

Mr. Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002, has redefined the space industry with partially reusable rockets and the Starlink satellite Internet service. In February, SpaceX bought his artificial intelligence company xAI, which owned his social media platform X. He independently controls electric car maker Tesla and other companies.

SpaceX, which has contracts with NASA and other federal agencies, has long been a financial mystery. Last month, the company revealed the full picture of its finances for the first time in an IPO prospectus. The company reported a loss of more than $4.9 billion last year, compared to 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.

SpaceX’s underwriters, which include Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, also have the option to buy an additional 83 million IPO shares from the company to sell to investors. If the underwriters exercise the option, the company would raise more than $86 billion in the offering.