Elon Musk is about to add another publicly traded company to his empire, and the buzz around it is already rippling through Tesla.
SpaceX is set to make its stock market debut today on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX, capping what is shaping up to be the largest IPO in history. The rocket and satellite company priced its offering at $135 a share, selling roughly 555.6 million shares to raise about $75 billion. At that price, SpaceX would carry a valuation of around $1.77 trillion, enough to make it the seventh-largest U.S. company by market value and to leapfrog Tesla, which sits near $1.6 trillion.
A record-setting raise
The deal tops the previous IPO record holder, Saudi Aramco’s $29 billion listing in 2019. Demand has been intense, with the offering reportedly drawing far more interest than the shares available, leaving it heavily oversubscribed. Goldman Sachs led the underwriting, joined by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. After the offering, Musk keeps more than 82% of the voting control.
Roughly 30% of the raise was set aside for retail investors, a much larger slice than a typical IPO hands to everyday buyers. That detail matters because so many of those retail buyers are also loyal Tesla shareholders.
The Tesla tug-of-war
That overlap is exactly what has Tesla investors on edge. The stock had a rocky week, sliding close to 10% over five sessions as some traders wondered whether retail investors were selling Tesla to free up cash for SpaceX shares. Tesla dipped about 4% on Wednesday to $381.59 before bouncing back 4.6% on Thursday to $399.15 once the SpaceX order book closed.
Whether the rotation theory fully holds up is debatable. The retail portion of the SpaceX raise works out to only around 2% of Tesla’s total market value, and not all of that money was coming out of Tesla. Broader weakness in tech stocks played a role too, with the Nasdaq down about 6% on the week and Tesla’s high volatility amplifying the swings.
The two companies are more entangled than ever. Tesla was name-checked 87 times in SpaceX’s latest filing, and Tesla itself holds 19 million SpaceX shares. The connections have revived chatter about a possible tie-up between Musk’s two most valuable companies, an idea that once sounded far-fetched.
What the analysts are saying
Wall Street has been busy repositioning. JPMorgan upgraded Tesla from underweight to neutral and sharply lifted its price target to $475 from $145. Evercore bumped the stock to outperform on the same day. Others stayed cautious, with Truist trimming its target to $400 and holding, and Jefferies and Oppenheimer keeping neutral stances. Across 44 analysts, the consensus lands at hold, with an average target around $404.
On SpaceX itself, the skeptics point to the math. The company posted about $18.67 billion in revenue for 2025, up 33%, but swung to a net loss of nearly $5 billion. At the IPO price, that works out to roughly 94 times trailing sales, a multiple that towers over most of the market.
The road ahead
For now, the focus is on Friday’s open. If SpaceX comes out hot and holds its ground, the flow of money out of Tesla could continue. If the new stock cools quickly, the pressure on Tesla may ease just as fast. Either way, Musk’s universe of companies just got a lot more interconnected, and a lot more public.