Elon Musk’s space and AI company is set to begin trading on the Nasdaq on Friday.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is on the verge of completing what is expected to be the largest initial public offering in stock market history. The company priced its IPO at $135 per share, raising roughly $75 billion in what is set to become the biggest market debut ever surpassing Saudi Aramco’s 2019 listing by a wide margin.
SpaceX said it plans to sell 555.6 million shares, with underwriters holding an option to purchase an additional 83.33 million shares at the IPO price, which would bring the total fundraise to as much as $86.2 billion. The company is scheduled to begin trading on the technology-focused Nasdaq index on Friday.
What the valuation means for Musk
The numbers here are difficult to overstate. At the $135 per share price, SpaceX would be valued at approximately $1.77 trillion, making it the seventh largest company in the United States by market capitalization and placing it above Tesla, which currently carries a market cap of roughly $1.6 trillion.
For Musk personally, the IPO could represent a historic wealth milestone. Already the richest person on the planet, the SpaceX chief executive is widely expected to become the world’s first trillionaire once shares begin trading and his combined stakes across multiple companies are tallied.
Musk will maintain over 82% voting control after the offering, made possible through his combined holdings of Class A and Class B shares. That means despite SpaceX becoming a publicly scrutinized company, Musk will retain near total authority over its direction a level of control that even exceeds that of Meta‘s Mark Zuckerberg, who holds roughly 60% voting power in his own company.
Governance concerns and what they mean for investors
That concentration of power has drawn attention from legal analysts. A review from Harvard Law School noted that because SpaceX insiders will control key decisions including potential acquisitions of other Musk owned entities and executive compensation investors take on meaningful risk that would not exist in a more traditionally governed public company.
SpaceX notably does not require any independent board members, meaning no one on its board is obligated to be free of a personal or financial interest in the company. That is an unusual arrangement for any company of this scale going public, let alone one valued at nearly $2 trillion.
The company’s financial entanglements are also worth noting. SpaceX has already absorbed Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI, which itself acquired the social media platform X previously known as Twitter, which Musk purchased in 2022. SpaceX’s xAI unit also purchased $269 million worth of Tesla megapacks in April, adding to the web of financial overlap between Musk’s various companies.
Wall Street is divided, but demand is high
Not everyone agrees on whether $135 per share represents a fair price. Morningstar analysts have described SpaceX as significantly overvalued, placing the company’s fair value at around $780 billion roughly 48% below its IPO target and pointing to the company’s recent net loss of $4.28 billion as a concern.
Others are far more optimistic. Global brokerage Oppenheimer launched Wall Street’s first official coverage of SpaceX with a bullish outlook, setting a target price of $190 per share. Retail investor demand heading into Friday’s debut has also been described as exceptionally strong, with reports indicating more than $70 billion in orders from individual buyers alone.
A test case for the next wave of mega IPOs
The SpaceX listing is being watched closely beyond just its own valuation. It is seen by many in the financial world as a proving ground for other high profile private companies, including Anthropic the artificial intelligence company behind Claude and OpenAI, both of which have signaled intentions to go public in the near future.
Analysts have noted that SpaceX’s debut carries an extraordinary valuation of roughly 67 times annual sales, which is three times the multiple of Nvidia based on its most recent financials. Whether public markets will sustain that premium once shares are freely trading will be one of the defining financial stories of 2026