Sawt Falasteen - SpaceX lifts off in record Wall Street debut

The blockbuster operation, which raised more than $75 billion, is expected to make Musk the world's first trillionaire and kick off a series of major IPOs by AI companies in the coming months.

The first trades -- and the level of demand -- were expected to be confirmed shortly after the opening of the Nasdaq market in New York.

"SpaceX wants to be able to take you to the moon, take you to Mars, and ultimately beyond," Musk said at a launch event in Starbase, Texas, surrounded by staff.

"I'm confident at this point that with the incredible team that we have here at SpaceX, that we will do that for you," Musk added.

About 100 people assembled outside the Nasdaq exchange's home in New York, where SpaceX also marked the occasion with a neon sign in Times Square reading "Building the infrastructure to the future."

Musk "sets very futuristic goals that no one else is doing, and I think that has got a lot of people excited," said Sarin Sio, of financial company Dovetail, who had come to the Nasdaq headquarters.

The company priced more than 555 million shares at $135 each in a filing with the US markets regulator on Thursday, placing SpaceX in the top 10 of Wall Street's biggest companies with a valuation of just under $1.8 trillion -- ahead of Tesla, Facebook-owner Meta and Walmart.

Options for nearly 83 million additional shares could push the total above $86 billion.

Co-founded by Musk in 2002, the rocket startup has since expanded into a major satellite operator and has also folded in Musk's artificial intelligence company -- xAI -- which includes the social media platform X (formerly Twitter).

The conglomerate will trade under the ticker symbol "SPCX," and all eyes will be on how Wall Street absorbs the offering.

SpaceX is the first out of the gates among leading AI giants eyeing public markets, with OpenAI and Anthropic both recently filing initial documents with regulators.

The IPO comes just over a year after Musk left President Donald Trump's administration, following a months-long stint leading the highly contentious "DOGE" effort to slash government spending -- while simultaneously juggling his CEO roles at Tesla and SpaceX.

Musk's backing of Trump and right-wing populists in Europe -- and a torrent of incendiary comments on X -- has seen the entrepreneur go from a broadly admired prodigy to a deeply polarizing figure.

The record IPO is nonetheless a testament to Musk's continued support among investors, with Bloomberg reporting that the offering was more than four times oversubscribed.

Demand among retail investors -- for whom 20 percent of shares were reserved -- was also reported to be high.

- Data centers in space -

The IPO is expected to mint thousands of new millionaires and several billionaires, with former and current employees -- and a long list of investors -- from the company's near quarter-century history looking to cash in.

The company's financials are giving some on Wall Street pause, as the valuation largely depends on Musk delivering on promises worthy of science fiction, including putting data centers in space and humans on Mars using as-yet unproven technology.

A lot also hangs on a huge expansion of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service as well as the success of xAI, the maker of the Grok chatbot and Musk's rival to OpenAI and Anthropic that has yet to gain traction.

While SpaceX is growing quickly -- revenue hit $18.7 billion in 2025 -- it is also losing money, producing a net loss of $4.9 billion, mainly on spending to build AI capacity.

In an extraordinary prediction, SpaceX's filing claims it can pull in more than $28.5 trillion in revenue from its various markets.

A successful debut could make Musk history's first trillionaire, dwarfing other billionaires in the sheer size of his fortune.

T.Ibrahim--SF-PST