Elon Musk’s SpaceX confirmed Thursday that it will begin trading on the Nasdaq exchange on Friday in the largest initial public offering in history, a successful market debut that could propel the entrepreneur to billionaire status.
In a filing with the US markets regulator, the company priced more than 555 million shares at $135 each, placing SpaceX among the 10 largest companies on Wall Street with a valuation of just under $1.8 trillion.
It will be valued more than Musk’s own Tesla car company, Meta, which owns Facebook, and Walmart.
The offering will raise a record $75 billion, easily surpassing Saudi Aramco’s $29.4 billion debut in 2019, so far the largest in history.
The underwriters have an option to purchase nearly 83 million additional shares, which would bring the total to more than $86 billion if exercised in full.
The rocket and space company, co-founded by Musk in 2002, will trade under the symbol “SPCX,” with a parallel listing on Nasdaq Texas. All eyes will be on how Wall Street absorbs the supply, which could send tremors through global markets.
SpaceX will be first out of the gate among the tech and AI giants eyeing public markets, with OpenAI and Anthropic expected to follow, both having recently filed with regulators for their own market debuts.
As is traditional for high-profile debuts, executives are expected to ring the opening bell on Friday to mark the start of the session, in this case in New York’s Times Square, home of Nasdaq.
The IPO is Musk’s biggest financial bet yet, with his company xAI and social media platform X (formerly Twitter) also included in the offering after the billionaire brought them into the company earlier this year.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America led a syndicate of more than 20 banks in the deal.
The offering was outbid more than four times by major banks and financial institutions, according to Bloomberg, and interest from everyday investors was reported to be high.
More than 20% of the shares will be reserved for these retail investors, a much larger proportion than is typically allocated in IPOs, giving Musk’s legions of followers the opportunity to buy a piece of the company.
The success of the IPO depends directly on investors’ faith in Musk as a visionary entrepreneur. The tech billionaire will serve as CEO, CTO and chairman of the newly listed company.
The IPO is expected to create thousands of new millionaires and many billionaires, with current and former employees, and a long list of investors, from nearly a quarter-century of the company’s history looking to cash in.
The company’s financials are giving some pause on Wall Street, as the valuation largely depends on Musk delivering on sci-fi promises, including putting data centers in space and humans on Mars using as-yet-unproven technology.
While the company is growing rapidly and revenue reached $18.7 billion in 2025, it is also losing money, resulting in a net loss of $4.9 billion.
In an extraordinary prediction, SpaceX’s filing claims it can reap more than $28.5 trillion in revenue from its various markets.
A successful initial public offering could make him the first billionaire in history on Friday.
Musk’s fortune rose to $782 billion on Thursday, according to the Forbes list of the world’s richest people, almost three times the wealth of number two, Google co-founder Larry Page.
“A trillion dollars in the hands of one man is incompatible not only with an affordable economy, but also with a healthy democracy,” said Nabil Ahmed, senior director of economic justice at Oxfam America.
On the eve of the commercial launch, activists displayed a giant inflatable Musk in front of the Nasdaq offices to protest the ability to create fake sexualized images using xAI’s Grok chatbot.
Published – June 12, 2026 09:25 am IST