SpaceX IPO: Musk’s Company Makes Historic Wall Street Debut
Elon Musk’s SpaceX will make its historic debut on Wall Street Friday, offering 555.6 million shares at $135 apiece in what is expected to be the largest initial public offering in history. The offering aims to raise approximately $75 billion, far surpassing the $26 billion raised by Saudi Aramco in 2019, and would give the company a market valuation of roughly $1.77 trillion, according to AP News.
Why SpaceX Is Going Public Now
SpaceX has remained a private company for 24 years, with Musk previously stating he would not take it public until the company reached Mars. The decision to list now is driven by massive capital requirements. The company plans to deploy 100,000 next-generation Starlink satellites into orbit and build AI data centers in space—a vision Musk described as a “massive new growth base” requiring significant funding during a conversation with JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon.
As AP News reported, the IPO proceeds will fund the expansion of infrastructure for SpaceX’s AI and rocket businesses, expand its Starlink satellite constellation, and support the development of Starship—the fully reusable rocket system key to Musk’s space ambitions.
The Three Moonshots Fueling the Valuation
According to a detailed analysis by TechCrunch, SpaceX’s valuation is built on three near-impossible engineering feats:
Fully Reusable Rocket (Starship): The key to economically putting mass into orbit. Starship is currently in its test phase with an ongoing FAA mishap investigation after a booster failed to make a controlled reentry.
High-Rate AI Satellite Production: Musk aims to produce 6,666 AI satellites per year—roughly 556 per month—doubling current Starlink production rates. These satellites would power orbital data centers.
Terafab Chip Foundry: A new U.S.-based semiconductor fabrication facility. Chip fabs typically cost billions of dollars and take up to a decade to build, making this one of the most ambitious components of the plan.
Governance Controversy
The IPO has drawn sharp criticism from major institutional investors over its governance structure. Three public pension funds—the New York State Common Retirement Fund, the New York City pension systems, and CalPERS—with combined assets exceeding $1 trillion sent a letter to SpaceX on May 13 expressing serious concerns, as documented by the NYC Comptroller’s office.
Under the proposed structure, Musk would hold 82.4% of voting power through 5.22 billion Class B shares carrying 10 votes each, while holding approximately 42% of the equity. Crucially, Musk can only be removed as CEO with his own consent due to the super-voting share structure. The pension funds described the arrangement as “the most management-favorable governance structure ever brought to the U.S. public markets at this scale.”
Additional concerns include mandatory arbitration of shareholder claims, Texas-law barriers requiring a 3% ownership threshold for derivative litigation, and the concentration of CEO, CTO, and Chair roles in a single individual who simultaneously leads Tesla, X, xAI, the Boring Company, and Neuralink.
Valuation Discrepancies
Not all analysts agree on SpaceX’s worth. While the company’s bankers peg the valuation at approximately $1.77 trillion, independent assessments vary significantly. Morningstar assigns a value of roughly $825 billion ($63 per share), while NYU Professor Aswath Damodaran estimates the company is worth approximately $1.2 trillion. Morningstar’s analyst characterizes the $72 difference between their fair value and the $135 IPO price as a “call option” on SpaceX’s ability to deliver orbital data centers.
Market Impact and Index Inclusion
SpaceX could join the Nasdaq 100 after just 15 trading days under new rules, while S&P 500 inclusion requires 12 months of trading. Index inclusion would force passive funds—such as Vanguard’s $950 billion VOO fund—to automatically purchase shares. Only six companies in the S&P 500 are currently worth more than SpaceX’s IPO valuation, with Nvidia leading at $5.2 trillion.
The company plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol “SPCX” and could begin trading as soon as next week. The IPO is reportedly deeply oversubscribed, with some institutional investors purchasing $10 billion blocks.
Business Risks and Forward Look
Despite the excitement, significant risks remain. SpaceX is currently losing billions of dollars annually—$2.6 billion from operations last year on $18.7 billion in revenue. Starship reusability remains unproven at scale, space data centers are estimated by industry experts to be roughly a decade away, and the AI business has no clear path to profitability per the prospectus.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, who noted that “at the end of the day Musk is SpaceX and SpaceX is Musk,” described the listing as “the first major test for public markets after years of muted IPO activity.” The offering is expected to pave the way for AI giants Anthropic and OpenAI, which have also filed confidential IPO paperwork.
As public investors get their hands on SpaceX shares, they will own a near-monopoly on access to space in the U.S. and Europe, a world-spanning communications network, and a wager on the most ambitious infrastructure project of the AI era. Whether Musk can deliver on his three hard-tech moonshots will determine whether this historic IPO proves to be a landmark investment or a cautionary tale.