Summary:
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Musk Becomes A Trillionaire
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SpaceX IPO Opens Up $150, above $135 IPO price
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SpaceX IPO Shares To Trade 29% Higher Than IPO Price
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Liftoff: SpaceX Gray-Market Trading Signals 35% IPO Pop
Incidentally, this is where Polymarket predicted the stock would open ahead of the first indications:
Late in the cash session, hours after SpaceX shares began trading around $150, the stock surged to $176.52, up 31% from the $135 IPO price.
Musk earlier…
Valor Equity Partners founder Antonio Gracias spoke to CNBC about SpaceX: “And what we’re building is the entire stack from, energy to compute, to launch to orbital compute.”
The key threshold was $140; above that level, Musk became the world’s first trillionaire on paper. This caused a meltdown among Democrats and their left-wing comrades…
Meanwhile, China-linked Neville Roy Singham’s NGO network appears to be firing up its anti-capitalist propaganda machine, and the timing is no accident. These leftists view Musk as a major threat because he just gained a whole lot of political firepower, with fresh capital that can be deployed into pro-America candidates, causes, and institutions that directly challenge the left’s progressive empire.
Latest from Bloomberg:
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The record-setting IPO attracted more than $350 billion in demand from institutions and retail investors after its debut on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas under the symbol SPCX
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Everyday investors jumped on the stock, but those using Robinhood Markets Inc. encountered glitches in the first minutes of trading that appeared to recede by about 12:30 p.m. in New York
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Shares climbed as much as 31% in their debut, propelling Musk’s wealth even further
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Options contracts on SpaceX will start trading on Tuesday. Demand is expected to be high for the derivatives, which allow investors to bet on future stock moves or insure against a drop
Trillionaire Musk
Our view in 2024:
SpaceX Begins Trading
SpaceX shares opened up at $150 per share, priced above the $135 IPO price.
Lead-left underwriter has a message:
Elon Musk has been minted, well, on paper, the world’s first trillionaire.
The left is furious with Musk’s trillionaire status. Why?
Well…
Space stocks are getting hammered as “sell the proxies, buy the leader” emerges:
- $SPCE -24%
- $ASTS -11%
- $VOYG -10%
- $LUNR -10%
- $FLY -9%
- $RDW -9%
- $RKLB -8%
- $BKSY -8%
- $PL -7%
- $SATS -6%
Wall Street Goes SPCX Bull
Wolfe Research analyst Myles Walton initiates an “Outperform” rating for SPCX with a $175 price target:
SpaceX turned a competitive moat into an ocean of opportunity that we don’t see others crossing. Bringing (internal) cost of launch to near-zero alongside a willingness to push boundaries of scale support out-of-this-world near-term valuation. Initiate Outperform/$175 PT
Oppenheimer analyst Timothy Horan initiates a “Buy” rating on SPCX with a $190 price target:
We believe SPCX intends to converge communications and cloud/AI using space- based infrastructure. We see potential for SPCX to leverage terrestrial compute expertise as a bridge (and possible back-up plan) to enable key scale and cost advantages. We see it as the only vertically-integrated AI company with the required capital, data, LLMs, hardware, manufacturing and engineering talent. We note significant regulatory, technology, execution, keyman and investor expectation risks remain and that thermal management of chips for space applications in space within four years appears challenging. However, its space infrastructure appears structurally advantaged. We note terrestrial DC capabilities include highest velocity/lowest cost DCs (Colossus) which combined with V3s and Cursor will drive 2027-30E revenues. We initiate coverage with an Outperform rating/$190 PT at the IPO price of $135.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives:
We also believe the SpaceX anticipation has caused some added volatility in the market especially in the tech sector as traders/investors anticipate the ripple impact of this historical IPO. Overall, SpaceX going public is an important moment for the broader tech sector in our view as this AI Revolution and data takes this next step forward
. . .
We still Expect Tesla and SpaceX to Merge in 2027 Post-IPO.
Bloomberg Intelligence ESG analyst Rob Du Boff:
“Based on the indicated opening of $168.75 a share, SpaceX would get a weighting of 0.14% in the Russell 1000 and 0.92% in the Nasdaq 100 in a few weeks. That implies $6.6 billion in forced buying from funds tied to those indexes”
Huatai Research analyst LI Yujie:
Low free float + index buying to underpin tight near-term S/D after listing SpaceX’s IPO is expected to become one of the largest listings in US stock market history. Potential passive buying could exceed USD10bn. After the offering, total market cap is expected to be c.USD1.77tn. Initial free-float market cap is expected to be c.USD75.0-86.3bn, implying a float ratio of only c.4.25%-4.86%. Tradable shares may be relatively limited in the early listing period. Given the company’s large market cap and Nasdaq listing venue, SpaceX could be included relatively quickly in major indices such as the Nasdaq Composite, Nasdaq-100, CRSP, Russell, and MSCI after listing. This would bring near-term passive allocation demand. Based on the size of verifiable index products, potential passive buying is estimated at c.USD9.1-11.3bn. If we further include extended market indices and broader passive funds, the upper end of the range could be revised up to USD14.0-16.0bn. Overall, the market impact in the early stage of SpaceX’s listing may not simply come from the liquidity siphon of IPO fundraising. It is more likely to appear as near-term supply-demand tightness caused by “low initial float + intensive index buying”. However, after the 2Q26 and 3Q26 results and subsequent staggered lock-up expiries, tradable supply should gradually increase. The market impact is likely to shift from short-term demand driven to supply release and valuation digestion.
SpaceX Trading Imminent
The SpaceX IPO is set to begin trading momentarily. Shares are indicated to open 29% above the IPO price.
Ahead of the public market debut, SpaceX has revealed that the IPO is expected to draw more than $350 billion in demand. There are indications that $250 billion is coming from institutional orders, while about 20% of shares have been allocated to retail.
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SpaceX record ipo is said to draw over $350 billion in demand
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SpaceX ipo said to draw over $250 billion in institutional orders
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SpaceX said to place 20% of ipo shares to retail investors
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SpaceX said to sell 70% of institutional book to long-only, swfs
Latest headlines:
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CNBC Television: SpaceX president: “I wasn’t sure we would go public”
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CNBC Television: SpaceX public debut set to be a big day for employees who own the stock
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CNBC Television: $140 SpaceX per share makes Musk a trillionaire
North of $140 per share, Musk becomes a trillionaire …. Indications right now show $175 per share.
Liftoff: SpaceX Gray-Market Trading Signals 35% IPO Pop
Trader sentiment has sharply reversed after President Trump canceled the planned strikes and negotiators signaled progress toward a potential U.S.-Iran peace deal.
Risk assets are catching a bid Friday morning, with S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures both up roughly 30 bps. Treasurys are also rallying, with yields down 8 to 10 bps across the curve, led by the belly, and the 10-year yield is around 4.45%.
The timing could not be better for Elon Musk. SpaceX shares are set to hit public markets in the coming hours, potentially making Musk the world’s first trillionaire on paper and minting roughly 4,000 employee millionaires. SpaceX’s public market debut comes as themes of artificial intelligence and the space economy ramp up.
Already, pre-IPO trading in the derivatives linked to SpaceX shows a potential first-day surge of 30% to 50%.
IG International pricing implied a market value near $2.4 trillion on Friday morning, more than 35% above the company’s $135 IPO price and $1.77 trillion valuation.
On Hyperliquid, SpaceX-linked perpetual futures traded at $175-$180, implying a valuation above $2.3 trillion, with 24-hour volume of more than $224 million and open interest of over $252 million.
Late in the U.S. cash session on Thursday, SpaceX filed a free writing prospectus (FWP) which confirmed the company sold 555.6 million shares at $135 each, for a total size of $75 billion (excluding the greenshoe), making history with the biggest-ever IPO, launching it into the top ranks of the largest public companies and putting founder Elon Musk on the verge of becoming the world’s first trillionaire.
For context, SpaceX is more than double the size of the previous largest IPO – Saudi Aramco’s $29.4 billion listing in 2019. The SpaceX registration statement was declared effective on Thursday.
The pricing details are shown below.
At $135, SpaceX will have a market value of $1.77 trillion. Accounting for employee stock options and restricted share units, the pricing gives it a fully diluted valuation of about $1.8 trillion. SpaceX’s market value will rank it among the top 10 public companies globally, and make it larger even than Musk’s own Tesla.
According to Polymarket, there is a 84% chance the IPO closes above its offering price tomorrow, and a 46% chance it rises more than 20%.
Odds on Polymarket are surging that today’s market cap will close between $2 and $2.5 trillion.
According to Bloomberg data, Wall Street analysts, including one from New Street Research, Oppenheimer, and KGI Securities, have all rated SpaceX “Buy” with an average 12-month price target of $189.
Oppenheimer analyst Timothy Horan published a note on Thursday, initiating coverage of SpaceX with a $190 price target and a “Buy” rating.
Horan’s bull thesis:
We believe SPCX intends to converge communications and cloud/AI using space- based infrastructure. We see potential for SPCX to leverage terrestrial compute expertise as a bridge (and possible back-up plan) to enable key scale and cost advantages. We see it as the only vertically-integrated AI company with the required capital, data, LLMs, hardware, manufacturing and engineering talent. We note significant regulatory, technology, execution, keyman and investor expectation risks remain and that thermal management of chips for space applications in space within four years appears challenging. However, its space infrastructure appears structurally advantaged. We note terrestrial DC capabilities include highest velocity/lowest cost DCs (Colossus) which combined with V3s and Cursor will drive 2027-30E revenues. We initiate coverage with an Outperform rating/$190 PT at the IPO price of $135.
His key points:
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Robust public currency is key to business strategy. We believe access to capital is essential for CEO Elon Musk’s long-term AI vision in order to fund dominant communications and compute capacity along with acquisitions of AI companies. Eventual Tesla merger is plausible, but near term we believe the cos. will remain a quasi-vertically integrated ecosystem to provide access to capital.
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Large markets, but critical technology risk remains. We believe SPCX could address a $10T TAM by 2035E, but note that critical enabling-technology commercialization for space-based DCs remains uncertain, notably for thermally resistant chips, and costs could prove noncompetitive even if SPCX successfully builds chips. Should technology development be delayed, we see potential to leverage core expertise in terrestrial DC buildouts to support AI plans.
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Starship is crucial for success. SPCX is targeting 10K launches/year (27/day) totaling ~1.4B kg to deploy 1M datacenters and 100K communication satellites to support 1TW of its own manufactured chips. We believe this is only possible with capital/Starship, the most complex machine ever built. We expect growth to accelerate in 2027E as Starship enters commercial service and as AI LLMs/ infrastructure begin to see market traction.
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LEO communications capacity to grow 100x, at a $10/subscriber/month cost. Goal is to have a majority of AI compute, offered in space at lowest cost. We see 230M broadband subs in a decade, and 240GW of compute vs. global current capacity of 100GW. The communications technology is solved, the compute is not. There are a half dozen other, large long-term industries.
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Expect high volatility, with shares trading up initially. We anticipate an initial demand/supply imbalance on SPCX shares given broad retail demand and accelerated index inclusion. Our $190 PT ($2.5T firm value) is based on our DCF and 2035E revenue/EBITDA of ~$0.9T/$0.5T, requiring ~$1.6T in cumulative CapEx/spectrum and $300M more funding.
Separately, IG analyst Fabien Yip noted, “Demand has been good for the IPO and there is a lot of interest in the pre-IPO trading as well,” adding, “We have had so far even with the valuation looking stretched. If the pre-IPO pricing momentum sustains, it will set a precedent for the next mega-IPOs.”
Yet Morningstar analysts, Elizabeth Warren, and lefty pension funds have all tried to kill the hype cycle leading up to today’s world’s largest IPO.
