Meanwhile, Musk rang the opening bell Texas from where SpaceX operates a spaceport. He described the IPO shortly before the start of trading as a milestone that he himself would not have expected his company to achieve. “I gave SpaceX a less than 10 percent chance of being successful.”
If someone had told him earlier that SpaceX would have the biggest IPO of all time, he would have said, “Man, you must be smoking some really good crack.” Musk also laid out bold goals for his company, saying it wants to take people “to the moon, to Mars and ultimately beyond.”
The IPO breaks records. SpaceX has raised a total of $75 billion, far more than any company before. The previous record holder was the Saudi oil company Saudi Aramco, whose IPO raised around $29 billion in 2019.
Future merger with Tesla?
Based on the share issue price of $135, SpaceX is valued at a total of $1.77 trillion. The price gain on Friday brings the valuation well over two trillion dollars. SpaceX is now one of the ten most valuable listed American companies and also leaves behind the car manufacturer Tesla, which is also run by Musk and whose market capitalization is currently $1.25 trillion. Only Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon are ahead of SpaceX.
Musk was already by far the richest person in the world. Behind him is Larry Page, a co-founder of the Internet company Google, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes magazine at $292 billion.
While Musk was in Texas on Friday, SpaceX was represented on the Nasdaq by Gwynne Shotwell, who as Chief Operating Officer is effectively number two in the company and has worked for Musk for many years. In an interview with CNBC, Shotwell did not rule out the possibility that SpaceX could one day merge with Tesla. She said, “This might make Elon’s life a little easier.” There is no question that there will be synergies between Tesla and SpaceX in the future. But Shotwell added that she is focused on SpaceX at the moment.
Shotwell also warned investors in the conversation that SpaceX might not adhere to the practices of listed companies. She said she didn’t want to focus on quarterly reports, the business results typically published quarterly. “People who invest in SpaceX need to know that we do very futuristic things.” Shotwell also said Musk is “very misunderstood” by the public.
SpaceX was founded in 2002 when Musk was 30 years old. Today the company has various business areas. Traditionally, it specializes in rockets and spacecraft that carry payloads and astronauts into space, particularly for the American space agency NASA. The division that now has the highest sales is Starlink, which provides high-speed access to the Internet using satellites from space. This year, SpaceX also acquired X.AI, the artificial intelligence company from Musk’s empire that competes with Open AI and Anthropic and which also owns the online platform X.
Last year, SpaceX had sales of $18.7 billion. Based on Friday’s share price, the company is valued by the stock market at more than 100 times its sales, an unusually high number. SpaceX also reported a net loss of $4.9 billion for 2025. Only Starlink managed a positive operating result.
