Elon Musk’s SpaceX has confirmed the terms of its SpaceX IPO stock market debut on Nasdaq on Friday, raising $75 billion (£56 billion) ahead of a listing that values the company at $1.77 trillion (£1.3 trillion) and would make it the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history.
An IPO is when a private company sells shares to the public for the first time on a stock exchange. The price of those shares is agreed in advance, and Friday’s debut will determine whether the market confirms or challenges the headline valuation.
A valuation that rewrites the record books
In a filing with America’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), SpaceX set its share price at $135 (£100.65), with 555.6 million shares being sold. That eclipses the previous record held by Saudi Aramco, which raised $25.6 billion (£19.1 billion) when it listed on Riyadh’s stock exchange in 2019.
According to CNBC, the $1.77 trillion valuation would place SpaceX as the seventh-biggest company in the United States by market capitalisation, putting it above Tesla, which is valued at about $1.6 trillion. If the float proceeds at that valuation, it could also make Musk the world’s first paper trillionaire, cementing his position as the richest person on the planet.
The word “paper” matters here: a paper trillionaire holds wealth on paper via share ownership, but that figure rises and falls with the share price once trading begins.
Retail investors given an unusually large slice
SpaceX has taken the unusual step of allocating a much higher proportion of IPO shares to smaller, everyday investors than is typical. While most IPOs set aside between 5% and 10% for retail investors, SpaceX is offering between 20% and 25%.
In the UK, 2.7 million shares worth $364 million (£271 million) have been pre-allocated to British retail investors, according to the firm handling UK subscriptions. Total demand from UK retail investors stood at just under $1 billion (£740 million), and total global demand from smaller investors was reportedly over $100 billion (£74.5 billion), leaving many orders unfulfilled.
Nearly two thirds of British retail investors (61%) received a full allocation. Those applying for up to $2,700 (£2,013) worth of shares received the full amount; those applying for more saw their allocations scaled back, with a cap of 1,000 shares each. The overall float is thought to have been at least four times oversubscribed.
SpaceX IPO: the risks behind the record valuation
Not everyone is confident the price reflects reality. Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB, pointed to the valuation multiple as a concern. ‘It is priced at 56 times future revenues, which is a huge multiple,’ she said. Brooks noted that 2025 revenue came in at $18.67 billion (£14 billion), up a third on 2024, but the company still posted a loss of $4.94 billion (£3.7 billion) last year. Revenue for this year is expected to reach $25 billion (£18.8 billion), though she described revenue forecasts further into the future as ‘problematic’.
Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at the Wealth Club, offered a similar note of caution. ‘Elon Musk likes to make a splash in everything he does, but he may not soak the markets in rocket fuel this time around, with more scepticism surfacing about the reality of his long-term ambitions,’ she said. Streeter added that ‘the coming weeks and months are likely to see volatility hit the stock, which often happens post-listing, and is highly likely given the mega valuation.’
What SpaceX plans to do with the money
The funds raised will help SpaceX launch 100,000 next-generation Starlink satellites into orbit, as part of broader plans to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) data centres in space. Starlink is the company’s satellite internet service, and next-generation satellites would carry greater capacity and capability than those already in orbit.
Much of the company’s space business also depends on its Starship rocket and its ability to be fully reusable, making a quick turnaround between flights commercially viable. The IPO prospectus filed last week identified the sale of business-oriented AI products as the firm’s biggest potential market, though it acknowledged uncertainty over the path to profitability for its xAI business, which merged with SpaceX earlier this year.
AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic have both revealed plans to float in recent weeks, meaning the SpaceX IPO stock market debut arrives at a moment of intense activity across the sector. Trading begins on Nasdaq on Friday, and the opening share price will give the clearest indication yet of how public markets judge Musk’s ambitions.
