SpaceX stormed onto the Nasdaq on Friday in the largest initial public offering on record, with shares priced at $135 opening at $150 and climbing as high as $176.52 before settling near $160.77 by midday — a roughly 19% gain over the IPO price that briefly pushed Elon Musk's rocket company past a $2 trillion market capitalization. The debut, trading under the ticker SPCX, raised $75 billion for the company and instantly made it one of the largest listed firms in the world.
A Record-Breaking Print
The offering sold 555,555,555 shares at a fixed price of $135, valuing SpaceX at roughly $1.77 trillion at the open before the first-day rally lifted that figure higher. According to CNBC, the deal was multiple times oversubscribed during the roadshow, and SpaceX reserved roughly 30% of the float for retail investors — a sharp departure from the 5% to 10% retail allocation typical of large U.S. IPOs.
Trading volume was historic. CNBC reported that more than 360 million SPCX shares changed hands within the first few hours of trading, roughly ten times the entire first-day volume of Cerebras, this year's second-largest debut. NPR described the listing as a "blast off" that lifted the stock "above its IPO price" within minutes of the opening bell.
Mixed Tape as Tech Rotates Into SPCX
The broader market traded mixed as investors made room for the new mega-cap. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed roughly 203 points, or 0.40%, while the S&P 500 finished close to flat as a 0.5% gain in the defensive-heavy Dow was offset by a roughly 0.5% slide in the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100. Sherwin-Williams (+1.86%), Goldman Sachs (+1.81%) and Caterpillar (+1.31%) led the Dow higher, while Salesforce (-2.35%), Travelers (-1.98%) and IBM (-1.96%) lagged.
The rotation is not coincidental. Analysts at Yahoo Finance noted that the SpaceX listing — along with anticipated debuts from Anthropic and OpenAI — could pull "large chunks of money away from other listed companies," forcing passive index funds to acquire SPCX shares and adding to volatility in incumbent tech names. Friday's tape, with chip and software stocks softening as SPCX traded heavily, fit that thesis.
Valuation Debate Splits Wall Street
Not every analyst is cheering. SpaceX's prospectus disclosed a net loss of $4.3 billion in the first quarter alone, and Fortune reported that Wall Street is "torn" between Musk's "holy grail" narrative and what one note called a "$72-per-share leap of faith." Morningstar pegged fair value at roughly $780 billion using a discounted cash flow model — less than half of the IPO valuation and roughly a third of where the stock traded intraday.
Bulls counter that Starship cadence, Starlink subscriber growth and emerging defense contracts justify the premium. Either way, Friday's print sets a new high-water mark for U.S. equity listings and, per BusinessToday, pushed Musk's paper net worth high enough to flirt with the world's first trillionaire status on Friday.
Sources: CNBC ("SpaceX IPO live updates: SPCX pops more than 25% on historic volume in Nasdaq debut"), NPR ("SpaceX stock lifts off, rising above its IPO price"), Fortune ("SpaceX's record IPO has Wall Street torn"), The Motley Fool ("Stock Market Today, June 12: SpaceX Mega IPO Soars"), BusinessToday ("SpaceX IPO Listing LIVE updates").