SpaceX soars 25% in Wall Street debut and makes Elon Musk the first trillionaire

The world’s rich­est man just be­came its first tril­lion­aire.

Shares in Elon Musk’s rock­et com­pa­ny SpaceX soared 25% af­ter open­ing for trad­ing at noon Fri­day, an aus­pi­cious start for his­to­ry’s biggest ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing and enough to push the net worth of its founder and CEO over the tril­lion dol­lar mark.

The shares opened at $150, then shot to $168.90 around 12:.50 p.m. ET. That price gave the com­pa­ny a mar­ket val­ue of $2.21 tril­lion. Musk, who al­so is a ma­jor share­hold­er and CEO of Tes­la, is now worth an es­ti­mat­ed $1.1 tril­lion, ac­cord­ing to Forbes.

Musk says SpaceX, found­ed in 2002, is go­ing pub­lic now be­cause it needs mon­ey to fund its am­bi­tions of putting satel­lites and da­ta cen­ters in space and even­tu­al­ly es­tab­lish­ing a colony of peo­ple on Mars.

He ear­li­er marked the open­ing of trad­ing on Nas­daq, where the com­pa­ny’ shares are trad­ing un­der the sym­bol “SPCX,” by join­ing a cer­e­mo­ni­al bell ring­ing from Star­base, the South Texas home of SpaceX.

He re­it­er­at­ed his lofty goals “to make life mul­ti­plan­e­tary.”

“Not just a few as­tro­nauts, I mean lit­er­al­ly you,” Musk said. “Who­ev­er you are watch­ing this, SpaceX wants to be able to take you to the moon, take you to Mars and ul­ti­mate­ly be­yond.”

Known for his tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs, as well as wild claims and missed dead­lines, Musk was able to whip up en­thu­si­asm for the IPO de­spite SpaceX los­ing bil­lions of dol­lars a year. In­sti­tu­tion­al and re­tail in­vestors alike jumped at the op­por­tu­ni­ty to buy a piece of the com­pa­ny at $135 per share be­fore trad­ing be­gan. The $75 bil­lion in pro­ceeds SpaceX raised eas­i­ly topped the pre­vi­ous record IPO from oil gi­ant Sau­di Aram­co in 2019.

In ad­di­tion to es­tab­lish­ing a one-mil­lion per­son Mar­t­ian colony, the com­pa­ny has promised to save hu­man­i­ty by es­tab­lish­ing oth­er out­posts in space, launch da­ta cen­ters the size of foot­ball fields in­to or­bit and out­do ri­vals An­throp­ic and Ope­nAI in the race to make mon­ey from ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.

To reach its goals, SpaceX needs bil­lions more than it cur­rent­ly takes in from its rock­et and satel­lite busi­ness. Be­tween the start of 2025 and March 31, 2026, the com­pa­ny lost $8.7 bil­lion.

Wall Street bankers that helped take SpaceX pub­lic are en­thu­si­as­tic about the com­pa­ny — and the big fees they will earn — but not every­one thinks the stock price is jus­ti­fied.

An­a­lysts at re­search firm Morn­ingstar, which doesn’t earn any in­vest­ment bank­ing fees, wrote that the IPO is “sig­nif­i­cant­ly over­val­ued” be­cause of SpaceX’s un­proven tech­nol­o­gy and mas­sive cap­i­tal needs.

They es­ti­mate the com­pa­ny is on­ly worth $780 bil­lion — less than half its IPO val­ue.

Still, Musk has pulled off the seem­ing­ly im­pos­si­ble be­fore.

The now-tril­lion­aire — on pa­per at least — made his for­tune by cre­at­ing two com­pa­nies, Zip2 and Pay­Pal, that net­ted him about $200 mil­lion at sale. He used that mon­ey to start SpaceX and in­vest in Tes­la, and de­fied the odds by cre­at­ing a space com­pa­ny that fig­ured out how to reuse rock­ets and a car com­pa­ny that made elec­tric ve­hi­cles cool.

Musk has re­al­ized vast sums of wealth for him­self, much of it in stock he has yet to cash in or grants for shares he’ll on­ly re­ceive if Tes­la or SpaceX hit am­bi­tious per­for­mance tar­gets. His re­cent pay pack­age from Tes­la drew crit­i­cism from the Vat­i­can. At Tes­la, he’s wor­ried share­hold­ers by fight­ing with reg­u­la­tors or di­vid­ing his at­ten­tion be­tween mul­ti­ple com­pa­nies and last year by tak­ing a role in the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

But a ris­ing stock price has cured all ills: Since it went pub­lic in 2010, Tes­la has re­turned 20,000% for share­hold­ers, or more than $1.2 tril­lion in in­vestor wealth.

SpaceX is the first of three “mega­cap” com­pa­nies ex­pect­ed to go pub­lic this year, with An­throp­ic and Ope­nAI to fol­low. Nas­daq even re­vised its rules to al­low SpaceX to gain en­try in­to funds tied to its in­dex­es in 15 days, which means in­vestors will end up buy­ing the rock­et mak­er’s shares much ear­li­er.

Not all in­vestors are thrilled about SpaceX po­ten­tial­ly show­ing up in their hold­ings of in­dex funds. Of­fi­cials from pen­sion funds for fire­fight­ers, teach­ers and oth­er work­ers in Cal­i­for­nia and New York sent a let­ter to SpaceX last month de­cry­ing some of the pro­vi­sions in its IPO, in­clud­ing the “su­per vot­ing shares,” manda­to­ry ar­bi­tra­tion of share­hold­er claims in­stead of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of law­suits and how much pow­er Musk will hold over the com­pa­ny.

AP re­porters Stan Choe and Wy­at­te Grantham-Philips con­tributed from New York.

NEW YORK (AP)