Initial public offering of SpaceX
2026 American company IPO
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SpaceX, an American aerospace and artificial intelligence company founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, had its initial public offering (IPO) on June 12, 2026.[1][2] The SpaceX IPO valued the company above US$2 trillion,[3][4] which made it the largest initial public offering in history, made Musk the first USD trillionaire,[3][5][6] and made SpaceX the sixth most valuable U.S.-listed firm.[7] The IPO raised $75 billion[8] for the company's long-term ambitions, including building orbital AI infrastructure to meet computing needs for xAI, a SpaceX subsidiary.[9] The company is listed on Nasdaq as SPCX and won a rule change to allow its early inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 index.[10][11]
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| Date | June 11, 2026 |
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Background
In December 2025, Elon Musk confirmed the IPO of SpaceX, which was expected to take place in mid-2026, after previously rejecting the idea of taking SpaceX public.[12] In January 2026, four banks were selected to lead the IPO.[citation needed]
In February 2026, SpaceX acquired Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI. xAI was valued at about $125 billion and SpaceX at close to $1 trillion, making the new aerospace and artificial intelligence company the most valuable private company ever.[13]
On May 20, 2026, SpaceX filed its S-1 offering statement with plans to list on a US stock market the following month. The prospectus disclosed which parts of the business were generating profits as well as the future plans, including building data centers in space.[14][15]
On June 3, 2026, SpaceX set an IPO price of $135 per share, bypassing typical Wall Street price-discovery mechanisms and consistent with CEO Elon Musk's preference of setting his own terms for capital raises.[16] The final IPO price was confirmed to be $135 on June 11.[17] After the IPO, Musk controls 82.4% of the voting power due to special voting shares.[18] Trading began on June 12, 2026.[6]
Pre-IPO developments
In May 2026, Anthropic signed a contract of $1.25 billion per month with xAI, a subsidiary of SpaceX, to buy all the compute capacity at the Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee,[19][20] about 220,000 Nvidia graphic processing units (GPUs).[21] Wired noted the deal was key for SpaceX's IPO.[20] SpaceX said in 2026 that their AI progress is driven by compute and used it as a key metric in the AI training of its supercomputer Colossus, which contains 1 million GPUs.[22]
In June 2026, Google signed a similar cloud computing agreement to pay $920 million monthly for cloud compute capacity from Colossus, without specifying which data center.[23] The deal covers a computing infrastructure of approximately 110,000 Nvidia GPUs, hardware needed to power Google Gemini models.[24] Google will pay a reduced rate through September 2026 and the full rate until 2029.[24]
Although both deals have 90-day termination clauses,[25] these two deals have impacted the way analysts value SpaceX.[26] One analyst said: "SpaceX is the first company to ever add $26 billion in ARR [annual run rate] between the date of its IPO filing with the SEC and the first trade."[27][28]
Inclusion in market indexes
Being included in a major stock market index can significantly increase demand for a company's shares because institutional asset managers must buy shares in order to mirror the index.[29] Rule changes about when SpaceX was to be included in an index were controversial because SpaceX was to be extremely expensive based on metrics like the price-revenue ratio, and skeptics were concerned that millions of Americans' retirement plans which invest using indexes would be exposed too soon to a volatile stock.[29]
As of March 2026, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq were competing for the IPO listing,[10] and SpaceX requested early inclusion on the Nasdaq-100 index as a condition for listing on Nasdaq.[10] On March 30, 2026, Nasdaq changed its rules to allow SpaceX and other large companies to be listed in the index 15 trading days after their IPO, instead of a minimum of three months and up to one year after.[29][30] But because only 5% of SpaceX's shares would initially be available to the public, Nasdaq's float-adjustment rules gave SpaceX a weight of 1% in the index, versus 5% weight without the rule, initially mitigating any swings in the SpaceX stock price.[29] On May 15, 2026, SpaceX chose to list on Nasdaq.[31]
On June 4, 2026, the S&P Global company reaffirmed no change to its rules which might have allowed SpaceX to be included in the S&P 500 index earlier.[32] The rules require a company to be profitable under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) in its most recent quarter as well as for the sum of its most recent four quarters.[32] SpaceX posted a net loss of $4.94 billion in 2025, and thus is not currently eligible for inclusion.[32] However, S&P Global said it planned to modify its rules to allow SpaceX earlier entry into its less widely followed but broader S&P Total Market Index and Dow Jones U.S. Total Stock Market Index.[32] Index provider FTSE Russell also changed its rules to allow SpaceX to be included earlier in both the Russell U.S. Equity Indexes and the FTSE Global Equity Index Series.[32]
Share structure
SpaceX has a two-class structure of its stock shares, consisting of Class A and Class B shares, as does Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook), Google's parent Alphabet and Berkshire Hathaway.[33] Investors in the IPO will be able to purchase Class A shares, which have one vote each in company voting. Class B shares, held by company insiders, have 10 votes per share. Elon Musk owns more than 5.5 billion Class B shares, and will control 85% of votes.[34] Musk has also been promised 1.3 billion shares as future incentive for successfully leading a Mars colonization effort that lands one million people on Mars. However, Musk is currently permitted to vote with those shares in advance of achieving that goal.[34] When sold to outsiders, Class B shares automatically convert to Class A and lose 90% of their voting power.[35]
Professors Lucian Bebchuk and Kobi Kastiel, the authors of a research on article on "The Perils of Small-Minority Controllers," have commented that the share structure of SpaceX "provide[s] Musk with substantial value at the expense of public investors" and lead to inefficiencies and distorted incentives.[35] Reuters reported that the Council of Institutional Investors, a major investor group which has long been an opponent of dual class shares, said "Over time, this founder-knows-best approach can entrench management and blindside executives to a need for change in strategy."[33] Reuters also reported: "A 2024 study published in the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance showed that on average companies in the Russell 3000 index (.RUA) with dual or multi-class share structures outperformed those with a single share class, over five and 10-year periods."[33]
Previously held shares and shares purchased during the IPO are subject to restrictions on their sale, known as a lock-up period. Musk and other insiders have agreed to not sell their shares for 366 days. Other pre-IPO investors have a 180-day lockup, but also permission to share parts of their holdings sooner, after a series of benchmarks, including SpaceX's announcements of its quarterly results.[36]
Reception
According to Reuters, "Investors have scrambled to secure a position in the deal, drawn by Elon Musk's track record and the potential for the offering to generate millions of dollars in fees for Wall Street firms."[16] However, IPOs are considered risky investments in general[37] with Forbes stating "some analysts have warned that early exposure to Elon Musk's aerospace firm will likely be risky."[6] Morningstar said that SpaceX "has been significantly overvalued", and that the stock could be acquired at "more attractive levels" following its IPO, because the market value is predicated on "novel revenue streams, such as orbital computing".[38] Truist, Michael Burry, and other analysts also warned against early trading of the stock.[6]