SpaceX completed the largest IPO in history on Friday, with SPCX shares closing their first session on Nasdaq at $161.11, up roughly 19% from the $135 offering price and giving Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company a market value above $1.77 trillion. The orderly debut clears a key benchmark for the next wave of AI infrastructure listings, including Anthropic and OpenAI.
$75 Billion Raise, $1.77 Trillion Cap
SpaceX priced the offering Thursday evening at $135 per share and sold more than 555 million shares to raise about $75 billion, eclipsing the $26 billion Saudi Aramco IPO of 2019 to become the largest global flotation on record, per CBS News. Bloomberg reported retail orders topped $100 billion ahead of the open. Shares opened on Nasdaq at $150, traded as high as $176.52 intraday and briefly carried SpaceX's market capitalisation above $2 trillion before settling near $1.77 trillion. The session made Musk, who owns about 42% of SpaceX and controls 82.4% of voting power, the world's first paper trillionaire.
Orderly Debut Validates AI Infrastructure Multiples
A roughly 19% first-day gain landed inside the orderly-debut range that analysts had described as the healthiest outcome for the broader AI IPO cycle. With the public entity now wrapping SpaceX's rocket franchise, Starlink, xAI and the X social network, investors are effectively underwriting a multi-segment AI infrastructure thesis at premium multiples. The accumulated $41.3 billion historical loss disclosed in the S-1 is a reminder that the valuation rests on forward Starlink and xAI economics rather than legacy profitability.
MSCI Early Inclusion Kicks Off Structural Demand
Index provider MSCI confirmed on June 9 that SpaceX would qualify for early inclusion in its large-cap index products from June 13, the first full trading day after listing. With only 4% of SpaceX shares free-floating, MSCI-tracking passive funds must now buy SPCX proportionally to their benchmark weightings, layering an unusually concentrated structural demand wave onto an already tight float. A second wave follows under Nasdaq's amended megacap IPO rules, which would make SPCX eligible for Nasdaq-100 inclusion roughly 15 trading days after listing.
For the next entrants in the AI IPO queue the read-through is cautiously positive. Both Anthropic and OpenAI filed confidential S-1s earlier this month, and SPCX's 19% debut suggests institutional and retail appetite exists at the valuations both companies are targeting without requiring a euphoric bubble premium. As SPCX's $135 fixed-price launch already showed, AI infrastructure capacity is what investors are paying up to own.
Reporting based on coverage from CBS News, NPR, Reuters and Seeking Alpha.