SpaceX began trading on US stock markets on Friday with a valuation exceeding $2 trillion, making chief executive Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire and placing the aerospace company among the largest publicly traded firms in the United States.

Get today's headlines by email

The company’s shares opened at $150, up 11% from the initial public offering (IPO) price of $135. The opening price gave SpaceX a market value of about $1.96 trillion, putting it on course to become the sixth-largest listed company in the country.

By the first hour of trading, shares under the ticker symbol SPCX had climbed further to $164.99.

Strong Demand for Shares

SpaceX raised $75 billion through the offering, initially valuing the company at $1.77 trillion. Demand for the IPO was particularly strong, with orders reportedly exceeding the available shares by four times.

According to reports, around 70% of shares allocated to institutional investors went to long-term investment funds and sovereign wealth funds, including investors from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen rang the opening bell at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City as trading commenced.

Delayed Trading and Protests

Despite the strong interest, shares did not begin changing hands immediately after markets opened. Exchange operators and underwriters delayed trading until buy and sell orders could be balanced, a precaution aimed at ensuring an orderly debut.

The launch was also accompanied by protests outside the Nasdaq MarketSite. Demonstrators voiced concerns over allegations involving Grok, an artificial intelligence product developed by xAI, which critics claim enabled the creation of non-consensual sexualised deepfake images before the IPO.

Market participants were particularly focused on avoiding the technical problems that affected the public debut of Meta Platforms in 2012.

Test for Future Mega-Listings

Analysts said investors were closely watching the offering as a gauge of demand for future high-profile technology flotations.

Samuel Kerr, global head of equity capital markets at Mergermarket, said expectations were for a sharp rise in the share price due to strong investor enthusiasm surrounding the deal.

The listing is also being viewed as a benchmark for planned public offerings by major artificial intelligence companies, including Anthropic and OpenAI.

Revenue Growth Driven by Starlink

The public debut further strengthened Musk’s position among the world’s wealthiest individuals and pushed SpaceX into the ranks of the most valuable companies globally.

The achievement comes despite the company reporting a loss of nearly $5 billion last year and generating significantly less revenue than many technology firms with comparable market valuations.

Much of SpaceX’s recent growth has been driven by its satellite internet business, Starlink, which accounts for roughly 80% of company revenue.

Separately on Friday, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 29 satellites from Cape Canaveral, underscoring the company’s continued expansion in the commercial space sector.

Join the discussion?

Already a member?

Adapted by ASEAN Now. Source 13 June 2026

View full article

Nice, the play here is the 3 week wait for the Nasdaq-100 to include SPCX

When it does all those index funds will buy it. I'm sure plenty of shenanigans will play out during this period and beyond.

That's a massive amount of buying that needs to be done and it will be front-run by everyone

Bernie Sanders head exploded. Liz Warren is now on the war path.

Go Musk,....GO....!

Far too few people understand Elon as I do.

Have you read the biography written by Walter Isaacson, as have I?

If you mistakenly believe that Musk is driven by money or power, then this would be a major misunderstanding of what drives the man.

Maybe I am in the minority.

But, I love Elon.

Elon is a man pure of spirit.

5 hours ago, GammaGlobulin said:

Go Musk,....GO....!

Far too few people understand Elon as I do.

Have you read the biography written by Walter Isaacson, as have I?

If you mistakenly believe that Musk is driven by money or power, then this would be a major misunderstanding of what drives the man.

Maybe I am in the minority.

But, I love Elon.

Elon is a man pure of spirit.

No thanks. That’s great that you feel you have some special inside “understanding” of what drives Musk, but Isaacson’s book was largely panned as sycophantic, so you probably won’t get much insight there. Musk can do what he wants with his money, but his wholesale cuts to US government programs last year with no understanding of the damage he was causing were repulsive. I reserve my admiration for people whose regard for humanity extends beyond their own ego.

4 minutes ago, Cory1848 said:

No thanks. That’s great that you feel you have some special inside “understanding” of what drives Musk, but Isaacson’s book was largely panned as sycophantic, so you probably won’t get much insight there. Musk can do what he wants with his money, but his wholesale cuts to US government programs last year with no understanding of the damage he was causing were repulsive. I reserve my admiration for people whose regard for humanity extends beyond their own ego.

Oh wow, thanks for the masterclass in moral superiority—I'll be sure to forward it straight to the Department of Woke Platitudes.

And those 'repulsive' cuts to government programs? Nothing says 'regard for humanity' like defending the sacred, untouched blob of trillions in waste, inefficiency, and pet projects that somehow never quite solve the problems they were funded for.

Musk actually builds things that advance humanity—electric cars that scale, reusable rockets, neural interfaces, Starlink for places governments ignore—while your heroes admire the view from their taxpayer-funded offices.

But sure, keep reserving that admiration for the pure-hearted ego-free saints who never accomplish anything measurable. The rest of us will be over here watching actual progress.

AOC can maybe give you some therapy.

Melissa Chen on X (https://x.com/MsMelChen/status/2065549495723503760?s=20):

Today’s flood of Western media hit pieces and ridiculous commentary on Elon and SpaceX is yet another sign that the West is rotting from the inside. EVEN the Chinese Communists treat their national champions with more respect than these pathetic hacks. The CCP and its state mouthpieces aren’t half as deranged with envy. They may leash guys like Jack Ma and slap them down hard when they step out of line, but at least they’re smart enough to understand that they need their best talent and innovators to deliver prosperity for their people, dominate global markets, project raw power across the planet, and forge their nation into a ruthless superpower. The Chinese see them as vital strategic national assets and would never publicly insult or attack the ambitious, high-achieving mindset that creates these winners in the first place. SpaceX is, without a doubt, America’s national champion. Elon built the first reusable orbital rockets (Falcon 9), slashed launch costs, launched more missions in a single year than entire nations, revived American space dominance, sent NASA astronauts to the ISS aboard Crew Dragon, built the Starlink constellation that now beams high-speed internet to millions across the globe (including battlefields and disaster zones), and is developing Starship - the most powerful fully reusable rocket ever built, designed to make humanity an inter-planetary species. Yet the Western press and Democratic officials are almost unanimously attacking the one man going above and beyond to secure prosperity, technological supremacy, and raw national strength for our civilization. These people are vile soul-sucking wreckers who despise all excellence. The only thing they can produce is endless grievance and failure. All they know to do is tear down the successful, insult greatness, and wallow in their own mediocrity.

38 minutes ago, FinChin67 said:

Oh wow, thanks for the masterclass in moral superiority—I'll be sure to forward it straight to the Department of Woke Platitudes.

And those 'repulsive' cuts to government programs? Nothing says 'regard for humanity' like defending the sacred, untouched blob of trillions in waste, inefficiency, and pet projects that somehow never quite solve the problems they were funded for.

Musk actually builds things that advance humanity—electric cars that scale, reusable rockets, neural interfaces, Starlink for places governments ignore—while your heroes admire the view from their taxpayer-funded offices.

But sure, keep reserving that admiration for the pure-hearted ego-free saints who never accomplish anything measurable. The rest of us will be over here watching actual progress.

AOC can maybe give you some therapy.

His gutting of USAID literally killed people for no reason.

20 minutes ago, Cory1848 said:

His gutting of USAID literally killed people for no reason.

Here's your hero Bernie. Cope harder.

SpaceX, will be set up with two classes of shares: those held by the general public, and those held by Elon Musk. They will not be the same. The ordinary people's shares will have one vote each. Elon Musk's shares will have ten. This means that, after the IPO, he will personally control 85% of the votes of all shareholders. And so he will do whatever he wants, appoint whoever he wants to the board of directors, and will not be controlled by anyone. There is no mechanism in the company's structure by which the CEO could be removed, for example (if it were found, for example, that he is addicted to ketamine and no longer has his brakes on). The only person authorized to fire the CEO, contrary to what is the case in most listed companies in the world, is the CEO.

And that's not all. Shareholders don't even have the right to take legal action against management if they believe it makes decisions that harm their interests. In the case of Tesla, shareholders sued management because it intended to give Musk a bonus of tens of billions of dollars. At SpaceX, suffocating restrictions have been placed on shareholder rights. Any objections should be resolved through mediation, he says, not in court. These are more extreme things. Under normal circumstances, such terms would not pass regulatory authorities and such companies would never enter a serious stock exchange. But in Trump's USA, these are details.

Furthermore, when companies go public, they float about 15-20% of their shares. SpaceX is only floating 5%, a common way to create artificial demand (and a trick to artificially boost the stock). Typically, 90% of the shares go to “systemic,” institutional investors, large funds, and investment banks, and only 10% are released to the general public. In SpaceX’s case, 30% will be made available to the general public—something that usually happens when institutional investors have reason to be skeptical about the stock.

None of this is unprecedented (except perhaps the governance issues), but all of it is very worrying and tests the institutional limits of stock markets, which in the US are already overstretched. But what completely breaks them apart is the issue of time.

A major investment factor in our world, now, are index funds. Giant investment funds that invest in all the stocks included in an index, such as the S&P 500 or the Nasdaq 100. These funds are extremely popular because they are considered safe. They invest, in practice, in a list of very good companies, the best in the market (as rated by the index managers). It does not matter if one of them goes bankrupt or if a market falls into crisis. The others balance the situation and, over time, these indices go up, rain or shine. These funds bring satisfactory returns. That is why they are preferred by individual small investors, as well as conservative organizations, such as pension funds.

Precisely because there are all these funds, these indices are very careful about which companies they include. They set rules and limits to ensure that they don't pollute their portfolio with bad companies. One of the safeguards is that only profitable companies are included in the index. Another is that no company can be included in an index immediately after it goes public. In the case of the Nasdaq 100, it has to wait a year to ensure that everything is going well, that its behavior is "mature" and that it doesn't hide any surprises. Until now.

Recently, the company that manages the index changed the rules. Now the adjustment period for “very large companies” is not a year, but 15 days. It’s a dramatic change for both SpaceX and the big AI companies that will be listed on the stock exchanges soon. What’s the big deal here? Once these companies are included in the index, the investment funds we mentioned are obligated to buy their shares, no matter what the price. So with the change in the rules, the average American who has their retirement plan in an index fund will be investing, whether they want to or not, in a loss-making company with a price that only makes sense if the sky is filled with space data centers and colonies are built on Mars within the next 5-10 years.

And who benefits from all this?

Guess who wins. The investment banks that manage the largest IPO in history. The Nasdaq, the stock exchange where the stock will be sold and bought. The investors who threw money at buying the loss-making, toxic Twitter of its fanatic user Elon Musk, and suddenly found themselves with shares of a company that makes spaceships and satellites. And, above all, Elon Musk himself. Who is exploiting the laxity of regulatory mechanisms by the government that he helped in various ways to get elected, to explode his personal wealth by collecting money indirectly from millions of unsuspecting small investors.

Only in such a shaky framework, only with the trivialization of rules and the corruption of power, can there be trillionaires in our world.

Unfortunately, if things don't change, others will follow.

1 hour ago, FinChin67 said:

Here's your hero Bernie. Cope harder.

If I’m correctly interpreting your posting of the silly Bernie Sanders meme in response to the one sentence I wrote about the gutting of USAID: for you, the creation of more millionaires is more important than the provision of medical services that literally keep people alive in distressed parts of the globe. Some people having money is more important than other people dying for lack of money. I find this heartless and cruel, but it takes all types I guess.

 

For more on the SpaceX IPO, see Plan B’s detailed explanation above. As for being a millionaire: I’m technically one, totaling some investments that have done well with equity in two properties I have. Believe me, in 2026, it’s not that big of a deal.

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy... (sarcasm alert)

Imagine all the good he could do with all that money. But this ketamine addicted douche chooses to act like Lex Luthor's evil twin.

2 hours ago, Cory1848 said:

His gutting of USAID literally killed people for no reason.

To be fair, the US needed that money to blow up elementary school girls in Iran and help Trump divert attention from the Epstein Files.

The actual savings from DOGE were miniscule. Not even a rounding error in the Budget. Lots of mistakes, too, because Musk and his teeny boppers just weren't as genius as would be needed to understand the entire USG and all it does in a couple of afternoons. Neither Musk nor anyone in the Trump Admin even knew what USAid did. They just went apoplectic because somebody made up a story of USAid providing condoms to some Moslems somewhere (as if Trump would want MORE Moslems in this world).

I think---though I might be wrong---any savings were wiped out when Trump ordered The Nat Guard to patrol the streets of DC after one of Musk's teeny boppers was beat up by a 15 year old girl. Ironically, the "victim" called himself "Big Balls" online.

3 hours ago, Cory1848 said:

No thanks. That’s great that you feel you have some special inside “understanding” of what drives Musk, but Isaacson’s book was largely panned as sycophantic, so you probably won’t get much insight there. Musk can do what he wants with his money, but his wholesale cuts to US government programs last year with no understanding of the damage he was causing were repulsive. I reserve my admiration for people whose regard for humanity extends beyond their own ego.

Hate based false rant, you know NOT what you are talking about.

27 minutes ago, rudi49jr said:

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy... (sarcasm alert)

Imagine all the good he could do with all that money. But this ketamine addicted douche chooses to act like Lex Luthor's evil twin.

Maybe cry harder....loser....lol

1 hour ago, Cory1848 said:

Bernie Sanders

WTF has this commie luvin socialist muppet accomplished OR done for America!

But Elon Musk, is a conversion Trump haters and losers loath, because, well, you hate real success from real people, real WINNERS, ESPECIALLY from MAGA world.

3 hours ago, FinChin67 said:

Here's your hero Bernie. Cope harder.

Nazis...Bernie...a natural fit.

Expect health care fraudster and tampons for boys advocate, Tim Walz to chime in soon on Elons failure colossal achievement as the worlds first trillionaire. Remember when Tim Walz celebrated Tesla’s stock going down? Such a loser, like any/all libtards AND especially those that support them.

1 hour ago, Wingate said:

To be fair, the US needed that money to blow up elementary school girls in Iran and help Trump divert attention from the Epstein Files.

The actual savings from DOGE were miniscule. Not even a rounding error in the Budget. Lots of mistakes, too, because Musk and his teeny boppers just weren't as genius as would be needed to understand the entire USG and all it does in a couple of afternoons. Neither Musk nor anyone in the Trump Admin even knew what USAid did. They just went apoplectic because somebody made up a story of USAid providing condoms to some Moslems somewhere (as if Trump would want MORE Moslems in this world).

I think---though I might be wrong---any savings were wiped out when Trump ordered The Nat Guard to patrol the streets of DC after one of Musk's teeny boppers was beat up by a 15 year old girl. Ironically, the "victim" called himself "Big Balls" online.

Big Balls, right, poor Big Balls! Or there was Marko Elez, another one of Musk’s frat boys, who said, “I was racist before it was cool,” among other things. He was forced to resign from DOGE, but then got reinstated: apparently, this was just the kind of attitude they were looking for!

2 hours ago, boganJoe said:

Hate based false rant, you know NOT what you are talking about.

What you many not have thought through here is, while Newsom, Sanders, and Warren are indeed politicians, as your meme points out, it’s not the “job” of politicians to build companies. They are civil servants who work for the people who elect them. In fact, owning for-profit companies may present some serious conflict-of-interest issues for a civil servant, who may then be inclined to advocate and indeed enact government policies that benefit their companies more than the greater public interest.

 

I know that having a trillion dollars may sound really exciting, but there are all sorts of reasons why a private individual having those kinds of resources may not be such a good idea -- another angle here that you may not have fully thought through.

6 hours ago, Cory1848 said:

No thanks. That’s great that you feel you have some special inside “understanding” of what drives Musk, but Isaacson’s book was largely panned as sycophantic, so you probably won’t get much insight there. Musk can do what he wants with his money, but his wholesale cuts to US government programs last year with no understanding of the damage he was causing were repulsive. I reserve my admiration for people whose regard for humanity extends beyond their own ego.

It seems that you demand perfection.

Someone like, say, Teddy Kennedy?

You are correct that Musk should have stayed well away from politics, since he could never be one.

There's no way he's the world's first trillionaire! Saudi Arabia, for example, makes makes between 15 to 30 billion net profit a month on average with their oil, and they have been making billions a month for decades!

3 minutes ago, pacovl46 said:

There's no way he's the world's first trillionaire! Saudi Arabia, for example, makes makes between 15 to 30 billion net profit a month on average with their oil, and they have been making billions a month for decades!

Saudi Arabia isn't a person though

For those keeping score at home, Musk went into Friday with a supposed NW of about $850 billion. His shares of the IPO doubled that, giving him a NW of ~$1,700,000,000,000.

That represents a figure equal to about 5% of total USGDP and relative to other nation's GDPs Musk would be 16th, just above Turkey and a shade below South Korea.

Yes, NW isn't national income, but that is just compare the degree of wealth.

What is puzzling, however, is the valuation of SpaceX. A hundred 30 times revenues? Of the companies under its umbrella, only Starlink makes money.

This kind of smells like some sort of seminal event in the history of stock markets.

13 hours ago, webfact said:

Elon Musk

trillionaire

Welcome to the club Mr Musk 💵 💲 💲 💰

52 minutes ago, GammaGlobulin said:

It seems that you demand perfection.

Someone like, say, Teddy Kennedy?

You are correct that Musk should have stayed well away from politics, since he could never be one.

Well, no, perfection isn’t required; “perfect is the enemy of good,” as the aphorism goes (usually attributed to Voltaire). I’d be quite happy with good. Musk’s gutting of USAID led directly to the deaths of several hundred thousand people in vulnerable parts of the world (including right across the northern Thai border in Burma), according to most estimates. That is not good.

 

You’re quite right -- if Musk had stayed well away from politics, if he had not tried to equate good governance with good business practice (two entirely different endeavors), if he had only stuck to his various innovative projects, many of which are good, he wouldn’t be so broadly reviled today.

26 minutes ago, Nick Carter icp said:

Saudi Arabia isn't a person though

Yes, but it's run by the royal Saudi family and their head is the one who makes all the cash, so it is technically speaking a person. And he's been a trillionaire since forever. You just don't hear about it because he's not listed on the Forbes list.

1 trillion divided by 15 billion/month equals 66.67 months, divided by 12 equals 5.5 years, and they've been in business for how many decades now?! Musk will never even get close to them, there's just no way!

30 minutes ago, Cory1848 said:

You’re quite right -- if Musk had stayed well away from politics, if he had not tried to equate good governance with good business practice (two entirely different endeavors), if he had only stuck to his various innovative projects, many of which are good, he wouldn’t be so broadly reviled today.

Yes.

This was a very sad thing to see.

Especially his leaping into the air with his bare gut showing before millions of people, worldwide.

One cannot put that back into the bottle.

But WHY did Musk do this, why did he become so visible in politics when none of his investors thought it might be a good idea?

I know why.

Musk, one night, had stayed up watching old movies, and suddenly had an epiphany.....

Mr. MUSK goes to Washington.....

52 minutes ago, pacovl46 said:

Yes, but it's run by the royal Saudi family and their head is the one who makes all the cash, so it is technically speaking a person. And he's been a trillionaire since forever. You just don't hear about it because he's not listed on the Forbes list.

1 trillion divided by 15 billion/month equals 66.67 months, divided by 12 equals 5.5 years, and they've been in business for how many decades now?! Musk will never even get close to them, there's just no way!

A Family isnt a person either

One more POS who gives nothing back to humanity. If he gets knocked, wonder which of his baby-mommies gets the trill.