A crowd had already gathered outside the NASDAQ building at 42nd Street in New York’s Times Square before the market opened today. Some were dressed as astronauts; others wore T-shirts reading “Occupy Mars,” a slogan made popular by SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. On the giant video screens that cover the curved facade of the building were scenes of rockets being launched, orbital data centers being built, and Musk describing humanity’s future in space.
All of this was in the run-up to SpaceX’s initial public offering, which was expected to move more than 555 million shares of SpaceX stock, raise $75 billion in fresh capital, put the company’s valuation at a staggering $1.77 trillion, and make Musk, who is also the CEO and founder of the electric car maker Tesla, the world’s first trillionaire, thanks to his stake in both companies.
After the market opened at 9:30 a.m. EDT, with Musk and SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell ringing the opening bell remotely—Shotwell in the NASDAQ building and Musk at SpaceX’s headquarters in Texas—the company didn’t disappoint. SpaceX set the IPO’s opening share price at $135; at just shy of 1:00 p.m. it was trading near $170, pushing the company’s valuation to close to $2.2 trillion, and putting Musk’s personal worth at $1.1 trillion, according to the Associated Press, citing Forbes.
That’s an awful lot of hype and an awful lot of cash for a company that lost $4.9 billion last year, and is net-negative—to the tune of $41.3 billion— since its founding in 2002. The company’s massive, 407-ft.-tall Starship rocket—on which SpaceX stakes the future of its long-term goals of getting humans back to the moon and later to Mars, not to mention launching data centers and satellite constellations into Earth orbit—has flown 12 times since 2023 with a mixed record of success. NASA is counting on Starship as much as SpaceX is, having cut the company checks totalling more than $4 billion to develop a
