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SpaceX IPO Sets Record on Nasdaq

SpaceX listed on the Nasdaq on June 12 under the ticker SPCX, raising $75 billion through the largest initial public offering in market history. The company priced shares at a fixed $135, bypassing the customary roadshow range, and the stock opened at $150 before closing at $160.95, a 19% first-day gain that pushed the market cap past $2.1 trillion and placed SpaceX among the six largest publicly traded companies in the United States.

The $75 billion raised was more than triple Alibaba’s previous U.S. record. Trading volume exceeded 500 million shares, ranking the debut second in Nasdaq IPO history. SpaceX allocated roughly 30% of shares to retail investors through Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, SoFi and E*Trade, well above the typical 5-10%, and the order book ran approximately twice oversubscribed with roughly $150 billion in orders.

The company’s presence in major indices will be more limited than its market cap implies. Nasdaq changed its rules to allow SpaceX to join the Nasdaq-100 as soon as 15 trading days after listing, but the company’s limited public float means an initial weight of approximately 1% rather than the 5% its full valuation would otherwise generate. S&P 500 inclusion requires GAAP profitability in the most recent quarter, a threshold SpaceX does not currently clear after reporting a net loss of $4.3 billion in the first quarter of 2026. 

The gap between market pricing and conventional valuation models is substantial. Morningstar analysts valued SpaceX at $780 billion using a discounted cash flow model and cited very high uncertainty about the company’s business trajectory and governance. Starlink, the only consistently profitable segment, generated quarterly revenue of $3.26 billion with roughly 10 million subscribers, projected to grow toward 17 million through 2026. 

Both OpenAI and Anthropic have filed paperwork with the SEC signaling intent to list shares, with analysts targeting listings as early as this fall, putting two more large AI companies in line to test whether the retail appetite SpaceX generated extends to the next wave of unprofitable technology offerings. 

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