NEW YORK, June 13 (Our New York News) — SpaceX’s first day as a publicly traded company turned a $75 billion stock sale into a much larger market event: Nasdaq trading data showed the rocket and satellite company closing its debut session at about $161 a share, above its $135 IPO price and high enough to imply a market value above $2 trillion.
The June 12 debut under ticker SPCX also pushed published wealth estimates for founder Elon Musk above $1 trillion. Forbes and Bloomberg wealth calculations placed Musk’s total net worth roughly between $1.05 trillion and $1.11 trillion after the first day of trading. Those estimates are not cash holdings. They are mainly tied to stock and options values that can rise or fall with market prices.
The financial impact on Musk was driven by his remaining SpaceX stake. Forbes-based estimates placed that stake at roughly $688 billion at the IPO price, close to $690 billion. Other estimates, using higher first-day trading prices or including different option assumptions, put the value of the SpaceX position from the mid-$700 billions to about $800 billion.
The evidence trail begins with the completed offering. SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 a share on June 11 and raised $75 billion, according to the company’s announced offering terms as reflected in market reports. The next day, Nasdaq trading data showed the stock opening around $150, reaching about $176.50 during the session and closing near $161.
Those prices matter because they changed the value of the whole company. At the IPO price, SpaceX was valued at about $1.77 trillion to $1.8 trillion. By the close of trading, the public market price implied a valuation above $2 trillion.
For New York’s financial markets, the listing was a major Wall Street event even though Musk marked the start of trading from Starbase in South Texas. Nasdaq is the exchange where SpaceX listed, and the company’s new public shareholders now include investors who bought into one of the largest offerings ever recorded in U.S. markets.
The company also gained a large pool of new capital. Musk said SpaceX was going public to help fund plans for satellites and data centers in space and, eventually, a human settlement on Mars, according to AP reporting based on his statement. The record reviewed for this article did not show how the proceeds would be divided among those projects or how quickly the money would be spent.
The listing changed the position of several groups at once. SpaceX received $75 billion in proceeds from the offering. New investors bought shares at or above the IPO price during the first session. Existing owners, including Musk, saw the paper value of their holdings rise with the market price. The available records did not show how much SpaceX employees sold, retained or received in the IPO.
The first-day surge did not settle the question of whether the price was justified. Morningstar analysts, described in AP and PBS reporting as independent of investment-banking fees tied to the IPO, estimated SpaceX’s value at about $780 billion. Morningstar called the IPO “significantly overvalued,” a view far below both the IPO valuation and the first-day market valuation.
That gap is central to the risk facing public investors. At $135 a share, buyers valued SpaceX at more than twice Morningstar’s estimate. At the closing price near $161, the market value moved even further above that outside estimate.
The record is less clear on Musk’s exact voting control. Several reports described a dual-class or special share structure that left him with outsized control after the listing, but the reported ownership and voting percentages conflict. The underlying offering document or exact share-count filing was not available in the research record reviewed for this article.
What is documented is the completed market event: SpaceX, founded in 2002, moved from private ownership into public trading on Nasdaq; the IPO raised $75 billion at $135 a share; the stock closed its first session near $161; and Forbes and Bloomberg wealth estimates placed Musk above the trillion-dollar mark after the debut.
