Elon Musk’s space exploration company is set to begin trading shares on the Nasdaq today in the largest IPO in history.
The SpaceX offering caps a remarkable journey for a company that has raised nearly $12 billion in private investment since its founding in 2002 to become the world’s most valuable venture-backed startup with a most recent private-market valuation of $1.25 trillion. Along the way, SpaceX helped redefine both the space industry and the late-stage venture market.
Its long-awaited offering is slated to raise some $75 billion and puts a nearly $1.8 trillion valuation on the company.
The IPO is an enormous liquidity event for Musk, who is poised to become the world’s first trillionaire as a result, as well as his close friend and confidant Antonio Gracias of Valor Equity Partners, who reportedly stands to own a stake valued at $68 billion in the newly public SpaceX. It’s also a massive and successful exit for early venture and corporate investors including Google, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Craft Ventures and Founders Fund.
The offering is unconventional along several fronts. Along with the IPO’s record-breaking nature — more than 10x larger than Facebook’s $104 billion offering in 2012 — SpaceX also defied convention by setting a fixed price of $135 per share, rather than the traditional approach whereby investors and bookbuilders determine a range based on demand.
Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX is also wildly unprofitable. The company posted a net loss of $4.28 billion in the first quarter of 2026, up more than 700% from a year ago. Revenue totaled $4.69 billion in Q1, up 15% from a year ago. Its megacap valuation means it’s slated to trade at an aggressive premium of 94x revenue.
The SpaceX offering is the first in a lineup of at least three historic IPOs this year, with generative AI giants Anthropic and OpenAI openly racing to make it to the public markets in coming months. Altogether, the three IPOs transfer some $3 trillion in value from the private to public markets.
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Related reading:
- The SpaceX IPO Filing Looks Nothing Like Those Of The Elite Group Of Tech Giants It’s Hoping To Join
- SpaceX IPO At $1.5T Valuation Would Be 10x Larger Than Biggest VC-Backed Listing Of All Time
- Before You Cheer The IPO Window, Watch Where The Money Goes
Illustration: Dom Guzman
