SpaceX, Elon Musk’s aerospace venture, is heading toward its long-anticipated debut on the Nasdaq today (12th June). The full name is Space Exploration Technologies (NSQ:SPCX) – love the name and Musk won’t damage it.
Instead of spinning off separate entities, Elon Musk bundled his primary ventures into a single public stock. When you invest in the SpaceX IPO, you are buying into the rocket launch business, Starlink, and a few other massive tech pillars. According to the S-1 prospectus, Starlink (categorized under the “Connectivity” segment) generated $11.4 billion in revenue, accounting for roughly 61% of SpaceX’s total business.
The flotation at $135 per share will raise $75bn. This will give the satellite, AI and rocket group a market cap of $1.78tn, reflecting the fact that less than 5% of its equity is being sold. As markets prepare for the listing, investors will be closely monitoring its potential impact across technology, aerospace, semiconductor, and broader equity markets. SpaceX is reported to be massively oversubscribed, with more than four times the demand than the quantity of shares that are actually available.
The Starlink Business (The Cash Cow)
Starlink is incredibly vital to the IPO because it is the company’s only segment that consistently generates a GAAP operating profit ($4.4 billion in operating income). It acts as the financial engine funding Musk’s capital-intensive deep-space ambitions.
Launching Rockets into Space (The Core Legacy)
The “Space” segment—consisting of Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Starship development, and contracts with NASA and the Department of Defense—is fully included in the IPO. This side of the business handles a staggering 82% of all U.S. space launches and nearly half of all commercial space contracts globally.
Despite its logistical monopoly, the rocket launch segment reported a $657 million operating loss on $4.1 billion in revenue. This is primarily due to the astronomical research and development costs poured into the Starship program and the long-term vision of Mars colonization.
What Else is Included? (The AI & Social Media Twist)
In a major corporate reshuffling ahead of the public debut, the SpaceX umbrella expanded well beyond rockets and satellites. If you buy SpaceX stock, you are also investing in:
- xAI: Elon Musk officially merged his artificial intelligence startup (makers of the Grok AI chatbot) into SpaceX. This segment is currently a heavy capital sink, burning billions to construct massive data centers.
- X (formerly Twitter): The social media platform is also bundled under the corporate SpaceX umbrella, effectively turning the IPO into a diversified bet on telecom, aerospace, defense, AI, and social media.
SpaceX sold 555.6 million shares in its IPO. On its first day (12th June 2026), over 517 million shares were traded. This means nearly an entire IPO’s worth of stock changed hands in a single day.
Interestingly, SpaceX is expected to be added to the Nasdaq 100 after just 15 days of trading. This could mean that index tracking funds will have no choice but to buy heavily in the coming weeks.
SpaceX may turn out to be the eagle-sized canary in the coal mine for the next phase of the AI boom. Its listing could be the first real test of just how much fresh equity the market can stomach before indigestion sets in.
And it will not stop there. Mega IPOs from Anthropic and OpenAI are expected to follow, while Google parent Alphabet (NSQ) is reportedly working on an $85bn equity raise, potentially the largest in history.
The big question is whether markets can absorb this tidal wave of new paper without sparking volatility elsewhere. The coming week should give us an early glimpse of what lies ahead. But my suspicion is that it may still take a little longer before investors stop buying the AI story as one broad trade and start separating the genuine winners from the overvalued passengers.
Elon Musk can now be referred to as the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX shares began trading in New York, valuing the company at roughly $2 trillion.
“Elon Musk: And that’s what SpaceX is all about – is to take the fiction out of science fiction and create an exciting, inspiring future for everyone.”
At a $1.8 trillion valuation, it will be more valuable than Tesla (NSQ:TSLA) and Meta Platforms (NSQ:META) but not quite as valuable as the likes of Amazon.com (NSQ:AMZN) and Microsoft (NSQ:MSFT). It will be a top 10 stock in the US by market cap.
SpaceX IPO: A Landmark Debut, a Monster Valuation, and a Lot of Hype
In historical terms, this is a genuine landmark moment. Alibaba Group Holding (NYQ) came to market in 2014 with a valuation of around $169 billion at its IPO price, which felt enormous at the time. Saudi Aramco was valued at about $1.7 trillion when it listed in 2019, although it raised “only” $29 billion.
SpaceX, by contrast, is looking to raise $75 billion – and apparently could have raised a lot more.
My own view is that we may now be entering the stage of a long-term bull market where the most popular shares start to detach completely from conventional fundamentals. I have already mentioned the price-to-sales multiples being discussed for SpaceX, which are very hard to justify using any traditional valuation framework. But then again, perhaps this time really is different?
Just for fun I will break protocol and let everyone know how IPO subscriptions go. The “bank” rings a high profile fund manager and asks if he is interested. The PM feigns interest and asks how much stock he is likely to get….at which point he is told off the record that orders will likely be scaled back 75%…..so PM needs to put in for 4x what he actually wants in order to get the right amount. So everyone puts 3-4x what they want and it all kinda works with +10-15% rise on day one some of these nice chaps decide to lighten the load. This all falls down when occasionally the 3-4x is wrong…. and calls go out the night before and morning to let PMs know they did a little better than expected….and successfully got say 50% or more. Now you have a stock that may only pop 2-3% or down even…and PMs have 2x the stock they want. Colleagues fall around laughing at naivety of PM. In theory it’s a bad day for the bank too if the stock falls but they still collect their fee!!! And my point….. over subscribed?? I would hope so…but don’t believe the hype. 10% first move won’t be enough with this one – no PM will want to admit losing money on this….price could do anything from +40% to -40% in first day. That’s an option not an equity.
#spcx #spacex #nasdaq
As everyone watches the SpaceX IPO today, its worth remembering this advice from Buffett
“The idea that a newly issued security (IPO)—brought to market at a time of the seller’s choosing and surrounded by massive hype—is the single best bargain among thousands of global businesses is absolute nonsense.
When an offering carries a ridiculous 7% commission just to incentivize salespeople, it simply cannot be the most attractive investment available.
While people easily get caught up in the excitement of a new launch, look at the reality: you have thousands of existing public companies whose prices are set by a natural auction market, free from aggressive promotion or hidden fees.
It makes no sense to buy a security precisely when an insider decides the timing is perfect to sell. Frankly, it isn’t worth spending five seconds thinking about IPOs.”
– Warren Buffett
Someone sent me this: ‘SpaceX IPO reminds me of my recent trip to Phuket where you can see beautiful girls lining up in front of massage parlours.
My wife said to me, the ones that are the most stunning are the men.
Better get a massage from the ones that don’t look as hot, but you know are actually women. Buy companies that are backed by real cash flow.’
Here’s a crazy stat for you!
The IPO is listed at 100x sales ($1.75tn cap Vs $18bn in sales)
If the stock falls 90% it will still trade at 10x revenues…
This might be the peak of the #bubble
