SpaceX's $75 Billion IPO Makes Elon Musk the World's First Trillionaire
SpaceX went public on June 11, 2026, pricing at $135 per share and raising $75 billion — the largest IPO ever recorded, more than doubling Saudi Aramco's previous record of $29.4 billion set in 2019. The company debuted on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX with a market cap of $1.77 trillion, landing it among the top-ten most valuable US companies ahead of Tesla, Meta, Walmart, and Berkshire Hathaway. For Elon Musk, the listing tipped his personal fortune past $1.1 trillion — making him, on paper, the world's first dollar trillionaire.
The structure
Musk's grip on the company remains absolute. Investors who bought in received Class A shares carrying one vote each. Musk holds Class B shares worth ten votes apiece, giving him 82.4% of total voting power, per CNBC. His SpaceX stake alone is valued at roughly $866 billion; Tesla and other holdings account for the rest of his $1.1 trillion-plus fortune — a gap to the second-richest person on earth (Larry Page, around $304 billion) that has no modern precedent.
Nasdaq's Fast Entry rule, introduced May 1, 2026, lets any mega-IPO that ranks in the top 40 by market cap join the Nasdaq-100 within 15 trading days. SpaceX's $1.77 trillion valuation triggered that clause immediately, forcing passive index funds to buy shares regardless of how they view the valuation. Critics have called this a structural wealth transfer that benefits insiders at retail investors' expense.
The numbers behind the hype
SpaceX merged with Musk's AI startup xAI earlier in 2026, and the combined financials are uneven. Full-year 2025 revenue reached $18.7 billion, but the group posted a net loss of $4.94 billion. The xAI division alone burned through $6.4 billion in operating losses on just $3.2 billion in revenue, according to TechTimes. All ten of xAI's original co-founders have left within two years of the company's founding — a turnover rate that analysts note raises execution questions.
The profitable core of the business is Starlink, the satellite internet service, which generated $4.4 billion in operating income in 2025. Goldman Sachs projects xAI's AI revenue could grow roughly 100-fold — from $3.2 billion today to $322 billion by 2030 — but that forecast comes from roadshow materials and is built on assumptions about AI adoption that remain unproven, notes BigGo Finance.
The retail question
About 30% of the $75 billion raise — $22.5 billion — was set aside for retail investors, three times the usual allocation. Employee share allocations worth $3.75 billion came with no lockup period, meaning insiders could sell from day one. Retail buyers, by contrast, carry the full valuation risk on a company whose AI division is burning far more cash than it earns. Whether the Starlink business justifies a $1.77 trillion price tag — or whether that number is driven primarily by Musk's personal brand — is the question investors are now pricing in real time.
