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Trillionaire Elon Musk makes history with SpaceX IPO: 5 takeaways

The Hill

ScienceThe Hill·Jun 12, 2026·5 min read

Trillionaire Elon Musk makes history with SpaceX IPO: 5 takeaways

Elon Musk’s SpaceX went public Friday, setting a new record with its stock market debut and turning the tech mogul into the world’s first trillionaire.

The highly anticipated initial public offering (IPO) popped 11 percent when trading officially opened on the Nasdaq, sending the company’s valuation soaring to a massive $1.96 trillion.

Here are five takeaways from the SpaceX IPO:

Musk reaches unprecedented wealth

Musk, already the world’s richest person, became the world’s first trillionaire with Friday’s public offering. The SpaceX CEO is now worth $1.1 trillion, according to Forbes’s Real-Time Billionaires list.

This is roughly equivalent to the economies of Poland and Switzerland, according to International Monetary Fund data. His closest peers among the ultrawealthy, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are worth $800 billion less than Musk.

Some have pointed to this milestone as a concerning sign of growing wealth inequality.

“We’re living in a time when more and more people are just hanging on by their fingernails to survive in this economy, and Elon Musk has more money and more wealth than anyone in human history,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a video posted to social platform X. “I want to be clear — this is not just some fluke. It is a feature of a rigged economy.”

SpaceX launches with strong start

SpaceX is riding high on a strong first day of trading.

The company was already expected to break the record for the largest IPO after pricing its shares at $135. This would have raised $75 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation, easily surpassing Saudi Aramco’s 2019 stock market debut.

But after opening at $150 and rising to $176 during trading, SpaceX saw its valuation soar past $2 trillion. It closed at around $161 with a valuation of $2.1 trillion, making it the world’s seventh most valuable company and even surpassing Musk’s Tesla.

Several experts have cautioned the company may be overvalued.

“Only the most optimistic Moonshot scenario, which requires a rapidly reusable Starship and commercially competitive orbital data centers, approaches the IPO price,” Morningstar wrote in an analysis Tuesday. “The IPO price implies the Moonshot scenario is highly likely, but we think the outlook is very uncertain.”

The total potential market that SpaceX claimed ahead of the IPO has also faced some skepticism.

“It’s important to take some of the projections with a grain of salt,” Nancy Tengler, CEO and chief investment officer of Laffer Tengler Investments, said in a statement. “Elon has talked about a total addressable market of $28.5 trillion. Interestingly, the majority of that opportunity is tied to what is currently the company’s cash incinerator—the AI segment of the business.”

The first of several big AI IPOs

The SpaceX IPO marks a new stage in the AI race.

Despite its lengthy history as a launch and satellite provider, the company is pushing to establish itself as a major player in the AI space, particularly after a merger with Musk’s xAI earlier this year.

“Everyone thinks of SpaceX as a rocket company. Increasingly, that’s the wrong lens,” Nicholas Anderson, a portfolio manager at Thornburg Investment Management, said in a statement.

“In a matter of months, SpaceX has become the world’s largest and most profitable AI neocloud, and over the next year, that business will contribute more profits than launches or satellite internet,” he continued.

It is the first in a series of leading AI companies that are preparing to go public. Both OpenAI and Anthropic recently filed for IPOs, although the timeline is still unclear as to when exactly either will make their stock market debut.

The two AI startups seem unlikely to reach the same heights as SpaceX. But both are currently closing in on a trillion-dollar valuation. OpenAI was valued at $852 billion in its latest funding round in March, while Anthropic secured new funding at a $965 billion valuation late last month.

Investors appear keen to get in on these AI companies that are central to the AI race but have so far been locked up in private markets. The key question following SpaceX’s strong IPO is how this demand will translate for both OpenAI and Anthropic.

Musk allies, employees win big

Several of Musk’s close allies who are invested in SpaceX are poised to benefit from the IPO, as are numerous current and former employees.

Antonio Gracias, a longtime friend and backer of Musk, owns a 6.7 percent stake in the company that is worth $81 billion based on Friday’s closing price. Luke Nosek, a fellow PayPal co-founder alongside Musk, owns shares worth $5.3 billion. Both serve on the SpaceX board of directors.

The IPO is also expected to turn more than 4,000 current and former SpaceX employees into millionaires, with about 400 of those individuals set to make $100 million or more, The New York Times reported.

Musk eyes SpaceX-Tesla merger

As SpaceX kicks off a new era as a public company, investors are closely watching for another key development — a potential merger with Musk’s Tesla.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives has long maintained that he expects Musk to merge the two companies. He said Friday he continues to believe SpaceX and Tesla are likely to merge in 2027.

“Musk wants to own and control more of the AI ecosystem and step by step the holy grail could be combining SpaceX and Tesla in some way to give the connected tissue between both disruptive tech stalwarts looking to lead the AI Revolution in this next tech chapter for the market,” Ives wrote in a note.

When asked about a Tesla merger in an interview with CNBC on Friday, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell didn’t reject the possibility.

“That might make Elon’s life a little easier, actually,” Shotwell said. “There’s no question that there’s synergies between Tesla and SpaceX and our futures definitely. There’s a convergence of what we’re all trying to accomplish in the future. But right now, I’m focused on keeping the lights on here.”