SpaceX is ahead of schedule. Elon Musk’s space and AI conglomerate officially confirmed on Friday that it had raised $75 billion by selling shares to underwriters, who will begin marketing the company on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
In an update to its website, SpaceX said it was pricing its 555.6 million shares at $135 per share. This officially makes SpaceX the largest IPO in history, easily surpassing the $24.9 billion raised by Saudi Aramco during its public market debut in 2019. At this price, this transaction will likely make Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
The company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., will trade under the ticker symbol SPCX.
IPO prices are typically set automatically as the markets open, but SpaceX took an unusual approach to setting its price in advance. According to the Financial Times, the company was testing a $135 stock target with investors before the official roadshow began. And the offering, which eschewed traditional IPO pricing practices, attracted four times the available shares, according to Bloomberg.
SpaceX’s stock price could fall or rise with active trading tomorrow. But anecdotes suggest that large institutional investors and individual buyers are lining up to buy shares of the 24-year-old technology company.
If the sale is as oversubscribed as the chattering bankers claim, they will have the option to put an additional 83.3 million shares on the market, which could raise an additional $11 billion at the company’s opening price.
Hyperliquid, a cryptocurrency betting marketplace that seeks to provide aggregate exposure to SpaceX stock, is currently pricing its shares at $167, suggesting market participants are expecting a typical 20% IPO pop on the first day of trading.
There’s a big open question about how SpaceX can justify its eye-popping valuation over the long term. From the world’s largest reusable rocket to a new U.S. chip manufacturing facility, the company’s outstanding engineering projects fill our to-do lists.
The biggest beneficiary of this proposal is Musk himself. He owns just under 850 million shares of Class A stock, entitled to one vote per share. He also has 10 voting rights per share and is entitled to an additional 5.6 billion Class B shares, including 1 billion shares based on a long-term bet that one million people will live in a SpaceX colony on Mars.
The listing will give Valor Management founder and CEO Antonio Gracias 503.4 million shares, valuing his position at nearly $68 billion at the IPO price. Other major shareholders set to benefit from the historic offering include SpaceX board member and investor Luke Nosek, who owns 33 million shares, and COO Gwynne Shotwell, who owns nearly 12.6 million shares.
The IPO would also provide a significant windfall for many of the roughly 400 venture capitalists who backed the company over its 20-year run, during which it raised about $40 billion as a private company.
Additionally, the large pool of smaller investors who backed SpaceX through special purpose vehicles (SPVs) will also see their initial capital double. However, due to the complexity of these vehicles, some may not know the exact size of SpaceX’s profit for several months after its public market debut.
Additionally, the countless smaller investors who invested in SpaceX through special purpose vehicles (SPVs) will also see their original funds multiply by multiples. However, some of these investors will not know the size of the profits they have earned or whether they are entitled to them until the company’s staggered protection period expires.
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