NEW YORK, June 13 (Our New York News) — SpaceX’s first day of public trading on Nasdaq turned a $75 billion stock offering into a sharp gain for new investors and a much larger paper fortune for founder Elon Musk, according to market data, company offering terms and wealth-index calculations.
The rocket and satellite company began trading June 12 under the ticker SPCX. SpaceX priced the initial public offering at $135 a share and raised $75 billion, according to the company’s offering announcement and listing terms reflected in market trading.
Nasdaq trading data show the stock opened around $150, already above the IPO price. During the session, shares climbed as high as about $176.50 before closing around $161. That closing price placed SpaceX’s public market value above $2 trillion, based on the company’s share count and the first-day trading price.
The market move had an immediate effect on Musk’s estimated net worth. Forbes and Bloomberg wealth calculations placed him at roughly $1.05 trillion to $1.11 trillion after the debut, making him the first person those wealth trackers have valued above $1 trillion.
Those figures are estimates, not cash in hand. They depend on market prices for shares and options, and they can change quickly if SpaceX or Tesla shares move. Bloomberg analysis and Forbes calculations placed Musk’s SpaceX stake at roughly $688 billion at the IPO price, about $690 billion in similar estimates, and higher — roughly $766 billion to $800 billion — when first-day trading prices were used.
The New York market debut gives public investors access to a company that had been private since Musk founded it in 2002. It also shifts part of SpaceX’s value into the daily view of Wall Street, where workers with equity, customers, investors and competitors can now watch the company’s market value move in real time.
Musk has said SpaceX went public to help fund plans for satellites, data centers in space and, eventually, a human settlement on Mars, according to the statement reported by The Associated Press. The IPO proceeds give SpaceX a large new pool of capital, but the company’s valuation is now being tested in public trading.
That valuation is a central point of dispute. Morningstar analysts, described in AP and PBS reporting as independent of investment-banking fees, valued SpaceX at about $780 billion before the debut and called the IPO “significantly overvalued.” That estimate was far below the roughly $1.77 trillion to $1.8 trillion value implied by the IPO price and far below the more than $2 trillion value implied by the first-day close.
The records available from the offering-day accounts leave some important details unresolved. Reports describe Musk as retaining outsized control through a dual-class or special share structure, but the exact ownership and voting percentages vary across accounts. The research materials reviewed for this article did not include the full prospectus, audited financial statements or the exact official share-count filing needed to independently reconcile those control figures.
What the trading record does show is clear: SpaceX sold shares at $135, opened higher, closed higher still, and ended its first day as one of the most highly valued public companies in U.S. markets. What the wealth estimates show is also clear, though less fixed: Musk’s trillion-dollar status depends heavily on the market value assigned to his SpaceX and Tesla holdings.
