Tonight, SpaceX's historic IPO: Musk's "faith premium" faces a capital referendum!
The largest IPO in the history of human capital markets will debut tonight, and the capital market will publicly price Musk's "faith premium."
Musk's rocket company SpaceX will be listed on the NASDAQ on Friday, issuing 555.6 million shares at a fixed price of $135 per share, raising about $75 billion, with a company valuation of approximately $1.77 trillion. This surpasses the record $29.4 billion raised by Saudi Aramco in 2019, making it the largest IPO in global history.
Based on the issue price, Musk's holdings in SpaceX are worth about $688 billion, bringing his personal net worth close to $971 billion. If the stock price climbs to about $140.71 after listing, he will become the world's first billionaire with a net worth exceeding $1 trillion.
The IPO's pricing strategy also breaks convention—SpaceX skipped traditional roadshows and price range inquiries, setting a fixed issue price from the start. While this reduces operational complexity, it also leaves all the pressure of market testing to today's actual trading.
As of now, the implied market cap in the OTC derivatives market is about $2.4 trillion, 35% higher than the IPO valuation; prediction platform Polymarket shows a roughly 70% probability that the closing market cap on the first day will break the $2 trillion mark.
It’s noteworthy that SpaceX’s performance today not only tests the so-called “Musk premium” that supports Tesla’s $1 trillion-plus valuation, but also serves as a key indicator of investor risk appetite—before AI giants Anthropic and OpenAI prepare to go public, the first day performance of the largest IPO in history will provide a crucial reference for those who follow.
Largest IPO in History: Retail Subscription Exceeds $100 Billion, Sovereign Funds Join In
According to The Wall Street Journal, SpaceX completed the full sale of 555.6 million shares at $135 per share on Thursday, raising about $75 billion and giving the company a valuation of approximately $1.77 trillion, breaking the fundraising record of Saudi Aramco’s global largest IPO in 2019.
The investor scramble was even more spectacular.
Wallstreetcn previously reported that retail subscriptions exceeded $100 billion, about 1,000 institutional investors submitted subscription applications, and BlackRock filed for at least $5 billion, becoming one of the main institutional subscribers for this offering.
Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds also entered collectively—the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) each submitted orders ranging from $1 billion to $5 billion, and Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) may also make a major commitment; according to The Wall Street Journal, a single family office submitted a subscription request exceeding $1 billion.
About 30% of the shares issued will be preferentially allocated to retail investors, far higher than the customary less-than-10% ratio in traditional IPOs.
This expands individual investor participation but also exposes the first day's trading to higher volatility risk. Underwriters and traders predict that if retail investors start panic selling, the price swings may trigger a 10% circuit breaker mechanism, pausing trading for five minutes—similar scenarios have occurred previously with Figma and chip company Cerebras Systems.
“One-Price” Strategy: Success or Failure Depends Entirely on Today’s Trading
SpaceX gave up traditional IPO roadshows and price range inquiry, locking in a fixed issue price of $135 per share from the outset. The intention was to compress operational complexity but at the expense of omitting the market’s necessary price discovery process.
The success of this pricing strategy will be judged directly by today's trading. If the stock price rises sharply, critics will say SpaceX underpriced the offering, "leaving money on the table"; if the stock underperforms or drops below the issue price, the market will question whether underwriters overestimated demand.
Currently, prediction markets remain optimistic about the first day's performance—Polymarket shows about an 84% probability that the closing market cap will exceed $1.8 trillion, and about 69% probability of exceeding $2 trillion.
As for opening time, such celebrity IPO stocks often debut later in the day. Underwriters usually hope to match buyers and sellers for about 10% of the issued shares before trading begins, which is about 55 million shares for SpaceX, worth approximately $7.5 billion. Because early investors are restricted by lockups, finding sellers willing to part with shares in a hot market takes time.
However, reports suggest underwriters may buck tradition and open trading before the usual proportion of deals is matched, to ensure enough trading time on the first day.
In addition, as a stabilization agent, Morgan Stanley controls the “greenshoe option”—that is, over-allotment of about 15% of the shares. If the stock price weakens after listing, Morgan Stanley can buy shares in the open market to support the price; if the price stays strong, it can exercise the over-allotment right and require the issuer to sell more shares.
Two Key Trading Dates Ahead
After tonight, investors need to closely watch two value-packed key trading dates. Well-known Tesla community opinion leader and former Wall Street analyst Alexandra Mertz points out these are “inclusion in the Nasdaq on July 7” and “lock-up expiration two days after the quarterly earnings meeting.”
First Key Date: July 7
This day is the first trading day after Independence Day weekend, and the 15th trading day after SpaceX lists. On that day, the Nasdaq 100 index will officially include SpaceX.
Passive funds tracking the index must open positions unconditionally in the public market, with expected passive buying ranging from $8 billion to $18 billion, more likely around $15 billion. Since shareholders still cannot sell stock at this stage, market float is at its lowest, potentially creating a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop to drive the price higher.
Second Key Date: Two business days after the Q2 earnings conference (expected around July 22 or 29)
Early internal shareholders will see the first major lockup expire. However, Mertz clarifies that fears of a 30% sell-off are clearly exaggerated. Musk himself holds about 50% of early shares, and his holdings are subject to a strict 366-day lockup.
Therefore, newly unlocked shares entering the market will only account for 10–15% of the total shares. Additionally, early major shareholder Ron Baron has declared he “won’t sell a single share, and will add another $1 billion in the open market.”
Wall Street’s Sharp Divide: AI Compute Bet vs. 53% Discount Warning
Wall Street has polarized on SpaceX’s valuation: some see the golden age of AI infrastructure, others only see sky-high fantasy at the expense of the future.
Dan Ives, senior analyst at Wedbush Securities, calls this IPO “an important moment for advancing the AI revolution.”
His optimism is based on SpaceX’s real progress in AI infrastructure: its Colossus data center in Memphis, Tennessee, already houses 220,000 top-end Nvidia GPUs and can provide over 300 MW of AI compute power. Listing documents show SpaceX signed an AI compute leasing deal with Google worth about $920 million per month, while Anthropic is committed to pay $1.25 billion per month for exclusive access to these resources.
In stark contrast, Morningstar analyst Nicolas Owens gives a fair value estimate of just $63 per share—53% below the issue price.
Owens believes about $72 of the current $135 issue price is what investors pay for SpaceX's still unrealized grand projects—a “options premium” mainly for orbital data centers and Mars base plans. He assigns a 50% probability to the data center project’s realization, and notes if it fails, the company’s valuation will be heavily reduced.
NYU finance professor Aswath Damodaran estimates enterprise value at $1.22 trillion, but admits that under extremely optimistic assumptions, a $1.75 trillion valuation is not unfounded.
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