SpaceX Sets $135 IPO Price at $1.77T Valuation The Biggest Offering Ever

In a statement with the SEC on Wednesday, SpaceX set a fixed price of $135 per share. This goes against one of the most basic rules of modern IPOs and makes it clear that Elon Musk wants to take his company public on his own terms.

The sale aims to raise $75 billion through 555.6 million shares. Underwriters also have the option to buy an extra 83.33 million shares at the same price, which would bring the total amount raised to $11.2 billion if they choose to do so. SpaceX would be worth $1.77 trillion if each share was worth $135. This would put it above Tesla, which is worth about $1.6 trillion, and make it the seventh-largest company in the US by market capitalisation on its first day of trade.

Nasdaq trading will start on June 12 under the ticker SPCX. The investor tour starts on Thursday, and prices are expected to be set on June 11. It would be the biggest IPO ever—more than three times the size of the biggest IPO in the US right now, which was Alibaba.

Why Publishing a Fixed Price Before the Roadshow Is Extraordinary

The usual steps for an IPO are test-the-waters talks, a roadshow, a price range, the final price, and the listing. The price range is where the real action takes place. It's how bankers figure out how sensitive demand is to different valuation levels, which helps the company and its advisors figure out where to land before agreeing to a number.

SpaceX skipped the range entirely.

Publishing a fixed $135 price a week ahead of the roadshow inverts the conventional logic. Rather than using investor feedback to arrive at a price, SpaceX told investors what the price is and invited them to participate on those terms. The message embedded in that structure is unambiguous: the company isn't seeking price discovery because it doesn't need it. The demand is assumed.

"Nothing about this IPO is normal in any course or sense, but then again this is the largest IPO in history so maybe that is not surprising," one investor planning to participate told Reuters.

The way investors spend their money makes the power difference even worse. There was a huge rush on Wall Street to buy IPO shares because of Musk's fame and the chance to make a lot of money from the first-ever big deal. Goldman Sachs is the first backer, and Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan come in after them. Investors with large amounts of money who do business with Goldman Sachs said they tried to buy shares but were told that assignments are "a David Solomon level decision," which is not what he said. He was told by his banker not to buy until the business goes public.

That's not how clients of major investment banks are typically treated in IPO allocations. It reflects the degree of leverage SpaceX holds in this transaction — a leverage that flows from the uniqueness of the asset, the scale of the raise, and Musk's willingness to run the process on his own schedule.

The Retail Investor Strategy: Musk's Cult Following as Demand Infrastructure

International banks like Mizuho, Deutsche Bank, UBS, and Barclays have been told to focus on finding wealthy individuals in their home countries as their main buyers. This is different from the usual way of allocating IPOs, which involves large institutional asset managers and major hedge funds as the main demand base.

SpaceX is allegedly thinking about giving up to 30% of the offering to individual investors. This would be a very large portion of the offering for retail investors compared to how institutional IPOs usually work. Through a direct share scheme, the company has also set aside up to 5% of its stock for "certain employees and persons" to buy.

There is something special about Musk's followers and how they act that the focus on retail shows. Investors who bought Tesla because they believed in the brand and stuck with it through rough patches because they were focused on the mission rather than the quarterly numbers are a demand pool that doesn't need analyst roadshow presentations or traditional valuation reasoning. People are buying SPCX because it's Musk's space company, which is reason enough for a sizable portion of market demand.

"Why would you want to own it?" "Because Elon Musk is well-known," said Robert Pavlik, senior portfolio manager at Dakota Wealth. He also said he wasn't buying any shares himself. The honesty shows the tension: an asset whose value is partly based on the charisma of the founder rather than standard valuation metrics is a different kind of investment opportunity, no matter how good the business itself is.

The Valuation Multiple That Requires Explanation

$1.77 trillion at $135 per share equals about 90 times the company's sales, based on its $18.67 billion in revenue in 2025—up 33% year-over-year even though it had a net loss of $4.94 billion.

CEO of GSMA Intelligence Tim Hatt said, "A revenue multiple of 90 times or more seems high by any measure." "But then again, SpaceX is not traditional in any way and there are no true public comparables."

It's hard to do analysis when there aren't any comparables, which is also kind of the bull case. It is not possible for a public company to offer commercial satellite internet (like Starlink, which has 10 million subscribers and a 63% EBITDA margin), commercial rocket launches (which are still profitable even though Starship spends a lot on research and development), and AI infrastructure (like the Colossus compute clusters, which generate a $15 billion annual Anthropic contract) all in one.

To create a valuation framework from scratch, you have to guess how each section grows and what terminal multiples apply. This is a step where reasonable analysts can come to very different conclusions.

The Starlink business by itself—with $18.67 billion in sales growing at 33% and operating margins that would be the best in any infrastructure category—might be able to support a big chunk of the suggested valuation.

While still in its early stages, the AI infrastructure sector is already creating the Anthropic contract. This adds a level of choice that pure satellite internet competitors don't offer. The launch business makes money and can't be replaced because Starship can be used again and again.

Investors who were invited to the tour allocation are now being asked to answer the question of whether these parts add up to $1.77 trillion at the current level of sales.

The Governance Structure That Concentrates Everything in Musk

After the sale, Musk will still have more than 82% of the votes, which is so much power that it makes even the most aggressive founder-control structures at other tech companies look mild. Because of the way super-voting shares are set up, public investors can't really change the direction of the company, the pay of executives, or strategic decisions through the ballot, no matter how much stock they buy together.

That framework really makes it hard for institutional investors with governance requirements or ESG screens to take part. For small investors who buy because they believe in the brand, it may not matter or even be comforting—they're betting on Musk's judgement, and concentrated control protects his ability to act on that judgement without board interference.

The governance question is connected to a specific strategy rumour that has been growing in the background. According to CNBC, talk is growing about Musk's possible goal of eventually merging SpaceX and Tesla.

Musk has talked about the idea with coworkers, and a present Tesla employee confirmed that the subject is openly discussed within the company. For years, the two companies have shared resources, employees, and business deals. For example, Tesla owns 18.99 million SpaceX shares, which were worth $2.56 billion at the IPO price, and SpaceX's xAI unit bought Tesla Megapacks worth $269 million just in April.

If a combo between Tesla and SpaceX ever happened, Musk would be able to make it happen because he would have 82% of the votes. Public SPCX shareholders wouldn't have many ways to stop it, which could be a risk or not a big deal based on how much you trust Musk's long-term strategic judgement.

Where SpaceX Lands in the AI IPO Race

At the same time that SpaceX goes public, both Anthropic (which filed its confidential prospectus with the SEC on Monday) and OpenAI are speeding up their IPO plans. OpenAI is planning to file in the next few weeks with a possible September listing. A lot of cutting edge AI companies are going public at the same time, which makes it hard for institutional capital to meet all the demand.

Goldman Sachs researchers noticed that before each of the four biggest US IPOs in history, cash balances at large US mutual funds went up. This seems to be happening again before SpaceX goes public. When the S&P 500 is added to an index, fund managers who need to keep SPCX must find capital somewhere. This usually means cutting back on large-cap positions. Alphabet has been specifically named as a possibility for rotation because its themes overlap with those of AI infrastructure.

The lockup expiration risk happens 90 to 180 days after the listing. This means that pre-IPO buyers who want to make money will put pressure on the secondary market in October to December 2026. With $75 billion in float, even a small number of pre-IPO buyers selling at the same time could put a lot of pressure on secondary prices, no matter how well the business does.

What June 12 Actually Prices

The tour ends on June 11, and business starts on June 12. Even though the price is set, how the opening trade acts will depend on how investors react during the roadshow. This includes whether demand is much higher than supply at $135 or whether institutional investors question the valuation.

Because SpaceX chose to set the price instead of running a range, the company can only sell shares at the price set at the start. After that, the normal roadshow process is over.

The secondary market is where the real price discovery happens. This is where demand from individual buyers, index funds buying on inclusion, and short-term momentum players sets the price.

Traditional IPO pricing runs the risk of either underpricing if demand is higher than supply (leaving money on the table) or overpricing if demand is lower than supply (breaking the deal). This system flips the risk around.

If the price stays the same before the roadshow, investors who buy at $135 take on the full risk. If secondary demand is lower than Musk said it would be, the stock starts below the IPO price, and early investors lose money.

Because of the unique nature of the asset, the size of the rise, and the retail allocation plan, there are a lot of possible outcomes on June 12. The $75 billion that SpaceX is raising will pay for whatever comes next, whether it's building a Starship, expanding Starlink, making Colossus's computers faster, or a mix of these things that Musk talks about on the tour. The price set on June 12 is based on whether the general market agrees, at $1.77 trillion, that what comes next is worth the price.