SpaceX Debuts on Nasdaq with Opening Price of $165 Per Share
Alina Collins
SpaceX opened at $165 on its Nasdaq debut, a 22% premium over the $135 IPO price, after attracting more than $350 billion in subscription demand — one of the largest U.S. IPOs ever, as the market reprices space infrastructure.
How big is this IPO?
SpaceX sold 555.6 million shares at $135 each, raising $75 billion before any greenshoe.
This means → at the offer price alone, the company is valued at $1.77 trillion, placing it among the world's most valuable firms on day one.
Subscription demand topped $350 billion, with institutional orders exceeding $250 billion — roughly a 5× oversubscription.
What does the opening price tell us?
Nasdaq's first trade printed at $165, about 22% above the IPO price.
Grey-market and derivatives trading had pointed to a first-day gain of 30–50%.
IG International's pricing implied a market cap near $2.4 trillion, more than 35% above the IPO valuation. This means → the open landed in the lower half of expectations — strong demand, but not a blow-off.
Who is buying, and where did the shares go?
About 20% of shares went to retail investors; 70% of the institutional book went to long-only funds and sovereign wealth funds.
In plain terms = this is not a retail-driven frenzy — most of the float is locked in "patient capital," limiting near-term selling pressure.
How does Wall Street see the stock from here?
New Street Research, Oppenheimer, and KGI Securities all initiated with "buy" ratings; the 12-month average target is $189.
Oppenheimer analyst Timothy Horan set an "outperform" rating with a $190 target.
He wrote that SpaceX plans to use space infrastructure to converge communications, cloud computing, and AI — potentially leveraging ground-based compute as a bridge to achieve scale and cost advantages.
This means → Wall Street is not pricing SpaceX as a launch company alone, but as a space-infrastructure platform — a combined communications-plus-compute story.
What does this mean for employees and Musk?
The listing could make roughly 4,000 employees millionaires, according to reports.
Musk's paper wealth now approaches the trillion-dollar mark, potentially making him the world's first trillionaire.
This reflects a wealth effect that extends beyond SpaceX itself — it is reshaping talent gravity and the capital narrative around the space industry.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.