NEW YORK, June 13 (Our New York News) — SpaceX’s first day as a public company on the Nasdaq gave New York’s financial markets a new $2 trillion-scale stock and pushed published estimates of founder Elon Musk’s wealth above $1 trillion, according to Nasdaq trading data, SpaceX’s announced offering terms and wealth calculations by Forbes and Bloomberg.
The rocket and satellite company began trading June 12 under the ticker SPCX. SpaceX priced its initial public offering at $135 a share and said the sale raised $75 billion. The stock opened around $150, climbed as high as about $176.50 during the session and closed near $161, Nasdaq market data showed.
Those trading levels put a public price on a company that had been privately held since Musk established SpaceX in 2002. At the IPO price, the offering valued the company at about $1.77 trillion to $1.8 trillion, based on offering terms. By the close of trading, the share price implied a market value above $2 trillion.
The same price move also changed the estimated value of Musk’s holdings. Forbes-based calculations put Musk’s SpaceX stake at roughly $688 billion at the IPO price, a figure rounded in market coverage to about $690 billion. Estimates based on higher trading prices placed the stake higher, with some calculations near $766 billion to $800 billion, depending on whether the IPO price, intraday high or closing price was used and how options were counted.
Forbes and Bloomberg wealth estimates placed Musk’s total net worth at roughly $1.05 trillion to $1.11 trillion after the debut, making him the first person publicly estimated to be worth more than $1 trillion. Those figures are estimates of paper wealth, not cash. They depend heavily on the market price of SpaceX stock, the value of Musk’s Tesla holdings and assumptions about shares and options.
The business impact was immediate for investors who bought into the IPO or traded the shares on the first day. A buyer at the $135 IPO price held a paper gain by the close near $161. Investors who bought near the intraday high, however, ended the session below that peak. For earlier private investors, the listing created a public market price for holdings that had long been valued through private transactions.
Musk said SpaceX went public to fund plans involving satellites, data centers in space and, eventually, a human settlement on Mars, according to the Associated Press, which attributed the statement to Musk. The records reviewed for this story do not identify which projects will receive proceeds first or how the $75 billion will be allocated.
The valuation was not accepted by all analysts. Morningstar analysts, described by AP and PBS as independent of investment-banking fees, estimated SpaceX’s value at about $780 billion and called the IPO “significantly overvalued.” That estimate was less than half the company’s IPO valuation and far below the market value implied by the first-day closing price.
The available record is clearer on the trading result than on control. Several accounts of the offering described a dual-class or special share structure that left Musk with outsized control. But the reported ownership and voting-power figures conflict, and the underlying prospectus or share-structure filing was not included in the source material reviewed for this article. For that reason, this article does not state an exact Musk voting percentage.
The New York link is the market itself. SpaceX’s listing took place on Nasdaq, placing one of the world’s largest private technology and aerospace companies into the daily pricing system used by Wall Street investors, index managers, retirement funds and other market participants. The debut’s central finding is documented by the trading record: SpaceX sold shares at $135, opened above that price, closed near $161 and ended its first public session with a valuation above $2 trillion.
