NEW YORK, June 13 (Our New York News) — SpaceX’s first day as a public company on Nasdaq turned a $75 billion stock sale into a market value above $2 trillion and, according to wealth estimates by Forbes and Bloomberg, pushed founder Elon Musk’s paper net worth past $1 trillion.
The finding rests on three sets of records and calculations: the company’s IPO pricing, Nasdaq trading data from the June 12 debut and outside wealth estimates tied to Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla holdings. Those sources show a historic financial shift, but they also show that the exact size of Musk’s fortune depends on timing, share-count assumptions and whether options are included.
SpaceX began trading June 12 on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX. The company priced the offering at $135 a share, according to offering terms attributed to SpaceX, and raised $75 billion. That placed the IPO valuation at roughly $1.77 trillion to $1.8 trillion before public trading began.
Nasdaq trading data then moved the valuation higher. SpaceX opened around $150 a share, climbed intraday to about $176.50 and closed near $161. At that closing level, market capitalization calculations put the rocket and satellite company above $2 trillion.
For New York’s financial markets, the listing placed one of the world’s most closely watched private companies directly into the public equity system used by institutional investors, retirement funds and individual traders. The debut also created a new public price for a company whose value had previously depended on private-market transactions and outside estimates.
The immediate winners on paper included Musk and pre-IPO investors. Forbes and Bloomberg wealth calculations placed Musk’s total net worth at roughly $1.05 trillion to $1.11 trillion after the first-day trading. Those estimates made him the first person tracked by those wealth indexes to cross the trillion-dollar mark.
Musk’s SpaceX stake alone was estimated at about $688 billion at the IPO price, about $690 billion in some calculations, and higher when measured against the stock’s first-day trading price. Other estimates put the value of the stake, including options or higher intraday pricing, in the range of about $766 billion to about $800 billion.
Those figures are not cash. They are estimates based largely on stock and options values. If SpaceX shares fall, Musk’s paper wealth would fall with them. If shares rise, the estimate would increase.
The public record available from the trading debut also leaves important questions unresolved. Several accounts of the offering described a dual-class or special share structure that left Musk with outsized control, but the exact ownership and voting figures conflict. Reported figures include about half of overall ownership, 42% ownership, 38% ownership and about 85% voting power. The underlying filing or prospectus needed to reconcile those figures was not included in the records available in the research brief, so the precise control structure could not be independently verified from those materials.
The valuation also drew early skepticism. 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 far below both the IPO valuation and the first-day public market value.
Musk has said SpaceX went public to fund plans for satellites and data centers in space and, ultimately, a human settlement on Mars, according to AP’s account of his statement. SpaceX was established in 2002.
The stock-market record shows a completed listing, not just an announced transaction: SpaceX priced shares, raised capital, began Nasdaq trading and closed its first public session at a price well above the IPO level. What the record does not yet settle is whether the first-day valuation can be sustained, how much control public investors will have compared with Musk, or which estimate of his stake will prove most durable once fuller public filings and later trading data are available.
