In a June filing, SpaceX said it aims to raise $75 billion by selling more than 555 million shares at an expected $135 each and will begin trading Friday under the ticker SPCX.
The company said the listing price is expected to be revealed late Thursday and the offering could be the biggest initial public offering ever, eclipsing Saudi Aramco's 2019 listing that netted $29.4 billion; at the targeted price SpaceX's valuation would be around $1.75 trillion, making it one of the 10 biggest listed companies on Earth.
SpaceX acquired Elon Musk's AI company xAI this year, a move that places the company alongside OpenAI and Anthropic as part of a trio of large artificial intelligence-related IPOs; OpenAI and Anthropic have also filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to begin the process of listing later this year.
SpaceX's prospectus shows Musk will control the board and hold more than 80% of stock voting power; "For a lot of people looking at this deal, whether you want to buy it or not is in part a bet on Elon Musk," said Angelo Bochanis, an associate at Renaissance Capital.
Market watchers warned the IPO could add volatility to equities: by the closing bell Wednesday the Nasdaq composite had shed 7.4% since hitting an all-time high on June 1, and index firms including Nasdaq and FTSE Russell have agreed to fast-track inclusion of SpaceX shares so passive funds that track indexes would have to acquire them; "There's a giant risk for volatility," said Bochanis.
In its prospectus, SpaceX said it will use the IPO proceeds for continued growth of its AI compute infrastructure, launch facilities and vehicles, and satellite constellations; Songyee Yoon, managing partner at Principal Venture Partners, said, "It is true that it's a kind of technology with huge potential, but I think we have to also be grounded in thinking about what we can actually accomplish within reasonable means," and she noted development is constrained by resources including computing power and energy.
Analysts offered cautions about investor appetite and liquidity: "There's just tons of money going into this," said Ethan Feller, a stock strategist at Zacks Investment Research, but he warned that level of investment is not guaranteed indefinitely, and "Investing in an IPO process can be highly speculative, and it's really difficult to determine the path of an IPO on a given day," said Rodney Comegys, chief investment officer and head of global equity for Vanguard Capital Management; once trading begins, the listing price could soar higher or dip lower in the coming days.