Elon Musk rang the Nasdaq opening bell on Friday, announcing the historic high-stakes debut of his aerospace firm SpaceX — which merged with Musk’s xAI earlier this year. The merged entity — Space Exploration Technologies Corp — is now going public at the Nasdaq after raising $75 billion under the ticker SPCX.
A total of 555.6 million SPCX shares have been put out for sale, with each share reportedly fetching $159 per share. This netted the company $75 billion in fresh capital. This debut values the company at $1.77 trillion, placing it among the most valuable corporations in the United States.
The development has set an all-time record for the largest sum of money raised in a single IPO while elevatating Musk status from a mere billionaire to the world’s first trillionaire.
Source: Nasdaq
Morgan Stanley has served as the joint lead bookrunner and sole stabilization agent for this IPO. Both, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have reportedly been allocated $15 billion in IPO shares.
Musk on Moon, Mars, and problems with Earth
Musk rang the Nasdaq bell via video link from Starbase, Texas, surrounded by a cluster of cheering employees. Addressing the office before the IPO he said, SpaceX, going forward, wishes to take the “fiction” element out of science fiction and make all of it a reality.
“We want to be able to take anyone who wants to the Moon, anyone who wants to Mars, or anywhere in the solar system, and maybe beyond the solar system at some point, we want to be able to take you there. Not just a few astronauts, I mean you. Literally you,” the 54-year-old tech mogul said.
“There are always problems on Earth, there are always things that we wish to be better that we want to solve here on Earth and we should solve them but they also have to be things that get you excited about the future and that’s the future that SpaceX wants to bring to you,” he added.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell also took the stage at the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square to mark the milestone. Shotwell disclosed that over half of 22,000 SpaceX employees have purchased stock in SpaceX IPO — accounting for $1 billion.
The SPCX stock will be offered to the public via both, the Nasdaq Global Select Market and Nasdaq Texas.
Market reacts
The S&P 500 has risen on Friday as investors reacted to the massive SpaceX IPO. While the Nasdaq Composite added 0.1 percent, the broad market index gained 0.4 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 338 points, or 0.7 percent.
The SPCX stock price was registering a constant spike at the time of writing, spewing excitement among market analysts.
