Instant Reaction: SpaceX Jumps in First Trades Following Record $75 Billion IPO

Kaylee Lines

SpaceX launches into public markets with a record-setting IPO of $75 billion priced at $135 a share, opening on the NASDAQ at $150, 11% higher.

Yahira

SpaceX has officially begun trading at $150 a share above its $135 IPO price, giving investors an immediate gain of roughly 11%. This values the company at approximately just under $2 trillion, instantly making it more valuable than Tesla, Meta, and Saudi Aramco.

Kaylee Lines

We now have a second channel for bets on Elon Musk through SpaceX, alongside Tesla.

Craig Trudell

Strong debut for SpaceX with a rotation maybe a little bit out of Tesla, but not disastrous. Tesla fell about 2.8%. If Tesla's volatile track record applies to SpaceX, we should be in for a bumpy ride.

Kaylee Lines

The IPO price was set unusually without typical price discovery. Musk said the price is $135 and got it. Jim Chanos is skeptical of valuing a market cap at 110 times revenue for a company that isn't profitable.

Craig Trudell

The company put out incredible numbers in their S1 about total addressable markets and space-based economy, but follow-through has been very minimal. With the exception of Starlink, there's been very little progress toward making money in space. The real trouble is the AI portion, a very recent addition that makes things muddy and complicated.

Kaylee Lines

Google's contract with SpaceX is nearly a billion dollars per month, assuming SpaceX can deliver on promised computing power. Anthropic is also a big customer.

Craig Trudell

Google and Anthropic reached deals in the lead-up to the IPO, helping buoy sentiment. But Musk's ambitions to build a competitive chatbot and monetize AI capabilities have seen real failures. He was candid about starting XAI all wrong and starting over.

Kaylee Lines

Would you be surprised if Tesla gets rolled into this larger company too?

Craig Trudell

Given the trend of rolling up Musk's companies, it feels likely. Musk wishes he had more control over Tesla. SpaceX has a special class of stock that protects him from activism, which Tesla didn't have when it went public.

Kaylee Lines

SpaceX trading at $164, up nearly 22% from the $135 IPO price after a record-setting $75 billion IPO.

Ed Ludlow

The IPO was massively oversubscribed on both institutional (80%) and retail (20%) sides. Elon Musk, CFO Brett Johnson, and President Gwynne Shotwell controlled and dictated the terms, bypassing bankers. Setting the price early without a range removed leverage from long-only asset managers.

Kaylee Lines

Walk us through the total addressable market thesis and what SpaceX needs to accomplish technologically.

Ed Ludlow

On a fully diluted basis, SpaceX is valued at more than $2 trillion. They pitch a future as a diversified business mostly selling AI software, claiming a $28.5 trillion addressable market with $26.5 trillion in enterprise AI. But near-term, everything depends on getting Starship to work regularly and reusably. They've done 12 test flights but never landed both the booster and spacecraft back on Earth.

Kaylee Lines

Anthropic has filed confidentially with the SEC for IPO, and so has OpenAI. SpaceX owns XAI as a wholly owned subsidiary.

Ed Ludlow

Anthropic pays SpaceX more than a billion dollars a month to rent compute capacity from a data center in Tennessee. On paper, SpaceX selling AI software would make them a rival to Anthropic. But existing investors say SpaceX had available data center capacity and is good at building and operating them efficiently on a competitive dollar-per-token basis, so renting it out makes sense as a near-term story.

Kaylee Lines

SpaceX is more than two decades old. Musk previously said they could stay reliant on private capital. Is this a new model going forward?

Ed Ludlow

SpaceX was seeded with about $27 million in 2002. In 2010 when Tesla went public, SpaceX had a billion-dollar valuation. From 2023-2025 in private markets, its valuation kept growing because it dominated launching payload to orbit. Starlink has become cash flow positive and a cash generator. Despite the narrative of unprofitability, the connectivity business is actually cash-generating.

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