SpaceX shares are set to start trading on Friday, opening the first public market for a company that says it wants to raise at least $75bn and value itself at around $1.75tn. The deal would put the SpaceX share price in the spotlight for individual investors and some of the world's biggest funds for the first time.
The offering is expected to include more than 550 million shares at $135 each, with trading due to begin on Nasdaq in New York. That size would put SpaceX within reach of the top 10 largest listed firms in the United States, a leap that could ripple through pension funds, savings accounts and index-tracking portfolios even for people who never place an order themselves.
For the search traffic arriving today, the draw is simple: who can buy, how much stock is available and what happens once the market opens. Individuals, including in the UK, will be able to apply through selected investment platforms and brokers, while the shares will be allocated according to demand before trading starts. Big global investment institutions are also likely to take part, giving the float a scale that ordinary retail investors rarely see.
Musk wants the new money to do more than widen SpaceX's balance sheet. He plans to use the proceeds to expand its current work and finance ventures that sound closer to science fiction than a stock sale: mining asteroids, colonising Mars and building AI data centres in space. The sales prospectus argues humanity must avoid “the same fate as dinosaurs” and move toward an “age of abundance” beyond Earth, with “the light of consciousness” no longer tied to a single planet.
That is also where the doubts begin. SpaceX is separate from Tesla, but it is still being sold on Musk's ability to turn ambitious language into working businesses, and plenty of scepticism surrounds whether every part of the plan can be done. Backers say he has beaten doubters before, yet the first real test comes as soon as Friday's trading starts and the market decides what the shares are worth after the opening bell.
For investors, the unanswered question is not whether SpaceX will be talked about on Friday — it will be. It is whether the shares command anything close to the $1.75tn pitch once real buyers and sellers begin setting the price.
