SpaceX Goes Public: Inside SPCX and the Biggest IPO in History

After years of speculation, it finally happened. On June 12, 2026, SpaceX began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX — and it did so as the largest initial public offering ever completed. The company Elon Musk once swore he'd keep private is now a publicly traded stock you can buy in your brokerage account. Here's exactly what happened, why it matters, and what investors should understand before chasing it.

What happened

SpaceX priced its IPO on the evening of June 11, 2026, selling 555,555,555 Class A shares at $135.00 each — a roughly $75 billion raise that values the company at approximately $1.77 trillion. That eclipses Saudi Aramco's 2019 listing (~$29 billion) to become the biggest IPO of all time by a wide margin.

The stock debuted the next day on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and Nasdaq Texas. It opened at $150 — an 11% jump from the IPO price — and finished its first day up nearly 20%. With that, SpaceX became roughly the sixth-largest publicly traded company in the United States, leapfrogging Musk's other company, Tesla (around $1.6 trillion).

A few unusual mechanics stood out:

• A fixed, "take-it-or-leave-it" price. Rather than offering a price range and letting demand set the final number, SpaceX set $135 and $1.77 trillion in advance — a confident, atypical move for a deal this size.
• A massive bank syndicate. Around 21 banks worked the offering (reportedly code-named "Project Apex"), with Goldman Sachs leading and Morgan Stanley, BofA, Citigroup, and JPMorgan among the book-running managers.
• A retail-heavy allocation. SpaceX discussed reserving up to 30% of shares for retail investors — far above the typical 5%–10% — and named Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Robinhood, SoFi, and E-Trade as platforms offering shares.
• A greenshoe option. Underwriters hold a 30-day option to buy up to 83.3 million additional shares at the IPO price.

Why SpaceX went public now

Musk long resisted a listing, but two things shifted the calculus: Starlink's maturation into a real cash-generating business, and a valuation that had simply grown too large to keep funding privately. By going public, SpaceX gains access to deep public-market capital to fund its most ambitious bets — Starship development and, reportedly, space-based data-center infrastructure.

The Starlink satellite-internet business is the heart of the investment case. It accounts for an estimated 58% of SpaceX's revenue, serves more than 10 million subscribers, and runs on a constellation of over 9,800 satellites — a genuine competitive moat that's hard for any rival to replicate.

The numbers behind the hype

This is where investors need to slow down. A $1.77 trillion valuation is extraordinary for a company with these financials:

• Revenue: about $18.7 billion last year.
• Profitability: an operating loss of roughly $4.2 billion.

For context, among the world's trillion-dollar public companies, the smallest by revenue generates far more than SpaceX does, and the rest are solidly profitable. SpaceX is being valued on its future — Starlink's growth, launch dominance, Starship, and the broader space economy — not its current earnings. That's a bet on execution, and it carries real risk.

The Musk and xAI wrinkle

Two governance facts deserve attention. First, Musk will retain over 82% of voting control after the offering, so public shareholders have limited say. Second, in February 2026 SpaceX merged with Musk's AI company xAI (the combined entity was valued around $1.25 trillion at the time), folding AI into the space giant. That ties SpaceX's story to Musk's wider empire — including financial overlaps with Tesla, which itself owns nearly 19 million SpaceX shares.

For some investors, Musk's track record of turning SpaceX from near-bankruptcy in 2008 into a launch monopoly is the entire bull case. For others, his concentrated control, divided attention across multiple companies, and headline volatility are the central risks.

How investors can buy SPCX

Because SPCX is a normal US-listed stock now, access is straightforward — no more private secondary markets or tokenized proxies required.

• US investors can buy it through essentially any brokerage, including the platforms that participated in the IPO (Schwab, Fidelity, Robinhood, SoFi, E-Trade) and others.
• Canadian investors can buy SPCX as a US-listed security through brokers like Questrade, Wealthsimple, or Interactive Brokers. Keep currency conversion in mind — a US trade from a CAD account typically incurs an FX cost unless you use a USD account.

Several issuers are also moving fast on SpaceX-themed ETFs (firms including Kurv and VistaShares have signaled launches), which may eventually offer diversified exposure for investors who don't want single-stock risk.

What it means for the market

Analysts read a successful SpaceX debut as a green light for a wave of mega-IPOs. Wedbush's Dan Ives framed it as an important moment for the broader tech sector amid the AI buildout, and other strategists noted that well-received giant listings tend to pull more companies into going public. With AI heavyweights also reportedly laying IPO groundwork, SpaceX may be the opening act of a much busier listing calendar. For more on that backdrop, see our look at AI & semiconductor stocks in 2026.

The bottom line

SpaceX's IPO is historic by any measure — the largest ever, a strong first-day pop, and a genuine landmark for the space economy. But "historic" and "a good buy at $135" are different questions. The valuation prices in years of flawless execution against a current operating loss, with Musk holding near-total control. If you're considering SPCX, treat it as a high-conviction, high-risk growth position, size it accordingly, and decide based on your own time horizon and risk tolerance — not the hype around the ticker.