SpaceX closed its first day on the Nasdaq at $160.95, up 19% from a $135 offer price, raising roughly $75 billion across more than 555 million shares and ending the session with a $2.2 trillion market cap once extended trading pushed SPCX to about $166.76. That capital raise alone dwarfs Saudi Aramco’s 2019 listing, which pulled in $25.6 billion, or roughly $33.2 billion in today’s dollars. SpaceX is now the sixth most-valuable U.S. company. Elon Musk, weeks shy of 55, is the world’s first trillionaire.

About an hour before the opening bell, a SpaceX rocket lifted off from Florida. The narrative management was, by any measure, total.

The structural read is harder to square with the tape. SpaceX lost $4.9 billion last year and has burned more than $41 billion since 2002. The closing price values the company at roughly 112 times last year’s revenue. Morningstar’s discounted-cash-flow model puts fair value at $780 billion, less than 40% of where SPCX printed in extended trading. The roughly $80 billion that got added after the bell exceeds the entire market cap of most Fortune 100 names.

Lloyd Greif of Greif & Co. put it bluntly: “This was not a deal that was priced based on market forces. This was a deal based on what one man wanted.” Musk retains about 85% of shareholder voting power post-listing, which means the governance structure formalizes what Greif is describing.

Musk himself once told staffers at Starbase, Texas the venture had a “less than 10% chance of succeeding.” That framing is now the founding myth, recited back at the prospectus.

The deal also cracks the window Wall Street has been waiting on. Anthropic filed a confidential S-1 on June 1; OpenAI followed roughly a week later, targeting an $852 billion valuation and a September debut. Former Nasdaq chief Robert Greifeld said he “would definitely bet” both clear. The reference point is no longer 2021’s SPAC boom or 2019’s Aramco print. It’s whatever SPCX does on Monday.

Sources