Global capital markets witnessed a historic moment as SpaceX, the space exploration company, made a spectacular debut, with its stock surging by double digits and achieving a market capitalization exceeding $2 trillion.

On Friday, March 12th, Eastern Time, as the U.S. stock market's morning session neared its close, SpaceX officially began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX. It opened at $150, an 11% increase from its offering price, climbed to a session high of $176.52 in the afternoon for a nearly 31% gain, before paring some of those gains to close at $160.95, up approximately 19.2%. The company's market value surpassed $2.1 trillion, and shares rose at least another 1% in after-hours trading.

At the close, SpaceX ranked as the sixth most valuable U.S.-listed company. The top five were NVIDIA, Alphabet (Google's parent), Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon. Another company led by Elon Musk, Tesla, held a market cap of nearly $1.3 trillion, ranking eighth, just behind Broadcom which has a market value exceeding $1.8 trillion.

As the largest Initial Public Offering in history, SpaceX raised $75 billion, excluding any over-allotment option, more than doubling the previous record set by Saudi Aramco. Even calculating based on the offering price and not the intraday trading highs, and adding the value of his over 700 million shares in Tesla, Elon Musk, who holds approximately 42% of SpaceX, has become the first person in history to amass a personal fortune exceeding $1 trillion.

Market enthusiasm soared even before trading officially began. Reports indicated the IPO attracted over $350 billion in subscription demand, with institutions and retail investors scrambling for shares, setting a new record for subscription multiples in recent large-scale IPOs. Nasdaq data showed the indicated opening price for SpaceX once reached $175, a nearly 30% premium to the offer price, demonstrating investor enthusiasm for this globally influential commercial space company far exceeded expectations.

In the first 20 minutes of trading, retail investors purchased $18.1 million worth of SpaceX stock, making it the second-largest individual stock by buy volume on Friday, trailing only NVIDIA. Due to SpaceX "sucking up" capital, other space-related stocks, which had surged across the board on Thursday, generally plunged. Space tourism company Virgin Galactic Holdings (SPCE) fell over 30%, and satellite communications company EchoStar (SATS), which holds SpaceX shares, also dropped over 10%.

SpaceX's historic IPO, active in rockets, satellites, and AI, paves the way for other companies building AI models to pursue ultra-large-scale public listings. Before its listing, media estimates suggested that if SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic all went public successfully, they could collectively add $3.6 trillion in market value to U.S. exchanges. Based on SpaceX's post-listing performance, this increase could be even higher.

Massive Institutional Demand and Allocation Shortfalls

The SpaceX IPO involved the sale of 555.6 million shares at an offering price of $135, raising $75 billion, far surpassing the previous record of $29.4 billion set by Saudi Aramco in 2019, and valuing the company at approximately $1.77 trillion.

Post-listing, if underwriters fully exercise their over-allotment option to issue an additional 83.33 million shares within 30 days, the total fundraising could expand to $86.25 billion.

Demand was unprecedented even before the listing. Sources familiar indicated the IPO accumulated over $350 billion in subscription demand, with institutional investors submitting orders exceeding $250 billion. Nearly one-third of institutional investors did not receive any allocation.

In this offering, SpaceX allocated approximately 20% of the shares to individual investors, equating to about $15 billion worth of stock flowing to the retail market. Despite this, a large number of investors received no allocation or only minimal shares, as retail investor order sizes surpassed $100 billion.

Among institutional investors, long-term capital was a priority for allocation. About 70% of the institutional allotment went to long-term investors and sovereign wealth funds. Previous reports indicated BlackRock alone submitted an order of approximately $5 billion, while the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) and the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) each requested shares valued between $1 billion and $5 billion.

The underwriting syndicate was equally impressive, comprising 23 financial institutions including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citi, and JPMorgan Chase.

Musk's Bell-Ringing Remarks: A Significant Step for Interplanetary Civilization

On Friday morning Eastern Time, the SpaceX management team rang the opening bell at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York. On screens displayed at the event, Elon Musk delivered a video address from the company's headquarters in Texas, participating remotely in the ceremony.

Musk stated, "Today belongs not just to SpaceX, but to everyone who believes humanity's future can be a multiplanetary one."

He emphasized that going public would not alter the company's long-term mission: "Our goal has always been to make humanity a spacefaring civilization. The capital markets are merely a tool to help us accelerate towards that goal."

Musk also thanked long-time employees, investors, and Starlink users, stating that SpaceX would continue to devote the vast majority of its resources to the Mars program, the next-generation Starship, and the construction of a global satellite internet network.

Shotwell: Listing Will Accelerate Starship and Starlink Expansion

SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell, interviewed at Nasdaq, said, "Today is an important milestone in the company's journey, but what truly matters is what we accomplish next."

Shotwell stated the raised capital would primarily be used for: the next phase of Starship development and mass production; expansion of the Starlink global network; construction of new satellite manufacturing facilities; and investment in deep space exploration projects.

She added, "Going public gives us unprecedented capital strength, allowing us to advance projects that might have taken a decade much faster."

Shotwell told media that beyond commercial projects, SpaceX is equally committed to serving the government and fulfilling related contracts.

She said, "We are a patriotic company. We want to ensure the government has access to leading technology and the best products, and I believe we are providing the best products." She also stated SpaceX would "always support our government."

Wall Street's Perspective on SpaceX

For Wall Street, SpaceX is more than just a rocket company.

Analysts widely believe its business model simultaneously covers: launch services; satellite internet; defense and intelligence operations; space infrastructure; and deep space exploration. Consequently, more institutions view it as a "super-enterprise" combining attributes of a technology platform, defense contractor, and infrastructure operator.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives remarked, "SpaceX is one of the most important technology companies globally over the past two decades. Its listing is as significant as the market debuts of Google, Facebook, and Alibaba."

Many investors now place SpaceX alongside tech giants like NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Apple as a core growth asset for the next decade.

Sequoia Capital partner Sean Maguire drew a parallel between today's SpaceX and AI chip leader NVIDIA. He said, "Personally, I think SpaceX today is more like NVIDIA three years ago, rather than Tesla, which many investors often compare it to. I mean, I have great confidence in its ability to achieve explosive revenue growth."

Maguire added that as a personal investor, he intends to "hold these (SpaceX) shares forever."

Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst Mandeep Singh is more optimistic about the prospects of two acquisitions SpaceX made this year. Among them, Cursor's position as an AI infrastructure provider and coding agent is expected to be further solidified following the IPO after its acquisition by SpaceX.

Regarding xAI, the AI startup founded by Musk and acquired in early February, Singh noted that by the end of 2026, xAI's contribution to SpaceX's sales could rise from about 17% to over 50%. He projects xAI could achieve $30 billion in sales by 2027, supporting a valuation between $300 billion and $400 billion, roughly 10 to 13 times expected sales.

A New Era for Capital Markets

The listing of SpaceX not only set an IPO record but may also reshape the U.S. capital market landscape.

For a long time, many of the most growth-oriented technology companies chose to remain in the private market. SpaceX's successful public debut is seen as a significant turning point.

Analysts believe that if SpaceX performs strongly post-listing, it could further encourage super-unicorns like OpenAI, Databricks, and Stripe to reconsider their IPO plans.

For investors, this also marks the first opportunity to directly participate in the growth of the global leader in commercial spaceflight.

As the first trades were made, the market's focus has shifted from "whether it can successfully list" to another question: When a company valued at $1.8 trillion like SpaceX truly begins trading, what price is Wall Street ultimately willing to assign to this "Mars company"?