Elon Musk’s SpaceX has begun trading on the US’ Nasdaq stock exchange far ahead of expectations with the biggest initial public offering in history expected to make the polarising entrepreneur the world’s first trillionaire.

Shares began trading at $US150 ($213) a share on Friday, US time, 11 per cent higher than the expected $US135 per share. By midday the shares were up to $US165 a share, 20 per cent higher than forecast.

That valued the space technology firm at a staggering $US2.2 trillion ($3.1 trillion).

It’s thought more than 4000 SpaceX employees, with stock holdings, could become instant millionaires on paper.

But an influential analyst has expressed caution and said Space X could be “significantly overvalued”. A prominent US politician has said Space X’s valuation is “nonsensical” and the initial public offering (IPO) should never have been given the green light by regulators.

The conglomerate will trade under the ticker symbol “SPCX,” and all eyes will be on how Wall Street absorbs the offering ahead of a raft of potential AI firm IPOs.


Musk gushes before trading bell

“I gave SpaceX less than a 10 per cent chance of succeeding at all,” said Mr Musk moments before he rang the bell to mark SpaceX’s Nasdaq debut.

“I told people this, I said, ‘look, we’re probably gonna fail, but you know, we should give it a try, because if we don’t, if there’s not a new company that enters space, we will never be a truly space-faring civilisation.’”

The company priced more than 555 million shares at $US135 ($192) each in a filing with the US markets regulator on Thursday, placing SpaceX in the top 10 of Wall Street’s biggest companies with a valuation of just under $US1.8 trillion – ahead of Tesla, Facebook-owner Meta and Walmart.

But as soon as the shares were tradeable they soared in price valuing the company at more than $US2 trillion. That makes it the seventh largest firm by market capitalisation behind only a few stock market stars such as NVIDIA, Google owner Alphabet, Apple and Microsoft.

The IPO will raise more than $US75 billion, easily outranking previous record-holder oil giant Saudi Aramco’s $US29.4 billion debut in 2019.

Options for nearly 83 million additional shares could push the total above $US86 billion.


‘Nonsensical’ numbers

But questions are being raised at SpaceX’s valuation and how it’s IPO was approved.

Analysts Morningstar said traders should, initially at least, avoid SpaceX shares.

“We think the company has been significantly overvalued and investors will have opportunities to buy the stock at more attractive levels after the IPO,” it said in a note.

Morningstar also questioned SpaceX’s IPO filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the regulator, where it stated its revenue was $US1.6 trillion. The analyst suggested it was closer to $US129 billion.

Democrat politician Elizabeth Warren said the numbers in SpaceX’s financial were farcical and it should not have passed muster with regulators ahead of its IPO.

“Trump’s SEC greenlit an IPO with numbers analysts have called ‘nonsensical,’” she said.

“The SEC should do its job and ensure Elon Musk does not rip off investors”

Just minutes before the debut, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket loaded with Starling satellites.

“Go SpaceX, go Starling to all SpaceXers, new and old. Let’s see what’s out there. Occupy Mars!” a SpaceX official said in a live feed of the launch from Cape Canaveral, on Florida’s east coast.

The rocket was carrying 29 Starling internet satellites, destined to join an existing network of more than 10,000 satellites.

Co-founded by Mr Musk in 2002, the rocket start-up has since expanded into a major satellite operator and has also folded in Musk’s artificial intelligence company – xAI – which includes the social media platform X.

SpaceX is the first out of the gates among leading AI giants eyeing public markets, with OpenAI and Anthropic both recently filing initial documents with regulators.

As is traditional for high-profile debuts, executives were due to ring the opening bell to mark the start of the session – in this case at New York’s Times Square, home of the Nasdaq.

The IPO comes just over a year after Mr Musk left US President Donald Trump’s administration, following a months-long stint leading the highly contentious “DOGE” effort to slash government spending – while simultaneously juggling his CEO roles at Tesla and SpaceX.

Mr Musk’s backing of Trump and right-wing populists in Europe – and a long list of incendiary comments on X – has seen the entrepreneur go from a broadly admired prodigy to a deeply polarising figure.

The record IPO is nonetheless a testament to Mr Musk’s continued support among investors, with Bloomberg reporting that the offering was more than four times oversubscribed.

Demand among retail investors, for whom 20 per cent of shares were reserved, was also reported to be high.


Data centres in space

The IPO is expected to mint thousands of new millionaires and several billionaires, with former and current employees, and a long list of investors, from the company’s near quarter-century history looking to cash in.

The company’s financials are giving some on Wall Street pause, as the valuation largely depends on Mr Musk delivering on promises worthy of science fiction, including putting data centres in space and humans on Mars using as-yet unproven technology.

A lot also hangs on a huge expansion of SpaceX’s Starling satellite internet service as well as the success of xAI, the maker of the Grok chatbot and Mr Musk’s rival to OpenAI and Anthropic that has yet to gain traction.


Trillionaire

While SpaceX is growing fast – revenue hit $US18.7 billion in 2025 – it is also losing money, producing a net loss of $US4.9 billion, mainly on spending to build AI capacity.

“Our horizons are very long term. I do not want to focus on quarterly earnings,” SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell told CNBC.

“What folks that invest in SpaceX, SpaceX AI, need to know is that what we’re doing is very futuristic and we should be thinking about the future as well as the current order,” she said.

In an extraordinary prediction, SpaceX’s filing claims it can pull in more than $US28.5 trillion in revenue from its various markets.

A successful debut could make Mr Musk history’s first trillionaire, dwarfing other billionaires in the sheer size of his fortune.

Going into Friday’s listing, Mr Musk’s wealth stood at $US782 billion, according to the Forbes list of the world’s richest people, nearing three times that of number two, Google co-founder Larry Page.

Activists displayed a giant inflatable Musk outside Nasdaq’s offices on the eve of the listing to protest against the ability to create fake sexualised images using xAI’s Grok chatbot.