Elon Musk’s aerospace company went public today. Space Exploration Technology Corp., more commonly known as SpaceX, is trading over 555 million shares of its common stock, listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and Nasdaq Texas under the ticker symbol SPCX. Trading opened at $150 per share, a significant increase over the company’s previously announced pricing of $135 per share on Thursday.
This price has netted a valuation of approximately $2 trillion for SpaceX, and makes its owner and CEO, Musk, the world’s first trillionaire, according to reporting by the New York Times. As share prices continue to rise, the rocket and satellite maker has raised the world’s largest IPO to date.
SpaceX’s IPO follows shortly after the company’s consolidation with xAI, the artificial intelligence startup by the same founder. The company, which is now one of the most valuable organizations in the world, has ambitions that include developing data centers in space to power AI applications down on Earth and enabling humanity to inhabit other planets.
“I gave SpaceX less than a 10 percent chance of succeeding at all,” Musk said in his Nasdaq opening bell speech. “If there’s not a new company that enters space, we will never be a truly space-bearing civilization. While the other aerospace companies build rockets and everything, they are simply not pursuing the technology that is necessary to make life multiplanetary … That’s what SpaceX is about: it’s to take the fiction out of science fiction.”
