SpaceX’s $75B IPO redefines the startup exit playbook with $1.77T valuation

From a startup that nearly died after its first three failures to the largest IPO in history — SpaceX’s journey defies everything venture capitalists learn about risk and valuation. The $75 billion raise, catapulting the company to a $1.77 trillion market cap, is a seismic event for the global startup ecosystem. It validates that patient capital and outsized ambition can produce returns that make software unicorns look quaint, and it forces founders and investors alike to ask: is this the beginning of a new era of deep-tech IPOs, or the peak of a speculative frenzy?

SpaceX’s public debut has shattered every record in the book, ringing in a new era for both capital markets and the space economy. On June 12, 2026, shares of the Elon Musk-led company began trading at $150, an 11% pop above the $135 IPO price, and later climbed to $164 — a first-day surge of 21%. By the closing bell, SpaceX commanded a market capitalisation of $1.77 trillion, making it the sixth-largest publicly listed US company overnight and the first to cross the $1 trillion threshold at IPO. The offering raised $75 billion through the sale of 556 million shares, dwarfing the previous record held by Saudi Aramco’s $29.4 billion listing. Veteran Indian banker Uday Kotak, founder of Kotak Mahindra Bank, captured the moment’s significance by calling the listing “a true test for capitalism,” adding that SpaceX’s valuation “does not fit any traditional matrix and is a huge bet on the future course of planet earth.”

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On June 12, 2026, shares of the Elon Musk-led company began trading at $150, an 11% pop above the $135 IPO price, and later climbed to $164 — a first-day surge of 21%.

The context for this staggering figure lies in Musk’s ambition to push artificial intelligence infrastructure into orbit. Proceeds are earmarked for the construction of orbital data centres — a concept that promises to marry SpaceX’s launch dominance with the world’s insatiable demand for compute power. While terrestrial data centres face energy, cooling, and land constraints, orbital platforms offer near-unlimited solar power and physical security. The IPO turns a speculative vision into a bet that institutional and retail investors clearly were willing to take, as demand from both sides was described as “intense.” For SpaceX, a company that has already redefined the launch industry, built the Starlink constellation, and is developing the Starship for interplanetary travel, going public represents the culmination of two decades of scrappy innovation and relentless capital raising from private markets.

Kotak’s framework — whether the valuation is a “fairy tale” or a “mega bubble” — gets to the heart of the debate. Traditional metrics like price-to-earnings or discounted cash flow are near impossible to apply to a company whose future revenues depend on unproven orbital AI services and a burgeoning space-based economy. Even SpaceX’s existing businesses — launch services and Starlink subscriptions — would struggle to justify a $1.77 trillion valuation under conventional analysis. Instead, the market is pricing in a future where orbital data centres generate hundreds of billions in revenue, the Starship fleet enables a lunar and Martian economy, and Starlink becomes the backbone of global connectivity. Such projections echo the dot-com bubble’s promise of a new internet economy, but with the crucial difference that SpaceX already possesses the infrastructure and track record to execute — it has launched more rockets than any other private company and operates thousands of satellites.

The listing also thrusts the spotlight onto the broader aerospace and defence sector. Companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman, with their solid dividend profiles and steady government contracts, suddenly seem pedestrian by comparison. SpaceX’s IPO may catalyse a wave of space infrastructure financing, encouraging other private ventures — Blue Origin, Relativity Space, and even smaller satellite operators — to test public markets sooner. For the US capital market ecosystem, the IPO underscores a risk appetite that has repeatedly allowed frontier-tech stories to flourish, from Tesla to NVIDIA. Kotak’s praise for “the country that has allowed such boundless creativity to flourish” underscores the policy environment that permitted an immigrant entrepreneur to transform industries.