June 12, 2026, will be remembered as one of the most consequential days in Wall Street history. SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company, officially began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX, completing the largest initial public offering ever recorded.
A Record-Breaking Debut
SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 per share on Thursday night, selling 556 million shares and raising approximately $75 billion nearly three times larger than the previous record for an IPO. When trading opened Friday, shares jumped immediately to $150, an 11% premium over the offer price.
From there, the stock continued climbing throughout the session, touching an intraday high of $176.52 before easing back. SPCX ultimately closed its first day at $160.95, up 19.3% from the IPO price. That move pushed SpaceX's market capitalization above $2.1 trillion, instantly making it the sixth largest publicly traded company in the United States.
Trading volume was extraordinary: more than 500 million shares changed hands on day one a figure that approaches Facebook's historic 2012 debut, which saw roughly 580 million shares traded.
Elon Musk Becomes the World's First Trillionaire
Perhaps the most talked-about consequence of the listing is that it made Elon Musk, who retains roughly 40% ownership of SpaceX, the world's first trillionaire on paper. Musk and SpaceX President/COO Gwynne Shotwell rang the opening bell Musk from SpaceX's Starbase facility in Texas, and Shotwell on the Nasdaq floor in New York.
"I gave SpaceX a less than 10% chance of succeeding at all," Musk said moments before the bell rang a reminder of how far the 24-year-old company has come since its early rocket failures.
Wall Street's Take: Wildly Divergent Price Targets
What makes SPCX particularly interesting for investors is just how split analyst opinion is. In the days leading up to the IPO, two independent research firms issued the first formal ratings:
Oppenheimer's Timothy Horan initiated coverage with an "Outperform" rating and a bold $190 price target — about 40% above the IPO price. His thesis isn't just about rockets: he frames SpaceX as "the only vertically integrated AI company with the required capital, data, LLMs, hardware, manufacturing and engineering talent," pointing to a potential $10 trillion total addressable market by 2035 driven by orbital data centers and satellite-based computing.
New Street Research's Pierre Ferragu set a $165 target, modeling $195 billion in annual revenue by the end of the decade — split roughly between $650 billion in cumulative Starlink-related value and $575 billion from AI infrastructure. Ferragu also outlined a bull case where SPCX could reach $330 per share within five years, implying a roughly $4 trillion valuation.
On the other end of the spectrum, Morningstar's Nicolas Owens published a sharply bearish note, valuing SpaceX at just $63 per share — less than half the IPO price — citing major uncertainty around the profitability of Musk's other ventures, including xAI and X.
By Friday afternoon, post-debut coverage pushed the average 12-month price target to roughly $139, with estimates ranging from a low of $63 to a high of $227, and an overall consensus rating of "Buy" from the small group of analysts covering the stock so far.
Why the Volatility Matters
SpaceX's business is genuinely difficult to value using traditional metrics. The company posted a net loss of roughly $4.28 billion in its most recent quarter. Its revenue today comes primarily from launch services and Starlink subscriptions, but its valuation increasingly reflects expectations about businesses that don't exist yet at scale — orbital data centers, AI infrastructure, and Starship-enabled deep space operations.
Add to that the sheer size of the float (13.076 billion total shares outstanding) and intense retail demand Citadel Securities reported the highest IPO auction order activity ever recorded from individual investors, and SPCX was the most-bought stock by retail traders on debut day, with buying volume more than 3.5 times that of Nvidia.
This combination a massive new supply of shares, polarized analyst views, and a wave of retail enthusiasm — is a recipe for continued volatility in the weeks ahead.
What Happens Next
SpaceX's next quarterly earnings report is scheduled for September 2, 2026, which will give investors their first real look at the company's financials as a public entity. Until then, much of the action in SPCX may be driven by sentiment, index-inclusion speculation (analysts widely expect a fast-tracked entry into the Nasdaq 100), and ongoing commentary from the 23 underwriting banks once their quiet periods expire.
For long-term investors, the key question isn't really about Friday's 19% pop — it's whether SpaceX's bet on becoming a "space-based AI infrastructure" company, rather than just a rocket and satellite business, can justify a valuation north of $2 trillion. The next several quarters of earnings reports will start to answer that.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.
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