Elon Musk’s space and AI conglomerate publicly acknowledged that it has raised $75 billion in a stock sale to underwriters who will begin marketing the company on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Friday.
In an update to its website, SpaceX announced the price of its 555.6 million shares at $135 per share. This officially makes SpaceX the largest IPO in history, easily surpassing the $24.9 billion raised by Saudi Aramco in its public market debut in 2019. At this price, the deal is expected to make Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
The company, officially known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., will trade under the ticker symbol SPCX.
Typically, IPO prices set themselves as the market opens, but SpaceX took the unusual approach of setting its price well in advance. The company was testing a $135 price target with investors before the official roadshow began, the Financial Times reported. And that offering, which bypassed traditional IPO pricing practices, raised four times the available shares, according to Bloomberg.
SpaceX stock could fall or rise as active trading begins tomorrow. But anecdotal reports suggest that large institutional investors and retail buyers are lining up to buy shares in the 24-year-old technology company.
If the sale is as flooded as the chatty bankers say, they have the option to put an additional 83.3 million shares on the market, which would raise an additional $11 billion in the company’s opening price.
Hyperliquid, a cryptocurrency betting marketplace that seeks to offer synthetic exposure to SpaceX stock, currently has a stock price of $167, which suggests market participants are expecting a classic 20% IPO pop on the first day of trading.
Longer term, big open questions remain about how SpaceX can justify its staggering valuation. From the world’s largest reusable rocket to a new U.S. chip factory, the company’s impressive engineering projects fill a daunting to-do list.
The biggest beneficiary of this proposal is Mr. Musk himself. He owns just under 850 million Class A shares, each with one vote. He also has the right to acquire an additional 5.6 billion Class B shares, which carry 10 votes per share and include 1 billion shares attached to SpaceX’s massive bet that 1 million people will live in a SpaceX colony on Mars.
The listing will give Valor Management founder and CEO Antonio Gracias 503.4 million shares, valuing his position at about $68 billion at the IPO price. Other large shareholders looking to benefit from this historic public offering include SpaceX board member and investor Luke Nosek, who owns 33 million shares, and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell, who owns approximately 12.6 million shares.
The IPO will also be a big win for many of the roughly 400 venture capitalists who backed the company during its 20 years as a private company, during which it raised about $40 billion in private capital.
In addition, large and small investors who backed SpaceX through special purpose vehicles (SPVs) are also expected to double their initial funding. However, due to the complexity of these vehicles, some may not know the exact size of SpaceX’s gains for months after it debuts on the public market.
In addition, countless small investors who invested in SpaceX through special purpose vehicles (SPVs) also have the potential to see their original capital multiplied many times over. However, some of these investors may not know the size of the gains or whether they are entitled to them until the company’s tiered lock-up period ends.
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