GoKawiilAn odd amalgamation of Elon Musk's projects not named Tesla is now one of the world's largest publicly traded companies. And while the name SpaceX brings to mind the firm's rockets, the much-hyped company also includes an internet provider, a social media site and (naturally) an AI developer.
SpaceX opened for trading on the Nasdaq just before noon ET Friday, starting at $150 a share.
SpaceX's initial public offering is the largest ever by money raised, with $75 billion in shares going on sale Friday to value the company at roughly $1.75 trillion. By comparison, oil giant Saudi Aramco's 2019 IPO raised more than $25 billion at a valuation of about $1.87 trillion.
SpaceX's IPO isn't just a landmark in financial history, but also in tech history. While big AI names like Google and Meta have long been public, Musk's megacorporation is the first major AI company to go public. This should give investors and the general public insights into how the AI business is doing financially. Competitors Anthropic and OpenAI have both recently begun to take steps toward their own public offerings.
Unlike Anthropic and OpenAI, however, SpaceX has a more diversified business, though it is still not really profitable.
SpaceX, the namesake business unit, launches rockets into space, mostly carrying satellites but also carrying Musk's dream of colonizing the moon and Mars. It includes Starlink, which uses satellites to provide broadband internet access without the need for cables. There's xAI, which operates the chatbot Grok, perhaps best known for having guardrails so lax that it allowed users to generate sexual images of minors. And X, the social media site once known as Twitter.
Today's IPO has widespread ramifications. It makes Elon Musk, already the world's wealthiest person, the first trillionaire. It could put a complicated, overvalued company into index funds that make up a lot of our retirement accounts -- meaning we all would own part of SpaceX, whether we wanted to or not.
And it puts the company further in the public spotlight and under the scrutiny of Wall Street analysts and investors, despite a business structure that ensures Musk maintains full control.
Where things go from there is in the market's hands. We'll be keeping an eye on what transpires and sharing the latest updates here.