Adam Spatacco, The Motley Fool
5 min read
Last Friday, Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX) made its historic entry into the public markets. As the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history, SpaceX’s debut provided a clear signal about how investors are prepared to value transformative companies in the current market.
From the scale of the offering, the strength of investor demand, and the immediate post-listing performance, abundant capital is seeking exposure to the companies that are redefining entire industries rather than merely competing within established incumbents.
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This precedent may carry direct implications for OpenAI and Anthropic, two artificial intelligence (AI) developers that have recently filed confidential S-1s with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a filing companies make when they plan to go public.
Looking at the scale and momentum of SpaceX’s IPO
SpaceX priced its shares at $135, raising a record $85.7 billion in what became the largest IPO of all time. The stock opened on the Nasdaq at about $150 and gained 17% on its first trading day — briefly pushing the company’s market capitalization above $2.1 trillion.
This outcome reflected an extraordinary level of oversubscription during the book-building process. Moreover, it also demonstrates that growth investors are willing to pay a premium for access to a business whose ecosystem spans reusable rocketry, global satellite broadband, and integrated artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.
So far, the transition from private to public ownership has not produced the typical post-IPO digestion or sell-off volatility often seen with large technology listings. Instead, SpaceX shares have exhibited sustained upward momentum — underscoring genuine conviction rather than speculative froth.
SpaceX’s valuation was $800 billion in December after the company completed a secondary share purchase from insiders. Moreover, just days before SpaceX hit the public exchanges, the company’s valuation soared to $1.5 trillion based on trading data from private market platform, Forge Global.
SpaceX’s further valuation expansion in market cap to more than $2.5 trillion suggests that public market investors are prepared to support — and exceed — the levels previously established in private transactions.
