For once, SpaceX is ahead of schedule: Elon Musk’s space and AI conglomerate has officially confirmed that it has raised $75 billion from the sale of its shares to its underwriters, who are set to begin marketing the company on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange on Friday.
SpaceX priced its 555.6 million shares at $135 each, the company said in an update to its website. That makes SpaceX officially the largest IPO in history, easily surpassing the $24.9 billion in cash raised by Saudi Aramco during its 2019 public market offering. At this price, the deal looks set to make Musk the world’s first billionaire.
The company, officially known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., will trade under the ticker symbol SPCX.
As active trading continues tomorrow, the price of SpaceX shares may go down or up. But undisclosed reports suggest that large institutional investors and individual buyers are lining up to buy shares in the 24-year-old technology company.
If the sale is oversubscribed as bankers say it is, they have the option to bring an additional 83.3 million shares to the market, which could raise another $11 billion from the company’s opening price.
Hyperliquid, a crypto betting market that attempts to provide synthetic exposure to SpaceX stock, currently values shares at $167, suggesting that market participants are expecting a classic IPO pop of 20% on the first day of trading.
In the long run, there are big open questions about how SpaceX will be able to justify its incredible valuation. The company’s outstanding engineering projects, from the world’s largest reusable rocket to America’s new chip fabric, fill a daunting to-do list.
The biggest beneficiary of the donation is Musk himself. He owns just under 850 million Class A shares which are entitled to one vote per share. He is also entitled to another 5.6 billion Class B shares, which come with 10 votes per share and include billions of shares based on a long-term bet that a million people will eventually live on a SpaceX colony on Mars.
The listing will bring Antonio Gracias, founder and CEO of Valor Management, 503.4 million shares, which puts the value of his position at about $ 68 billion at the IPO price. Other major shareholders poised to benefit from the historic offering include SpaceX board member and investor Luke Nosek, who owns 33 million shares, and COO Gwynne Shotwell, who owns nearly 12.6 million shares.
The IPO will also bring significant windfalls to the roughly 400 venture capitalists who backed the company during its two decades as a private equity firm, during which it raised nearly $40 billion in private equity.
Additionally, a number of small investors backing SpaceX through special purpose vehicles (SPVs) are also set to see their initial investment multiplied. However, due to the complexity of these vehicles, some may not know the true extent of their benefits for months after SpaceX makes its debut on the public market.
Additionally, the countless number of small investors who have invested in SpaceX through special purpose vehicles (SPVs) may see their original investment multiplied. However, some of these investors will not know the size of their profits or whether they are entitled to them until the company’s closing period is over.
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