SpaceX is expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq on Friday at a price of $135 per share, giving it a valuation of approximately $1.8 trillion — the highest-value stock listing in recorded history, surpassing Saudi Aramco’s 2019 debut at $1.7 trillion. The company is aiming to raise $75 billion through the offering, and demand has been extraordinary, with orders reported at roughly four times the planned offering size. If founder and CEO Elon Musk’s shares price at or above the target, he will become the world’s first trillionaire. SpaceX posted a $4.9 billion loss in 2025 on revenue of $18 billion, up from $14 billion the prior year. The company is not profitable by conventional accounting measures. Nasdaq changed its index inclusion rules in early May 2026, allowing mega-cap companies to enter the index after just 15 trading days rather than the standard seasoning period — a rule change that SpaceX lobbied for and that sets a precedent for upcoming IPOs by OpenAI and Anthropic.
The received wisdom
The bull case for SpaceX is genuinely compelling, and it deserves honest engagement before being critiqued. Starlink, the satellite internet subsidiary, has more than 10 million subscribers, is profitable in its own right, and represents somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of company revenue. SpaceX launches a rocket approximately every two days — 165 launches in 2025 alone. The Falcon 9 programme has transformed the economics of access to orbit in ways that no other entity — government or private — has matched. Revenue projections from major banks are stratospheric but not obviously irrational: Morgan Stanley projects $330 billion by 2030, Goldman Sachs $470 billion. SpaceX is, on almost any operational metric, the most capable launch provider in the world and the only company positioned to build the infrastructure a lunar economy would require. The Defence Department has already signalled it views SpaceX as a strategically irreplaceable asset.
The retail investor enthusiasm — 20 percent of shares reserved for retail — reflects a genuine democratic broadening of capital markets that conservatives, of all people, should appreciate. For decades, the most transformative companies stayed private until their growth was largely priced in, leaving ordinary investors with the scraps. SpaceX’s IPO, whatever its flaws, gives ordinary people a seat at the table.
A different read
The structural problems with this IPO are not about whether SpaceX is a good company. It almost certainly is. They are about the machinery through which millions of ordinary investors — most of them involuntary, through pension funds and index trackers — will be forced to own it, at whatever price the market sets, with essentially no governance recourse.
Start with the Nasdaq rule change. The S&P 500 still requires four consecutive profitable quarters before a company can enter the index. Nasdaq’s 15-day rule — adopted specifically to accommodate SpaceX and now available to OpenAI and Anthropic — eliminates the seasoning requirement that exists to give the market time to price a new listing properly. As Aleksander Tomic of Boston College told Al Jazeera: “What’s particularly problematic is the 15-day rule because there isn’t enough time to see how an IPO will perform.” This is not a minor technicality. It means that fund managers who are contractually obligated to track the Nasdaq-100 — pension funds, state retirement systems, university endowments — must buy SpaceX proportionally to its index weight the moment it enters, regardless of whether they believe the valuation is justified. North Carolina’s state treasurer has already indicated this concern: she declined a direct stake as too expensive, but will be exposed through the index anyway. This is not freely chosen investment. It is compelled.
Then there is the governance problem. Musk will control approximately 85 percent of voting power despite owning only 42 percent of equity. The joint statement from the New York State Comptroller, the NYC Comptroller, and CalPERS noted the obvious: removal of Musk would require his own vote. He is, in any meaningful sense, ungovernable by shareholders. Public companies accept external accountability in exchange for the privilege of accessing public capital. SpaceX is seeking to do both — access the largest pool of public capital in history while retaining the control structure of a private fiefdom.
Conservatives who believe in rule of law and properly functioning institutions should be able to hold two thoughts simultaneously: SpaceX’s commercial achievements are real and worth celebrating, and a governance structure that renders shareholders legally powerless is corrosive to the norms that make capital markets trustworthy in the first place. The precedent is what matters most. If SpaceX can do this, so can every company that follows. The Nasdaq’s rule change is the thin end of a wedge that will be driven harder by OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have already confidentially filed for IPOs at comparable valuations. Morningstar’s fundamental valuation of SpaceX puts fair value at $63 per share — a 53 percent discount to the IPO price. One bank’s analytical judgment is not gospel. But it is a signal that “highest-demand IPO in history” and “correctly valued” are not the same thing.
What to watch
Whether SpaceX actually trades at or above $135 on Friday. Four-times oversubscription in the order book does not guarantee it — Nasdaq rule changes mean the first 15 trading days are an unusually volatile price-discovery process.
Nasdaq-100 index inclusion date. Once SpaceX enters, watch for any disclosure from large pension funds of the forced purchases they were unable to avoid. Congressional scrutiny of the Nasdaq rule change is plausible if the stock falls significantly post-inclusion.
OpenAI and Anthropic’s filings. Both companies confidentially filed in early June. Their IPO terms — especially governance structures — will tell us whether SpaceX has set a floor or a ceiling for investor protections in the next wave of mega-cap tech listings.
Musk’s delivery record. A New York Times analysis found Musk has met his stated commitments on time only 19 percent of the time across approximately 600 promises. Investors now own a public vehicle whose trajectory depends on a CEO with that track record and no governance mechanism to hold him to account.
— J