Today is a day that will be in the history books. SpaceX began trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange this morning under the ticker SPCX, raising $75 billion in the largest initial public offering in history. The stock opened at $150, an 11 percent premium over the $135 IPO price, and surged as high as $168.75 during the session, a 25 percent gain from the IPO price that briefly gave SpaceX a market valuation of over $2.2 trillion. At that midday peak, Elon Musk's combined stakes in SpaceX and Tesla pushed his personal net worth past $1 trillion, making him the first human being in recorded history to hold that much individual wealth.

The Numbers Behind the Listing

SpaceX raised $75 billion at an IPO price of $135 per share, selling 555.56 million Class A shares in the offering led by Goldman Sachs. Demand was extraordinary: institutional and sovereign wealth fund orders reportedly exceeded available shares by multiples, and retail investors who requested shares through brokerages including Robinhood, Fidelity, and Charles Schwab received only a fraction of what they asked for. One trader who requested 20 shares received 11. Dollar volume in SPCX on the first day of trading topped $33 billion, exceeding the dollar volume of the QQQ and SPY ETFs combined.

Elon Musk retains approximately 42 percent of SpaceX's equity through a dual-class share structure that gives him 82 percent of voting control via Class B shares. SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell and company executives rang the opening bell at the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square. Musk participated via video and later shared a photo from the trading floor on X with a fire emoji.



What SpaceX Actually Is

Most people think of SpaceX as a rocket company. The IPO filing tells a different story. SpaceX describes itself as targeting a $28.5 trillion total addressable market spanning rocketry, satellite connectivity through Starlink, and artificial intelligence infrastructure through its Colossus data centre operations. Starlink alone generated 61 percent of SpaceX's 2025 revenue and produced $1.2 billion in quarterly profit in its most recent reporting period. The rocket business is the brand. The satellite internet business is the engine.

What Nigerian Investors Should Know

Nigerian retail investors cannot directly buy SPCX through local brokerages, but those with accounts on platforms like Bamboo, Trove, or Chaka that provide access to US markets can purchase shares on the open market now that trading has begun. Whether the opening day surge represents sustainable value or IPO euphoria is a question that the next several quarters of SpaceX financial results will answer. What is clear today is that SpaceX is now a public company valued at over $2 trillion, Starlink's African expansion is now under the scrutiny of public market investors, and the competitive dynamics of satellite internet in Nigeria and across Africa have changed in ways that will play out over the next several years.