SpaceX Opens at $150 on Nasdaq; Musk’s Paper Net Worth Tops $1T

SpaceX shares began trading on Nasdaq at $150 on June 12, above the $135 IPO price, and rallied to an intraday high of $168.40 shortly after the market opened. The initial public offering drew heavy demand and produced a sharp early price move.

Pre-market indications had been higher, with early signals near $171 and $175 per share during Nasdaq’s price-discovery process before trading began. When shares traded in the $168 range, SpaceX’s market capitalization rose above $2 trillion. That valuation placed the portion of SpaceX held by Elon Musk at more than $1 trillion on paper and pushed estimates of his total net worth to roughly $1.3 trillion based on current trading levels.

Those figures reflect paper values tied to the public share price and do not account for lock-up restrictions, potential market swings or discounts typically applied to illiquid holdings. The stock opened at $150 and immediately gained roughly 12 percent as buy orders matched against the available supply.

The offering attracted substantial institutional interest. Orders from institutions reportedly exceeded $250 billion, bringing total demand to about $350 billion. The sale raised approximately $75 billion. About 70 percent of the shares sold to institutions were allocated to long-only investors and sovereign wealth funds, according to allocations shared with market participants.

Market participants noted a small public float coupled with heavy interest from both institutional and retail investors, and they flagged potential passive buying by ETFs and index funds as a factor likely to affect trading and volatility in the days after the listing.

Nasdaq’s pre-open auction collects and matches buy and sell orders to set a single opening price for the stock. Early indications showed a strong premium to the IPO price before the official open, and those signals were followed by the immediate intraday rally.

Musk previously recalled giving the company “less than a 10% chance” of succeeding when he launched SpaceX. The public debut brings SpaceX’s satellite business, reusable-rocket operations, defense contracts and potential orbital services into public-market valuation, making those revenue streams and growth prospects visible to a broader set of investors.