SpaceX CEO Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire, with assets exceeding $1 trillion, on the back of the company's successful stock market debut. Upon listing, SpaceX leapfrogged major big tech companies to become the sixth-largest company by market capitalization on the New York stock market.
On Wednesday on the Nasdaq market, SpaceX closed its first trading day at $161.11, 19.3% above its IPO price of $135. At one point during the session, the stock soared as much as 30.4% to $176.52.
SpaceX's market capitalization exceeded $2 trillion that day, vaulting the company to sixth place in corporate value behind Nvidia, Google parent Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon. Musk, the largest shareholder, became the world's first trillionaire the moment trading began. The world's first billionaire was John D. Rockefeller, former president of Standard Oil and known as the "oil king," in 1916. The first person to surpass $100 billion in wealth was Microsoft founder Bill Gates in 1999.
According to Bloomberg, as SpaceX began trading at $150, 11% above its IPO price, Musk's total assets reached $1.05 trillion (about 1,600 trillion won). That is comparable to Switzerland's gross domestic product (GDP). It is also two to three times more than the wealth of Larry Page, the Google co-founder ranked second on the world's rich list. The value of Musk's SpaceX stake accounts for about 70% of his net worth. Tesla also rose 1.82% that day, contributing to the increase in Musk's wealth.
Amid a flood of investment demand from retail investors for SpaceX, the trading platform Robinhood reported about 5,000 service disruptions. Fidelity Securities received more than 500,000 buy orders within an hour of SpaceX's listing. Citadel Securities also said it processed the largest volume of retail investor trades of any IPO in history.
SpaceX had earlier achieved strong demand in its public offering subscription on Sunday, drawing $350 billion in margin deposits. Of that, institutional investor orders amounted to $250 billion and retail investor orders reached $100 billion. Through this IPO, SpaceX is selling 555.6 million shares, or a 4.3% stake, to raise a total of $75 billion (about 116 trillion won). That is more than double the $29.4 billion raised by Aramco in 2019. The corporate value assigned during the IPO process alone reached $1.77 trillion. Musk, the largest shareholder, plans to retain 84% of voting rights and control the company through dual-class shares and other means even after the listing.
SpaceX was founded in May 2002 by Musk. It is famous as the company that shifted leadership of the space industry from governments to the private sector. In 2015, it became the first in the world to commercialize technology that recovers and reuses rockets rather than discarding them after a single use, lowering space launch costs to about 10% of previous levels. It is also participating as a key company in NASA's "Artemis" moon landing project.
SpaceX grew in size in February this year by merging with xAI, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) startup. xAI, founded by Musk on March 9, 2023, is the developer of the generative AI "Grok." SpaceX has not yet proven clear profitability, however. SpaceX posted an annual net loss of $4.9 billion (about 7.3 trillion won) last year, followed by a loss of $4.28 billion in the first quarter of this year.
