Introduction: SpaceX secures $75bn in largest IPO worldwide

Good morning. Elon Musk's SpaceX will arrive on the US stock market today after completing a landmark initial public offering, but will its shares climb higher?

Shares in the rockets-to-satellites-to-AI firm will start trading on Wall Street today, after SpaceX raised $75bn via its IPO.

The listing will place SpaceX among the biggest public companies, and could see Musk named the world's first trillionaire later today.

Last night, SpaceX announced it had raised $75bn in a landmark initial public offering, which values the company at $1.77tn. It sold 555,555,555 shares of its Class A common stock, at $135.00 per share.

Banks underwriting the deal have also received an over-allotment option to purchase an extra 83.3m shares, which would increase the IPO size to about $86bn.

SpaceX drew orders for more than three times the amount offered, according to the Financial Times - with robust interest from institutions and retail investors alike. That could help lift SpaceX shares today, as those who missed out in the IPO try to participate.

This robust demand arrived despite worries that the company was overvalued - being priced at 92 times last year's revenues (a substantial valuation).

Investment research group Morningstar stated earlier this week that SpaceX was worth only $63 a share - less than half the IPO price of $135 - and cautioned there is a major disconnect between market expectations and underlying fundamentals.

Michael Field, the chief equity strategist at Morningstar, advises investors to skip the IPO and wait for a more attractive entry point later.

All eyes will be on the US markets today to see how SpaceX shares perform.

The agenda

7am BST: UK GDP report for April
2.30pm BST: US stock market trading begins
3pm BST: University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment survey

Key events

1h ago SpaceX shares rise in shadow trading ahead of official float
1h ago Forbes: Elon Musk nears trillionaire status
2h ago Giant inflatable Elon Musk highlighted Grok risks
2h ago Analyst: SpaceX float is massive
2h ago Introduction: SpaceX secures $75bn in largest IPO worldwide

SpaceX appears to have picked a strong day to join the US stock market.

Equity markets around the world are advancing today, after Donald Trump stated that the US and Iran are close to signing a peace agreement and announced he will cancel fresh missile strikes.

Stocks rallied in Asia-Pacific markets overnight, lifting Japan's Nikkei 225 by 2.8%.

In London this morning, the FTSE 100 index of blue-chip shares is up 1.5%, or 151 points, at 10,455 points.

Wall Street is on track to open a little higher, after rallying strongly after Trump's comments.

Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at Wealth Club, says:

Risk-taking is back in fashion at the end of another volatile week, helped by renewed confidence that the conflict with Iran may soon end.
President Trump's promises are again moving markets, with investors buoyed by his assertion that a deal could be reached as soon as this weekend. The hotly anticipated SpaceX IPO is feeding the frenzy, with high hopes that aerospace and AI will cross bountiful new frontiers in the future.

Marex Financial, who have handled the UK retail element of SpaceX's IPO, have reported that just over 60% of UK investors who applied for shares have received their full allocation.

Those who wanted more than about £2,000 of shares, though, will not get as much as they hoped.

Marex explain:

Investors in the Retail Offer who applied for up to $2,700 (£2,013) have been allocated in full, rounded down to the nearest whole Share. Those who applied for more than this amount have been scaled back, with a maximum of 1000 Shares being allocated to any such investor.
This means 61 per cent. of investors in the Retail Offer have received a full allocation.

A poll by Opinium has found that one in four Gen Z and Millennial investors in the UK say they have applied for shares in SpaceX or will buy shares on the day of the IPO.

One in seven (15%) of all UK investors say they have applied for shares or will buy them on the day of the IPO, which is on track to become the largest in market history. Male investors (18%) are also more likely than female investors (10%) to say that have or will buy SpaceX shares.

Analysts at Unicredit say that the stock-market debut of SpaceX is more than an IPO story, adding:

It is a reminder that space is increasingly becoming Earth's critical economic infrastructure - and that the US is setting the pace in the commercial and geopolitical space race.

SpaceX shares rise in shadow trading ahead of official float

SpaceX's shares are surging in shadow financial markets, indicating that its value could surge by 35% when trading begins later today.

Derivatives offered by online brokerage IG are indicating SpaceX's market value could surge to around $2.4tn, up from the $1.77tn valuation set by last night's IPO pricing.

That implies that SpaceX's shares might jump to around $180 when trading begins, cementing Musk's trillionaire status.

Bloomberg have spotted a second market which also implies SpaceX's shares might pop:

SpaceX-tied perpetual futures, contracts that do not expire, on crypto venue Hyperliquid were trading around $180, implying a valuation of more than $2.3 trillion.

Forbes: Elon Musk nears trillionaire status

Forbes has calculated that Elon Musk is on the verge of becoming a trillionaire thanks to the pricing of SpaceX's record-breaking IPO.

That is if you add Musk's stake in SpaceX to his holding in Tesla, which they calculate means Musk is now worth $982bn.

Forbes explain:

Musk, who serves as chairman, CEO and chief technical officer of SpaceX, owns 4.8 billion shares of the rocketmaker, worth $644 billion. He has another 350 million stock options with an exercise price of $8.40 per share, worth $44 billion, giving him a 38% stake in the company, worth $688 billion at the IPO price

They add:

Musk also owns just over 10% of $1.5 trillion (market cap) Tesla, worth $165 billion, plus options to acquire another nearly 8% stake, worth $114 billion.

So SpaceX's shares only have to rise slightly when they start trading on the US stock market, to around $138.50, to give Musk the title of the world's first trillionaire.

Giant inflatable Elon Musk highlighted Grok risks

The SpaceX IPO also led to an unusual protest yesterday in New York.

A 40-foot high giant inflatable of Elon Musk, smiling and shirtless, appeared at Times Square. It was created by the Safe AI Now (SAIN) coalition, to warn of the dangers of SpaceX's AI assistant Grok.

SAIN say:

The enormous inflatable of Musk is meant to draw attention to a serious issue: SpaceX's Grok has been widely used to generate illicit images of real people - including children. In fact, a NYT report found that of the 4.4 million images Grok pushed out in a recent nine-day period, an estimated 65% were sexualized or explicit. There are entire online communities, with hundreds of thousands of visitors each week, dedicated to sharing Grok-generated pornography and tips for explicit content generation.
While this inflatable is a fitting metaphor - much like Musk and his companies, it is inflated, full of hot air, and could pop at any minute - it serves as a warning to investors eager to buy into Musk's SpaceX IPO on Friday morning. Because the reality is, shareholders' investment in SpaceX means financially supporting a company that has been involved in child exploitation, revenge porn, and worse.

In March, three teenage girls in Tennessee, two of whom are minors, filed a lawsuit against xAI alleging that its Grok image generator used photos of them to produce and distribute child sexual abuse material.

Last week, UK MP Jess Asato took legal action against Elon Musk's xAI company after saying its Grok tool helped a user produce fake sexualised pictures of her.

Analyst: SpaceX float is massive

Today may go down in history as the day Elon Musk could become the world's first trillionaire, and the day SpaceX blasted off into the public markets, says Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote:

The company already made history yesterday by selling 555.6 million shares priced at $135 each, raising the $75 billion that it was looking for and giving the company nearly the $1.8 trillion valuation that it was targeting. It equals the combined value of the 29 biggest IPOs in US history since 2000 - adjusted for inflation - including Meta, Google, Hilton, Airbnb, DoorDash, Uber, Snowflake and GM.
Yes, it is huge. So today, everyone will be watching SpaceX leave the launchpad. In yesterday's note, I discussed in detail what to expect from this IPO today, and in the coming weeks and months, for those who are interested in what the future could hold for the company and for the rest of the market.