SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 per share, valuing the company at $75 billion, and began trading on Nasdaq under ticker SPCX. The stock closed around $160.95 on its first full trading day, a $25.95 gain, or +19.22% from the IPO price. That’s not a soft landing. It’s a demand signal.
The $75 billion IPO valuation is large enough to matter as a reference point. Saudi Aramco raised roughly $25.6 billion in its 2019 offering; Alibaba raised about $25 billion in 2014. Whether the SPCX offering surpasses those on proceeds raised or on offering valuation depends on how the comparison is structured, The Guardian described this as one of the largest IPOs in history, though independent verification of that specific superlative wasn’t available at publication. What isn’t in dispute: $75 billion at $135 per share, confirmed by The Guardian’s June 12 reporting and corroborated by Yahoo Finance market data showing SPCX’s previous close at exactly $135.00.
Why it matters
The SPCX debut answers a question Wall Street has been asking since the AI IPO pipeline became visible: will public market buyers actually show up? They did. A +19% first-day move on a $75 billion offering isn’t irrational exuberance, it’s an underpriced deal finding its level. That’s useful information for OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have now filed confidential S-1s with the SEC. OpenAI submitted its filing on June 9; Anthropic’s filing was confirmed in early June. Those companies will price into a market that just proved it can absorb a major AI-adjacent offering.
The catch is
that SPCX isn’t a pure AI play. SpaceX’s business is satellites, launch infrastructure, and Starlink, the AI angle is infrastructure and compute exposure, not model development. OpenAI and Anthropic are asking public markets to value something structurally different: AI software companies with enormous revenue growth, real operating losses, and no historical comparables at scale. The absorption question isn’t settled by SPCX. It’s just opened.
Context
The broader concern, whether public markets can absorb three major frontier-adjacent IPOs without repricing each other, was live before this week. That’s a question worth tracking across the next two to three quarters as OpenAI and Anthropic work through their registration processes.
What to Watch
What to watch
SPCX’s trading range over the next 30 days matters more than the first-day close. Sustained trading above $150 signals genuine institutional conviction; a drift back toward $135 suggests the debut was retail-driven. The second data point in this series is OpenAI’s S-1 going effective, when that happens, watch the initial price range relative to SPCX’s first-day close.
TJS synthesis
The market said yes to SPCX. That’s a necessary condition for the OpenAI and Anthropic windows to open, but not sufficient. Underwriters will price those offerings against this debut, which means SPCX’s post-debut trading behavior is now part of the AI IPO story. Watch the 30-day chart.