Michael Thompson

Tens of thousands of Australians have bid for shares in SpaceX, which is, of course, Elon Musk's AI and rocket company that plans to create data centers in space and colonize Mars.

Some pretty lofty goals there, but it hits Wall Street tonight.

Retail investors in Australia could apply for shares via a ComSec account.

And 30,000 different accounts did do that.

They bid for stock.

There have been bigger retail IPOs in Australia, but that's only because people were effectively kind of subsidized into companies like Telstra and Commonwealth Bank when they were privatized, which is a very different story.

Why are retail investors buying into the SpaceX story?

I mean, is it because they believe in Elon Musk and think that ultimately at some point down the track they can make loads of money?

Or is it just like almost a kind of an historic kind of thing that they just want to say they were there when SpaceX achieved liftoff on Wall Street?

Michael, I have no idea.

Yeah, that was snatching it out of the sky, just grabbing it.

Yeah, it was extraordinary.

That really is.

The thing is, though, it's not just Australians, clearly, that want to buy into SpaceX.

This has kind of ignited interest all over the place.

Bloomberg is reporting that the IPO has attracted demand for more than four times the available shares.

The company is offering 556 or 555.6 shares.

million shares at a fixed price of US$135 each, which would raise about US$75 billion and value the company at about US$1.8 trillion.

It's a minnow.

Yeah, indeed.