SpaceX IPO, UK Defense Chief Quits, More
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SpaceX has made history with the biggest stock market listing of all time. The Elon Musk-led company has raised $75 billion with shares priced at $135 each. At that price, SpaceX is worth about $1.77 trillion, making it one of the world's most valuable public companies. Including employee stock awards and options, the valuation rises to roughly $1.8 trillion. Dan Ives is the global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities.
I think a big reason for some of the stuff we've seen in tech over the last week is an anticipation of this in terms of little, you know, white knuckle moment. But it comes down to like anyone that's owning SpaceX, you're buying it for the Musk factor. And many that bet against Tesla and Musk going back a decade ago, that was proven historically wrong.
AI big tech bull Dan Ives there, as Musk's fan base played a crucial component of the deal. Sources tell us retail investors alone have placed more than $100 billion in orders, far exceeding the 20% of shares reserved for them.
SpaceX will begin trading on Nasdaq later today under the ticket SPCX. However, the company will not be eligible for inclusion in the S&P 500 for at least a year. It would also need to meet the index's requirements for profitability and 10% public share ownership. Now, currently, less than 5% of SpaceX's shares are available for public trading, and the company posted a loss of nearly $4.2 billion in the first quarter. Peter Singlehurst heads the private companies team at Bailey Giffords.
Mathematically, it's very hard to see how you could see SpaceX delivering the same kind of returns as a public company as Tesla did. But I think what this speaks to is a requirement for investors to have exposure to growth in both the private and the public markets.
Peter Singlehurst speaking there. With a small number of firms set to net tens of billions of dollars in returns from the listing in one of the most significant windfalls for the venture capital industry in history. SpaceX, of course, is the first of three major IPOs, though, that are expected to capitalise on investors' appetite for artificial intelligence. You've got Anthropic and OpenAI expected to go public this year, and they could each seek valuations of more than a trillion dollars.
And as well as raising tens of billions of dollars for the company, the listing of SpaceX makes Elon Musk a near-trillionaire. It's a status he could hit once the stock starts trading later today, as Bloomberg's Tom McKenzie reports.
How did SpaceX achieve the largest stock market listing in history?
According to calculations by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Musk's net worth will jump to about $970 billion after taking into account SpaceX's offering price. Already the world's richest person at $135 a share, his stake, including options, is worth $688 billion. And a successful showing in public markets Friday could tip the scales into making him a trillionaire. His wealth will boom even further if he meets performance-based conditions. However, hitting those targets would require out-of-this-world performance. The company's market cap would need to reach $7.5 trillion. SpaceX would also have to deliver a significant number of space-based data centres. And last but not no means least, establish a permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants.
In London, Tom McKenzie. Still very much on planet Earth for Bloomberg Radio.
Well, I wonder whether the current and former employees at SpaceX will keep their feet on the ground as we know so many of them will become millionaires and the early investors like Founders Fund and Anderson Horowitz.
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