SpaceX opens at $150, crosses $2 trillion in market cap

SpaceX started trading on the Nasdaq at $150 a share Friday under the ticker SPCX, then climbed past $176 by early afternoon. That put the rocket and satellite company above a $2 trillion market capitalization, joining just five other U.S. companies – Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon – at that threshold.

More than 360 million shares had changed hands by 2 p.m. EDT, with 172 million shares listed on the Nasdaq, CNBC reported. Polymarket bettors give a 70% probability SpaceX will close above $2 trillion in its first session.

Elon Musk and President and COO Gwynne Shotwell rang the opening bell, with Musk in Texas and Shotwell at the Nasdaq in New York. The offering is the largest IPO in history.

Musk already qualifies as a trillionaire, according to most wealth trackers. With SpaceX public, he will be CEO of two of the ten most valuable publicly traded companies simultaneously, as Tesla also sits in that group.

Musk told CNBC before the IPO that SpaceX had been cash-flow positive since roughly 2015. He said he chose to take the company public now to raise capital for what he called "a significant growth phase." Plans include putting more than 100,000 satellites in orbit for communications and building AI data centers in space.

"Having a private company was important to us early on because we weren't really focused on quarterly financials, we were so focused on the long-term outlook for the company," Shotwell told CNBC.

She also cited investor demand. "We've been feeling, over the last few years, a lot of pressure from everyday Americans and our friends that wanted to buy stock, and there was just no way for these folks to get in," Shotwell said.

According to its prospectus, SpaceX has reported a cumulative net loss of $41.3 billion since its founding in 2002. Originally a maker of reusable rockets, the company's only consistently profitable segment has been Starlink satellite internet. In February, SpaceX acquired Musk's AI startup xAI, which faces lawsuits and regulatory pressure over its ability to generate explicit images without consent.

Citadel Securities processed more retail activity for the SpaceX IPO than for any other auction on record, CNN reported. "Retail investors" here refers to ordinary individuals trading stocks rather than professional institutions.

SpaceX trades under ticker SPCX on the Nasdaq. It has 172 million shares listed.