SpaceX has made history with the biggest initial public offering, launching it into the top ranks of the largest public companies and putting founder Elon Musk on the verge of becoming the world’s first trillionaire.The company raised $75 billion in the IPO, pricing 555.6 million shares at $135 each, it said on Thursday. SpaceX’s IPO is more than double the size of Saudi Aramco’s $29.4 billion listing in 2019.Space Exploration Technologies, as it is officially known, has given the underwriting banks an overallotment option to buy an additional 83.3 million shares at the IPO price, the statement shows, a move that would increase the size of the deal to about $86 billion if fully exercised. The IPO drew demand for more than four times the available shares.At the IPO price, SpaceX has a market value of $1.77 trillion. Accounting for employee stock options and restricted share units, the pricing gives it a fully diluted valuation of about $1.8 trillion.Mr Musk’s supporters in the retail trading community are a crucial component of the deal. They have placed more than $100 billion in orders for the stock, sources said on Thursday. That is more than the 20 per cent of shares that had been reserved for them.Play02:18IPO frenzy: Investors queue up as tech trio drives multitrillion-dollar valuation boomBut not everyone is excited. Veteran short-seller James Chanos on Wednesday called it “a hopes-and-dreams IPO” driven by enthusiasm for Mr Musk and artificial intelligence, rather than the fundamentals of a company that has not yet posted a profit.Still, coupled with rule changes that could fast-track the stock into benchmark gauges such as the Nasdaq-100, demand from passive funds and retail investors unable to buy at the IPO price should set the stage for a solid cohort of buyers for shares of the rocket, satellite and AI company once they start trading.“It’s probably the most hopeful IPO,” said Kim Forrest, chief investment officer at Bokeh Capital Partners. She added that she does not buy IPOs. Buyers of SpaceX “want to be part of the future", she said. “And I think that’s oddly hopeful in this time when we’re moving between the poles of greed and fear.”SpaceX is the first of three major IPOs expected to capitalise on stock investors’ appetite for the leading AI companies. There is a seemingly insatiable demand that has propelled benchmark US indexes to records this year despite the acceleration of inflation and economic disruption caused by the war in Iran.Anthropic and OpenAI, two of the company’s AI competitors, are expected to go public this year and could seek valuations of more than $1 trillion each. That means the performance of SpaceX’s stock will be as closely scrutinised by Silicon Valley venture capitalists as it is by Wall Street traders. The deluge of public equity, on top of an $85 billion equity offering from Alphabet and the potential for other big tech companies to follow suit, has sparked a debate over whether there is enough investor demand to meet the incoming supply.“It’s a big deal as a kind of precursor for Anthropic and OpenAI,” said Anthony Saglimbene, chief market strategist at Ameriprise. “When I look at all three of those and the amount of capital that these companies are raising, it tells me that the demand for AI is still very strong even though we’ve seen more volatility. And I think some of that volatility in the market has been positioning around the expectations for these IPOs.”Mr Musk was the first to make a move, allowing SpaceX to enjoy another jump in its valuation in less than a year. SpaceX’s acquisition of Mr Musk’s xAI in February vaulted the combined company’s private valuation to $1.25 trillion, with the original SpaceX value hitting $1 trillion. That was up from about $800 billion in an insider share sale in December – about double its mark from July 2025.At the IPO price of $135, SpaceX’s market value ranks it among the top 10 public companies globally and makes it larger even than another of Mr Musk’s companies, Tesla.The surge reflects the evolution of SpaceX over the past six months, from focusing on rocket launches and providing satellite broadband internet to becoming an aspiring AI juggernaut. Deals to provide computing infrastructure to Anthropic and Alphabet’s Google for as much as $2.17 billion a month are set to become SpaceX's biggest source of revenue.QuoteIt’s a big deal as a kind of precursor for Anthropic and OpenAIAnthony Saglimbene, chief market strategist at AmeripriseMr Musk’s pitch to place SpaceX at the heart of a sci-fi vision of the future, with data centres in space and robot factories on the Moon, came at precisely the right time to capitalise on the surging appetite for investments related to the AI boom. Even after a sharp sell-off in recent sessions, the Nasdaq-100 is still up 15.45 per cent this year, while the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index has surged 81.84 per cent as a scramble for physical infrastructure drives up share prices across the sector.Yet much of SpaceX’s plan to dominate what the company sees as a $26.5 trillion total addressable market in AI rests on technology that either does not exist or has not yet been tested at scale. The company also faces stiff competition from Anthropic and OpenAI, whose chatbots have been more widely adopted by consumers and enterprise customers than xAI’s Grok.“The total addressable market for space is infinite,” Mr Chanos, founder of Chanos & Co, said at the iConnections Global Alts conference in New York on Wednesday. “You can build whatever stories you want – colonies on Mars, factories on the moon, data centres in space – to justify the valuation.”But even observers sceptical of the company’s current valuation have acknowledged Mr Musk’s achievements in building Tesla and SpaceX into giants – and making money for investors, thanks in part to his loyal retail investor fanbase.Musk’s paper gainsMr Musk’s net worth will increase by about $275 billion to about $970 billion after taking into account SpaceX’s offering price, just shy of trillionaire status, according to calculations by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Mr Musk’s SpaceX stake, including options, is worth $688 billion at $135 a share.A poster in the UK criticises Elon Musk's growing wealth. Getty ImagesInfoA successful showing in public markets on Friday could tip the scales to make him a trillionaire. His wealth will increase even further if he meets performance-based conditions for awards of as many as 1.3 billion additional class B shares in aggregate, split into tranches.It would be no small feat to earn all those shares. The company’s market capitalisation needs to reach $7.5 trillion, it will have to complete non-Earth-based data centres capable of delivering 100 terawatts of computing power a year, and establish a permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants.Mr Musk, who will not be able to sell any shares until a year after the start of trading, controls 84 per cent of the voting power after the IPO, excluding the potential overallotment. SpaceX’s governance policies ensure Mr Musk is effectively able to choose the board members, which means only he can remove himself as chief executive.The IPO is set to deliver returns to a variety of backers, from venture capital firms to special purpose vehicle investors to members of US President Donald Trump's administration.Led by board member Antonio Gracias, Valor Equity Partners is the second largest shareholder after Mr Musk and has 6.7 per cent of the Class A shares after the listing assuming no exercise of the overallotment, the filing shows. SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell and chief financial officer Bret Johnsen each hold millions of shares and stock options.The listing is also set to cement paper gains for private funds and current and former employees. A group of more than 1,000 are negotiating as a group with wealth management companies for better pricing and access to sophisticated tax-saving financial products ahead of the IPO, Bloomberg News has reported.Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase are leading the deal, with 18 other banks participating. The company will make its debut on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas on Friday under the symbol SPCX.