SpaceX just pulled off a $75 billion IPO, and the ripple effects might extend far beyond aerospace. Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital, thinks this is the moment that kicks hardware startups into a higher gear, drawing talent away from traditional software and big research labs into sectors like biology, longevity, energy, and climate.
The IPO, which priced around $135 per share on June 11-12, pushed SpaceX’s post-IPO valuation north of $2 trillion.
The SpaceX alumni pipeline is already real
Maguire says that 30-50% of the hardware startups he encounters already have SpaceX alumni on their founding teams. Think of it like the PayPal Mafia, but for atoms instead of bits. When PayPal went public in the early 2000s, its alumni went on to found or lead Tesla, LinkedIn, YouTube, Palantir, and Yelp. Maguire is essentially arguing that SpaceX’s IPO is a similar inflection point, except this generation of founders builds physical things: rockets, batteries, biotech devices, and energy infrastructure.
Sequoia’s massive bet keeps paying off
