SpaceX’s Record-Breaking Listing Makes Musk a Trillionaire and Enriches Early Backers

SpaceX’s massive market debut became Wall Street’s biggest story of the weekend, creating extraordinary paper wealth for early investors and employees. Forbes said the company’s early backers, excluding owner and CEO Elon Musk, gained about $230 billion, while thousands of workers became millionaires and some became multimillionaires.

SpaceX, which operates in rocket launches, satellite communications and AI, sold just 4.2% of its shares and raised $75 billion at an implied valuation of almost $1.8 trillion, breaking every U.S. market record. Its stock jumped 19% on its first trading day to a $2.1 trillion valuation, making it the sixth-largest company in the United States and giving fast profits to anyone who bought and sold on day one. A decade ago, SpaceX was worth $10 billion, with Google investing $900 million then alongside Fidelity. The company was valued at $127 billion in 2022 and $350 billion two years later.

Google, though its current stake was not disclosed in the prospectus, appears to be one of the biggest winners. Bloomberg said Alphabet held about 6.11% before the merger between Musk and xAI, and roughly 5% afterward, putting that stake at about $105 billion. Another major early investor, Antonio Gracias of Valor Management, holds about 3.85% worth $81 billion. Musk himself, age 54, became the world’s first trillionaire from SpaceX alone, with about 46.4% of the company worth nearly $1 trillion; combined with Tesla, his personal fortune reached $1.1 trillion.

Musk also controls 85% of the voting power through Class B shares, even though he owns less than half the stock, meaning investors can share in the gains without controlling decisions. Among other big winners are Gwynne Shotwell, with shares worth $2 billion, Luke Nosek, with $5.3 billion, and Ron Baron, whose roughly $2 billion investment since 2017 is now worth about $12 billion. The underwriters, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan and Barclays, earned about $500 million in fees.

In Israel, most institutional investors stayed out, saying the pricing looked too expensive or that they would gain exposure later through indexes. The exception was Mivtachim, which did participate and buy shares. Retail investors, however, rushed in after Musk set aside about 30% of the deal for them, and Exlance Trade CEO Dror Yiriv said client activity was unprecedented, with over 1,000 orders entered before Friday trading and 18% of client turnover going into SpaceX, worth millions of shekels.