HAWTHORNE, Calif. — Retail investors have flooded SpaceX's initial public offering with more than $70 billion in orders, an extraordinary show of individual-investor demand as the largest market debut in history enters its final hours.
The figure, first reported by Bloomberg on Thursday, means everyday investors alone have ordered nearly as much stock as the entire $75 billion offering — before counting the roughly 1,000 institutional investors that have also placed orders.
Retail Gets a Seat at the Table
Individual investors are set to receive at least 20% of the available shares, an unusually large retail allocation for a major IPO. Even at that level, the bulk of retail demand will go unfulfilled: at the planned $75 billion deal size, a 20% allocation amounts to about $15 billion in stock against more than $70 billion in orders.
The offering terms are expected to hold steady at $135 per share for 555.6 million shares, raising about $75 billion and valuing SpaceX at roughly $1.8 trillion. International orders will receive less than 10% of shares, though Japan's allocation was raised to $2.5 billion from $2 billion earlier this month — a sign of global appetite for the rocket, satellite, and AI company.
The Home Stretch of a Historic Listing
The retail surge caps a remarkable two-week sprint to the public markets. SpaceX shares are set to begin trading Friday, June 12, on the Nasdaq under ticker SPCX, in a debut that will surpass Saudi Aramco's 2019 listing as the largest IPO ever.
A $75 billion raise would hand SpaceX an enormous war chest for the programs investors are most excited about: Starship's march toward full reusability, Starlink's expansion past 10 million subscribers, and the AI infrastructure ambitions the company inherited with its xAI acquisition.
Demand Kept Building All Week
Thursday's retail numbers extend a pattern that has defined this offering from the start. Institutional demand had the book heavily oversubscribed within days of the roadshow opening, and people familiar with the deal now say total demand has reached more than four times the available shares.
For Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of making life multiplanetary, the IPO is both a funding milestone and a vote of confidence from millions of ordinary investors who want a piece of that mission. When the opening bell rings Friday morning, many of them will own SpaceX stock — and the company will have more resources than ever to push toward Mars.
