SpaceX Stock Rises 11% in Largest IPO Ever

SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket and artificial intelligence company, capped the biggest-ever initial public offering by rising 20 percent in its trading debut on Friday, turning the world’s richest man into the first trillionaire and setting the stage for fast-growing A.I. companies to reach the stock market in a once-in-a-lifetime bonanza.

SpaceX shares opened trading at $150, up from their I.P.O. price of $135, before closing the day at $161.11. That valued the company at more than $2 trillion, exceeding the market capitalizations of other titans of American industry, including Walmart and General Motors combined.

At that size, the offering dethroned Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, which was valued at $1.7 trillion and raised more than $29 billion when it went public in 2019. SpaceX raised $75 billion from its offering, more than the combined amount amassed by every other U.S. I.P.O. over the past two years, according to Renaissance Capital, a research and advisory firm.

The pop in SpaceX’s share price also catapulted Mr. Musk, 54, to trillionaire status. The entrepreneur, who not only leads SpaceX but also runs the electric carmaker Tesla and other businesses, has long been the planet’s wealthiest person. But passing the trillionaire milestone is significant, further augmenting Mr. Musk’s fortune and influence.

A coterie of Mr. Musk’s friends and venture capital and private investment firms were enriched by the I.P.O., many by billions of dollars. Thousands of SpaceX employees instantly became millionaires.

Mr. Musk spent Friday at the company’s Starbase headquarters in Texas, where he celebrated with employees, family, friends and investors. “It is certainly hard to believe that a little company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo is now going public,” he told them, referring to SpaceX’s founding in 2002 in Southern California. “I gave SpaceX less than a 10 percent chance of succeeding at all.”