SpaceX will debut on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas today under the symbol ‘SPCX’.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has raised a record-breaking $75bn in its IPO debut, setting the scene for rival AI giants Anthropic and OpenAI as they gear up to go public.

The X- and xAI-parent company has confirmed some 555.6m shares at a price of $135 a share. It will debut on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas today (12 June) under the symbol ‘SPCX’.

At this price, SpaceX draws a market value of more than $1.7trn, or a fully diluted valuation of $.18trn if employee stock options and restricted share units are accounted for.

Underwriters have been given the option to purchase an additional 83.3m shares at the same price, which would increase the raise to about $86bn if fully exercised.

Following the raise, Musk, the company’s chairperson, CEO and chief technical officer, is expected to hold more than 82pc of its voting power.

Alongside Musk, a small number of companies are set to earn tens of billions of dollars in returns from SpaceX’s IPO.

The Peter Thiel-led venture capital firm Founders Fund owns around 3pc of SpaceX’s stake after investing $600m in the company in its lifetime. A source told Bloomberg that stake in the company is worth more than $50bn. Andreessen Horowitz’s stake, meanwhile, is worth more than $10bn and Sequoia Capital owns about 1.5pc of SpaceX at a value of more than $20bn.

Musk’s large fan base in the retail trading community placed more than $100bn in orders for SpaceX stock, sources told the publication yesterday (11 June) – far exceeding the 20pc of shares (or around $15bn) allocated for them. Overall, the IPO reportedly drew demand for more than four-times the available shares.

However, only retail investors in select countries can take part in this round. In the European Economic Area, that includes just Germany, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden. In Japan – the only Asian country eligible for the round – the company raised $2.2bn in the country’s biggest first-time share sale since JX Advanced Metals’ IPO last year.

The historic raises comes despite SpaceX posting a net loss of $4.28bn on a revenue of $4.69bn for Q1, compared with a net loss of $528m on revenue of $4bn a year ago.

The space-tech company was last valued at a reported $1.2trn following the February acquisition of xAI, another Musk company behind the AI chatbot Grok. This came less than a year after xAI acquired the social media platform X, another of Musk’s businesses.

SpaceX is the first in a series of blockbuster IPOs expected this summer. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, recently announced its intention to go public, with estimates expecting the company to hit a valuation of around $1trn. Meanwhile, Anthropic is expected to cross the $1trn mark when it goes public.

Earlier this week, Aravind Srinivas, the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity, shared his intentions to take the company public in 2028.

Srinivas told CNBC that it is “important for the AI industry that these IPOs go well”, referring to SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI.

“I certainly think there will be ripple effects if they don’t go well … The SpaceX IPO this week will definitely be like a leading indicator to how Anthropic or OpenAI will go out,” he said.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Elon Musk in 2020. Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)