SpaceX shares gain 21% as trading begins, valuing Elon Musk’s rocket company at more than $2 trillion

SpaceX Shares rose as they began trading on Friday NasdaqThis pushed the rocket company’s valuation to over $2 trillion.

Shares of the Elon Musk-led space company last rose 23% in midday trading to $166 per share, reaching a market value of $2.17 trillion.

“This was a successful launch, there’s no doubt about it,” said Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets. “There is public demand, so that’s a good thing. But now will this open price be able to hold, or will an enthusiastic retail audience encourage it?”

SpaceX opened at $150 per share, posting a gain of roughly 11% from its $135 IPO price. However, this figure was outside the $175 level shown on the indicators that initially attracted the attention of trading desks.

“You have to give it a full trading day, which will be next week,” Woods said. “Initial thoughts on trading desks were that it could go as high as $200.”

Friday’s first event officially crowned Musk as the first trillionaire in history and is expected to create thousands of new millionaires. But shares led by Musk Tesla’s It fell more than 2% in intraday trading.

Space industry stocks tumbled following SpaceX’s debut as investors focused on the IPO. redwire And Rocket Lab They fell more than 13% and 12% respectively in Friday’s session.

SpaceX’s debut is expected to kick off a wave of high-profile IPOs. Anthropic and OpenAI confidentially filed prospectuses with regulators in recent weeks.

SpaceX Chief of Operations Gwynne Shotwell told CNBC in an exclusive interview that she’s “not sure it will be released publicly.” But he said now “actually feels like the right time.”

Some big investors have been quietly building their stakes in SpaceX as a private company for almost two decades.

Retail traders also sought to participate in the IPO, part of a broader trend of support for Musk from individual investors. But SpaceX is allocating a smaller portion of its IPO to retail than expected, a source told CNBC.

“Market sentiment reflects a book that looks pretty solid,” Dan Alpert, founding managing partner of Westwood Capital, told CNBC. “People who bought only a fraction of the shares they wanted are now looking for a stable market to buy.”

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