How SpaceXs IPO Compares With Saudi Aramco, Uber and Others

SpaceX this week became the largest initial public offering in history, eclipsing the previous record by an extraordinary margin.The peak was last set by Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned energy company, which raised $29 billion in 2019 (roughly $38 billion today when adjusted for inflation).SpaceX raised roughly twice that amount, valuing the company — which includes rockets, satellites, artificial intelligence and social media — at $1.77 trillion, according to the I.P.O.price set on Thursday.

When the stock began trading on Friday, Elon Musk, the company’s chief executive and already the richest person in the world, became the first trillionaire.The market debut comes at a critical moment.It will be a testament to investors’ faith in Mr.

Musk, who has, among other things, promised to use the company to put people on Mars.It is also a test of the stock market’s excitement about artificial intelligence.SpaceX has increasingly focused its energies on A.I.

development, acquiring xAI, another company controlled by Mr.Musk, in February.

It also has a deal to acquire Cursor, an A.I.-assisted coding start-up, this year.With the A.I.companies OpenAI and Anthropic preparing for their own I.P.O.s, SpaceX’s debut will be something of a barometer for whether the A.I.

boom can live up to the lofty expectations of investors.Jay Ritter, an I.P.O.expert at the University of Florida, said the current valuations of SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI were “not based upon how profitable they currently are or even how much revenue they have, but rather the very optimistic and not totally implausible scenarios for how they might become enormously profitable.”SpaceX’s I.P.O.

price was $135 a share.At that level, the company’s offering is billions of dollars larger than all the I.P.O.s in 2023 and 2024 combined, and nearly the same amount as all offerings last year.

Banks managing the offering also have an option to sell an extra 83 million shares over the co...