One of the biggest days in stock market history is tomorrow. At some point during trading hours on Friday, June 12, SpaceX will begin trading after going public through an initial public offering (IPO). The price is close to final at $135 a share, with a $1.77 trillion market cap and $75 billion in capital raised, barring any last-minute adjustments.
Still confused? Here's exactly what investors need to know about tomorrow's SpaceX IPO.
Price and demand
Reports say SpaceX will raise approximately $75 billion in its IPO, at a market cap of $1.77 trillion. Both are the largest levels in history. It is also close to 4 times oversubscribed, with $250 billion in investment capital looking to buy at this IPO price.
What does this all mean in preparation for Friday? This is where the Wall Street bankers come in. Scanning across the board from large funds to individual traders using online brokerages, investment banks like Morgan Stanley are currently building and choosing the order book for the $75 billion in SpaceX shares that will be allocated at the IPO.
On Friday, the market makers and investment banks (multiple in this case) will collect buy and sell orders and open the stock once they believe supply and demand have been matched. This step shows why a stock may open higher or lower than its IPO price, depending on how many others want to buy shares that didn't get included in the original allocation. For SpaceX, with $250 billion of investor demand reportedly trying to buy the stock, it may pop above its $135 IPO price on the first day of trading.
Image source: Getty Images.
A business with many moving parts
Enough about IPO mechanics; let's talk about SpaceX's actual business that you are buying a piece of if you get in on the IPO or trade it on the first day.
SpaceX is known for its rocket launch business, but it is quickly evolving into much more than that with its internet and artificial intelligence (AI) endeavors. Starlink revenue was $11.4 billion in 2025, growing 50% year over year. Its new contracts for AI compute with Anthropic and Alphabet are massive, bringing this segment from close to a standing start to $26 billion in annual revenue -- as long as the two AI software players don't back out of the deals.
Altogether, SpaceX generated $18 billion in revenue last year and was unprofitable. A $1.77 trillion market cap compared to this revenue is quite the premium. However, it also has the potential to quickly grow this revenue in the years ahead because of its Starlink and AI initiatives.
The truth about most IPO stocks
Excitement has reached a fever pitch for the SpaceX IPO. Expectations are that many individual investors will get an allocation to the initial offering, with many more buying on the first day of trading.
Even if the stock does pop tomorrow, the odds are stacked against SpaceX delivering positive returns in the years ahead.
First, it trades at a price-to-sales ratio (P/S) of 93 compared to its 2025 revenue and is unprofitable. Second, IPO stocks on average disappoint investors after the first days of trading. Three years after the IPO, two-thirds of IPO stocks underperform the market. This is due to most of them being priced at a premium valuation.
The same can be said of SpaceX. It is going out at an IPO of $1.77 trillion and will likely pop on its first day of trading. To generate positive returns for shareholders, it will have to quickly turn its 2025 revenue of $18 billion into hundreds of billions. Call me skeptical that it will occur, no matter how grand Elon Musk's vision is.
