SpaceX has turned the IPO record book into a historical document. Its $75 billion offering is larger than any listing markets have seen before, and only a handful of the biggest deals in history come close even when counted together.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has priced its initial public offering at $135 a share, setting up a Friday, June 12, debut on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX after raising $75 billion. That is not just a large technology listing. It is a different scale of transaction for public markets.
According to MarketWatch, SpaceX sold 555,555,555 shares at the offering price, valuing the company at roughly $1.77 trillion, with underwriters also holding an option to buy additional shares after the offering. The deal pushes aside Saudi Aramco’s 2019 listing, which had stood as the largest IPO in history after raising $25.6 billion at launch and $29.4 billion after the overallotment option was exercised.
That comparison matters because the largest IPOs before SpaceX were not concentrated in one fashionable corner of the market. They came from oil, Chinese banking, e-commerce, telecoms and insurance. In other words, they were tied to sectors that already sat at the center of national economies. SpaceX is asking investors to value rockets, satellites, broadband, government contracts and long-range space infrastructure in the same breath.
Saudi Aramco’s December 2019 IPO was built on something markets understood very well: oil production at enormous scale. The company sold shares on Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul exchange at 32 riyals each, raising $25.6 billion before the greenshoe lifted total proceeds to $29.4 billion. It was a local listing with global consequences, because it gave public investors a partial claim on one of the most profitable energy businesses ever built.
The Aramco deal was also political. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had long pushed the listing as part of Saudi Arabia’s effort to draw capital into the kingdom and reduce its dependence on crude exports. Only a small slice of the company was sold, but the proceeds were large enough to overtake Alibaba’s previous record and fix Aramco in market history.
Alibaba held that record from 2014, when the Hangzhou company listed in New York and raised $25 billion after underwriters exercised their option to sell additional shares. Jack Ma’s company came to market with Taobao, Tmall and a payments ecosystem that had already changed how Chinese consumers bought goods online. The IPO valued Alibaba at about $231 billion at the offer price, making it a defining moment for Chinese internet companies on Wall Street.
SoftBank Corp followed in 2018 with a $23.5 billion listing in Tokyo. This was not the venture capital holding company best known for the Vision Fund, but the Japanese telecom business carved out by SoftBank Group. The timing was awkward, coming just after a major network outage and amid concerns about mobile pricing pressure in Japan, but the size of the deal showed how much capital mature telecom assets could still command.
China’s banks made IPO history before tech took over
Agricultural Bank of China raised about $22.1 billion in 2010 through a dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong, completing the public-market rollout of China’s largest state-controlled banks. Its story was less glamorous than Alibaba’s, but more revealing about the financial system at the time. Investors were buying into a lender with deep rural roots, a vast branch network and direct exposure to China’s state-directed growth model.
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China had already shown the path in 2006, raising about $21.9 billion in Hong Kong and Shanghai. ICBC’s listing was the largest IPO in the world at the time and signaled how quickly Chinese financial institutions had moved from domestic restructuring to global capital raising. The bank’s scale was the attraction. Its risk was the same thing.
These deals explain why SpaceX’s debut is so unusual. The previous leaders were either tied to state-backed assets, national banking systems or businesses already generating huge cash flows in established markets. SpaceX has real revenue, led by launch services and Starlink, but its valuation also leans heavily on what investors believe the company can become. That includes satellite internet growth, heavier launch cadence, defense contracts and longer-term projects that are expensive before they are profitable.
The $75 billion figure also changes the psychology of the IPO market. A company raising $10 billion can be treated as a major listing. A company raising $25 billion becomes a market event. SpaceX has raised three times that amount while still leaving most of the company in private hands. That gives Musk and existing holders capital without giving public investors much control.
For investors, the lesson from the earlier IPO giants is simple enough. Size creates attention, but it does not remove the need to judge price, governance and durability. Aramco gave buyers a cash-generating oil machine. Alibaba gave them a dominant e-commerce platform. China’s banks gave them exposure to a financial system still expanding fast. SpaceX is offering something harder to model: a company that has already changed spaceflight, but now wants public markets to fund a much wider ambition.
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