Trillionaire Elon Musk makes history with SpaceX IPO: 5 takeaways

Elon Musk’s SpaceX went public Friday, setting a new record with its stock market debut and turning the tech mogul into the world’s first trillionaire.

The highly anticipated initial public offering (IPO) popped 11 percent when trading officially opened on the Nasdaq, sending the company’s valuation soaring to a massive $1.96 trillion.

Here are five takeaways from the SpaceX IPO:

Musk reaches unprecedented wealth

Musk, already the world’s richest person, became the world’s first trillionaire with Friday’s public offering. The SpaceX CEO is now worth $1.1 trillion, according to Forbes’s Real-Time Billionaires list.

This is roughly equivalent to the economies of Poland and Switzerland, according to International Monetary Fund data. His closest peers among the ultrawealthy, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are worth $800 billion less than Musk.

Some have pointed to this milestone as a concerning sign of growing wealth inequality.

“We’re living in a time when more and more people are just hanging on by their fingernails to survive in this economy, and Elon Musk has more money and more wealth than anyone in human history,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a video posted to social platform X. “I want to be clear — this is not just some fluke. It is a feature of a rigged economy.”

SpaceX launches with strong start

SpaceX is riding high on a strong first day of trading.

The company was already expected to break the record for the largest IPO after pricing its shares at $135. This would have raised $75 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation, easily surpassing Saudi Aramco’s 2019 stock market debut.

But after opening at $150 and rising to $176 during trading, SpaceX saw its valuation soar past $2 trillion. It closed at around $161 with a........

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