Elon Musk rang the Nasdaq opening bell on June 12 as the world’s first trillionaire, his space and AI company completing the largest initial public offering in history the same week a rival’s rocket turned Cape Canaveral into a fireball.
SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 per share, raising $75 billion — triple the size of the next-largest IPO ever — and opened trading at $150, with shares closing their first day at $161, a 19% jump from the offering price.
Musk owns 4.8 billion shares — roughly 42% of the company — plus 350 million stock options exercisable at $8.39 per share. At the IPO price, his SpaceX stake alone was worth $648 billion. Combined with his Tesla holdings, Musk’s total net worth reached approximately $1.05 trillion on Friday. The SpaceX IPO added more than $180 billion to his fortune in a single trading day, putting him ahead of the next five richest billionaires combined.
The company that went public is no longer just a rocket company. SpaceX acquired Musk’s AI company xAI in February 2026 in an all-stock deal that valued SpaceX at approximately $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion. The combined entity reported $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025. Starlink’s satellite internet service accounted for $11.4 billion — about 61% of total revenue. The xAI segment contributed $3.2 billion. Despite that revenue, SpaceX posted a net loss of $4.9 billion, driven by Starship development costs and xAI expenditures.
The SEC prospectus lays out the company’s ambition directly: SpaceX’s reusable rockets and global satellite network will enable cost-effective deployment of AI compute satellites in orbit, with deployment targeted as early as 2028. Starlink’s 10.3 million subscribers are the engine funding that vision.
Mars is the mission statement. SpaceX has confirmed targeting the 2026 Earth-Mars transfer window for the first uncrewed Starship mission to the red planet, carrying Tesla’s Optimus robots and demonstrating propellant production on the Martian surface. Musk put the odds at 50-50 for hitting that window, noting success depends on completing an orbital refueling maneuver not yet demonstrated. If the mission misses the 2026 window, the next alignment does not occur for two years. A crewed Mars mission is targeted for 2028, though outside analysts widely consider that timeline aggressive.
SpaceX has spent over $15 billion developing Starship — more than originally budgeted — and Starship development topped the company’s own list of IPO risk factors in the SEC filing. Investors who bought in at $135 are valuing a company whose most ambitious work is still ahead of it.
Two weeks before Musk’s Nasdaq debut, Jeff Bezos got a different kind of spectacle. On May 28, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket exploded on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral during an engine test firing, destroying the vehicle and sending debris across the pad and surrounding area. The explosion was visible for miles. No personnel were injured. Bezos called it a “very rough day” and pledged to rebuild.
The setback was not isolated. New Glenn’s third flight in April 2026 had already triggered an FAA investigation after the rocket’s second stage failed to reach its intended orbit. Blue Origin was preparing a return-to-flight when the May explosion ended that plan.
Blue Origin says New Glenn will fly again before the end of 2026. The root cause of the explosion has not been publicly disclosed, the investigation is not complete, and Launch Complex 36 — the company’s only operational New Glenn pad — remains damaged. NASA’s Artemis lunar timeline is now at risk, with Blue Moon lander deliveries tied directly to New Glenn’s return to service.
The contrast between the two companies reflects two different execution records. SpaceX completed over 165 Falcon 9 launches in 2025 alone, catches orbital-class rocket boosters out of the sky with mechanical arms, and operates a satellite internet network with 10 million paying subscribers. Blue Origin flew its first orbital rocket in January 2025 and has since logged a missed orbit and an explosion that destroyed its only heavy-lift launch pad.
Musk responded to the Blue Origin explosion on X with three words: “Most unfortunate. Rockets are hard.”
Support Independent Local Journalism — High Country Advocate was created as a real alternative to regional media that too often silences dissenting voices while taking sides in the political struggle. Producing in-depth, unflinching reporting like this series and others is expensive: servers, editing, research time, and legal review all add up quickly. If these articles have informed you or given you new perspective, please consider supporting HCA with a paid subscription — every subscriber helps keep this reporting strong and independent. 