The ultimate moonshot day is here for public markets: SpaceX, the self-landing, gravity-defying private space company, is finally reaching public markets, under the Nasdaq ticker SPCX. At 9:52 am, the stock was indicating a +23% jump, according to Bloomberg. The stock may trade as early as 10 am ET.

This is not a normal IPO, it’s the largest ever, blowing away Saudi Aramco’s 2019 high water mark by nearly double. Thursday night the firm confirmed raising at $135 per share, selling about 555.6 million shares, netting roughly $75 billion. That puts the company around $1.75 trillion to $1.78 trillion, depending on final share math.

That massive windfall will meet majorly oversubscribed demand, with more than $250B waiting to pass go Friday. Retail is eating up at least $70B in orders. BlackRock, and other large institutions, were jumping out ahead with $5B+ orders, according to Bloomberg.

All of that demand, the primordial forces of the market, is raining down on a Frankenstein company that combines Starlink cash flow, xAI research losses, orbital AI dreams, and an insane Elon Musk voting control.

Stocktwits is already treating the moment like a referendum. The bull case: SPCE is Tesla 2010 but with rockets. The bear case: retail buying the most expensive exit ramp on Earth, and giant institutions and thousands of company workers (yes even cafeteria workers) will become multi millkionares with the push of a button.

Let’s dive in:

SpaceX is expected to start trading Friday under $SPCX, likely launching for trade later in the day than the regular 9:30 am opening bell. After watching equities hit markets firsthand on the NYSE, I can tell you the first pricing will be slow. Some recall the market halting the IPO of Facebook a decade ago, and that was just a measly $16B raise for a $104B company.

The first real test is the opening print. Allocated IPO buyers get shares at the offering price, and everyone else gets whatever Nasdaq price discovery spits out when $SPCX finally opens for public trading. That could be above $135, below it, or god knows where.

What are investors buying: Starlink is the cleanest part of the story, with more than 10 million subscribers across 160-plus countries. But the IPO also includes launch dominance, Starship, xAI, orbital data-center dreams, and the giant Musk premium sitting on top of it.

The RIP: SpaceX posted 2025 revenue of $18.7 billion and a $4.9 billion net loss. Starlink reportedly generated $11.39 billion in revenue, while the AI segment did $3.2 billion and lost more than $6 billion from operations. The buy is the future, and SpaceX is pitching a big one.

Though ownership and voting is a whole other question. Stocks tend to grant portions of the underlying business, but in the SpaceX world, Musk is in control. The S-1 made it official: Musk keeps ~82% of the votes with just 42% of the equity, plus the CEO, CTO, and chairman titles. His stake in the firm will net him a cool zillion dollars Friday, or $860B.

He also carved out 5% of the offering for employees and friends with zero lockup, a move he ran at Tesla's 2010 IPO too. The result: 4,400 new millionaires, cooks and welders included, free to sell Friday. Retail gets the ticker, but Elon keeps the steering wheel.

Few companies have generated as much excitement, debate and anticipation as SpaceX (SPCX).

Supporters see a company that transformed the economics of space launch, built one of the largest satellite networks, and sits at the intersection of aerospace, AI, and communications. Skeptics question the valuation, the ambitious projects, and whether expectations have gotten ahead of reality.

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SpaceX is reportedly setting aside a much bigger slice for individual investors than a normal mega-IPO, with reports ranging from 20% to as much as 30% of the deal. Fidelity, Robinhood, SoFi, E-Trade, and Schwab are in the access mix, and retail is screaming about it.

The betting markets are already trading the open. As of Thursday night, Polymarket gives 69% odds that $SPCX closes Friday above a $2 trillion market cap, roughly a +13% pop from the IPO price, while pre-IPO perps on crypto platforms are pricing a +20% launch.

Stocktwits has already entered the group-chat phase. The live $SPCX stream is extremely bullish with extremely high message volume, while the older $SPACZZX.P placeholder has the better fight: “do not fade Elon” bulls, sub-$100 bears, lockup doomers, the whole world is in there.

By Thursday night, the stream flipped from anticipation to allocation rage. Confirmations dripped out broker by broker: Schwab users complained, one trader announced he found two shares, another hoping the stock doesn't "crash 20-30% after they fill my order lol." The sharpest post of the night needed one line: 4x oversubscribed and the price is still $135, "totally normal 🤣."

Also loud: $DXYZ, the closed-end fund that spent two years as retail's only SpaceX proxy, is trending right alongside the real thing. In the ticker talk, bulls think scarcity, Musk, Starlink, and IPO demand overpower valuation. Bears think retail is being handed the exit-liquidity bag, especially with users flagging cash burn, lockup worries, and the possibility that the first trade becomes the top.

Tell $SPCX: liftoff or liquidity trap →

At $135 per share, SpaceX is coming public near $1.75 trillion to $1.78 trillion. Against 2025 revenue of $18.7 billion, that is roughly 94x to 95x sales for a company that still lost $4.9 billion last year. That is not “rockets are cool” math, it’s “please value the future of space, broadband, AI compute, defense, phones, social data, and Mars before lunch” math.

Morningstar is the loud skeptic. As a non participator pre IPO, it was able to cover the IPO, and analysts there reportedly peg fair value at $63 per share, less than half the IPO price, at roughly $830 billion. Goldman Sachs, a lead underwriter of the deal, said this past week it expects revenue to soar to $322B by 2030. Morgan Stanley, another underwriter, expects overall revenue near $3.4T by 2040.

Morningstar is not fully bearish; its model reportedly values rockets and Starlink around $40 per share. The fight is over everything layered on top.

The killer Morningstar point is probability. In its most bullish scenario, SpaceX becomes a monster orbital compute platform and the stock is worth more than the IPO price. Morningstar reportedly gives that outcome a 7% chance. For $135 to make sense, investors basically have to believe the best-case scenario is not a long shot, but inevitable.

SpaceX’s filing reportedly frames its total addressable market around $28.5 trillion.

The quiet-period wrinkle makes Morningstar louder. SpaceX reportedly hired more than 20 banks, which means many sell-side desks may be muzzled right when retail needs research.

The lockup calendar is the bear case with a date on it. Insiders reportedly unlock in stages before the full 180-day window. It’s not the only near term price risk: SpaceX is carrying a $20B bridge loan that matures 15 months after the IPO.

Bulls are buying SpaceX as the infrastructure layer of the next tech cycle. Bears are asking why a money-losing company with huge AI capex deserves one of the richest public-market starting valuations ever.

By mid-afternoon Thursday, the space basket was ripping ahead of the IPO. $SPCE, $MNTS, $SATL, $LUNR, $RDW, $ASTS, $PL, and $RKLB all caught some version of the SpaceX bid. $GSAT was the calmer satellite-connectivity laggard. Friday morning, the same basket was selling off, the industry grab bag ETF $NASA ( ▼ 8.26% ) falling 7% in the first 15 minutes. Money is rotating out this morning and waiting for the big boy to enter the chat.

$RKLB and $ASTS are the cleaner debate names with launch infrastructure and satellite-to-phone connectivity. $RDW and $LUNR are the space-infrastructure chasers. $SPCE and $MNTS are the retail beta trades that move when traders type “space stocks” into the group chat and stop reading after the first result.

$SATS has been pitched as an EchoStar-related SpaceX exposure because of spectrum and stake chatter. $ARKVX is the private-market angle. $TSLA is the Musk proxy. None of these are clean $SPCX substitutes, but clean has never been the requirement for a sympathy trade.

Two oddballs round out the trending list: $DXYZ, an early allocation that now has to explain its premium when the actual SpaceX trades next door, and $NASA, the Tema space ETF whose ticker is doing more work than its holdings.

FatherofTrades, a top trader from Stocktoberfest West last year at Stocktwits, said, “Throw fundamentals out the window.” With just 4.7% of shares in float and $165B or more of inflow, we could see a price well into 3.5-4T on day one, he said. Earlier this week, he imagined the stock might be the largest company in the world by market cap, if however briefly.

FinnessaurusFlex the Stocktwits top trader of the year for his love of ASTS said: I'm so excited for this. So much money and interest will be pouring into the space economy.. the first launch they have as a public company is $ASTS launch of BB8-10.. Fun times ahead, cheers to an active space summer!!

Friday is the wallet vote. The next few quarters are the audit.

The first print tells us how much $SPCX demand was real. If it opens hot, watch the sympathy basket. If it fades, watch how fast the memes turn into risk management.

After that: index inclusion, analyst quiet periods, lockups, first earnings, Starlink growth, Starship milestones, and whether orbital AI compute is real or just the most expensive group project in history.

Washington wants a word too. Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent the SEC a 12-page letter this week asking it to delay the IPO, flagging Musk's "uniquely unchecked" voting power and arguing that fast index inclusion would force millions of passive index-fund investors into $SPCX whether they want it or not. The SEC has until June 23 to respond, by which point the company will likely be worth at least a trillion. 😆

Keep one eye on the Middle East, too: Iran's state-aligned Fars News named Starlink ground stations as "legitimate military targets" Thursday. But hey, maybe the war is over, for real this time.

Until we know the outcome, we’ll cover it for you, as always on Stocktwits. Thanks for sticking around to the end, and let it RIP.

-kt

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