SpaceX's $85.7 Billion IPO: Record Raise, Zero-Fee Greenshoe, and a $2 Trillion Debut

SpaceX's entry into the public markets in June 2026 rewrote the record books and challenged Wall Street conventions in nearly every possible way. The initial public offering, which took the company public on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX, was the largest in history, generated unprecedented fee concessions from underwriters, and instantly polarized analysts who see the firm as either a multi-trillion-dollar titan or a dangerously overvalued gamble.

The Record $85.7 Billion Raise

The IPO began trading on Friday, June 12, 2026, with an initial sale of 555.56 million shares at a fixed price of $135 each, generating $75 billion in gross proceeds . The company skipped the traditional roadshow model of a pricing range and instead set a flat, take-it-or-leave-it price—an uncommon move for a debut of this size .

Just three days later, on Monday, June 15, the syndicate of underwriters led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley fully exercised their 15% overallotment option, commonly known as a greenshoe. This added another 83.3 million shares and brought the total raised to $85.7 billion, a sum that surpassed the previous record set by Saudi Aramco’s 2019 IPO by approximately 191% . In total, SpaceX placed approximately 639 million Class A common shares .

Pricing and First-Week Stock Performance

A fixed offering price of $135 per share gave SpaceX an initial valuation of around $1.77 trillion . The stock opened at $150 on the Nasdaq, an immediate 11% pop from the IPO price .

First-day trading was extraordinarily active, with over 500 million shares changing hands . The stock surged as high as $176.52 intraday before closing at $160.95, a 19% gain, propelling the company’s market capitalization to roughly $2.1 trillion—instantly making it the sixth most valuable company in the United States . By the following Monday, June 15, the rally continued, with shares adding roughly another $31 to close near $192 .

The Unprecedented Fee Structure

SpaceX negotiated one of the most favorable fee structures in IPO history, underscoring its immense leverage over the banks clamoring for a role in the historic listing.

• Base fee: The company paid a gross spread of approximately 0.75% or less on the initial $75 billion tranche. At 0.7%, the total fee pool amounted to roughly $500 million, distributed among 21 underwriters . According to IPO expert Jay Ritter of the University of Florida, this rate ties the lowest percentage on record for a conventional IPO, where banks typically command a 1% to 3% spread on large deals .
• Zero-fee greenshoe: In an even more extraordinary arrangement, SpaceX negotiated to pay $0 in fees on the roughly $11.2 billion greenshoe overallotment. This rare concession meant that Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and the other banks forfeited an estimated $75 million in additional revenue they would have otherwise collected .

Retail Allocation Falls Short of Musk’s Hint

Retail investor access became a contentious storyline in the weeks leading up to the debut. Elon Musk had publicly suggested on X that a meaningful portion of the offering—potentially as high as 30%—would be reserved for individual investors, a figure roughly three times the typical 5–10% retail allocation for large institutional IPOs .

In practice, the final allocation to retail investors landed in the low-20% range, around 22.5% of the offering. While this was still well above the standard for major U.S. listings, it disappointed some individual investors who had been unable to secure shares at the IPO price .

Use of Proceeds: Orbital AI Data Centers

SpaceX signaled that a significant portion of the IPO capital would be directed toward an ambitious new frontier: the construction of orbital AI data centers. The company plans to leverage its Starship heavy-lift launch capability and its Starlink satellite network to deploy AI compute infrastructure in space .

A Deeply Divided Wall Street

The debut ignited an immediate and stark divide among equity analysts, with price targets ranging from a deeply bearish $115 to a bullish $190.

The Bull Case: New Street Research’s $165 Target

Pierre Ferragu of New Street Research initiated coverage on June 10 with an Overweight rating and a $165 price target, implying 22% upside from the $135 IPO price. His thesis values the post-Cursor-acquisition company at roughly $2.3 trillion and rests on a 2030 forecast of $195 billion in revenue and $65 billion in EBIT. Ferragu argues that the market is undervaluing the long-term potential of Starlink, the company’s AI division xAI, and its unique physical infrastructure advantage .

The Bear Case: CFRA’s Rare $115 Sell Rating

On the other side of the spectrum, CFRA analyst Keith Snyder issued a rare Sell rating with a $115 price target less than an hour after trading began on June 12. The target implies a nearly 29% downside from the first-day close and suggests a full valuation of just $1.5 trillion, or 20.2 times CFRA’s 2027 sales projection. Snyder cited “high valuation expectations,” enormous capital expenditure requirements, and ambitious growth plans that carry significant execution risk .

Notably, other firms landed between these extremes. Oppenheimer initiated with an Outperform rating and a $190 price target, while Wolfe Research launched with an optimistic rating as well, underscoring that for every firm betting on a crash, another sees this as the beginning of a historic run .