It is worth noting that some sources report a higher figure for Saudi Aramco's IPO, quoting $29.4 billion. This larger number includes the exercise of a "greenshoe" option, which allows underwriters to sell additional shares after the initial offering, while the $25.6 billion figure represents the base capital raised at the time of listing .
SpaceX's offering, involving 555.6 million shares priced at $135 each, completely resets the scale of previous records. The $75 billion raise is nearly triple the base figure of the previous record holder, Saudi Aramco . The company's target raise alone will exceed the combined proceeds of the three largest IPOs in history before it: Saudi Aramco, Alibaba, and SoftBank
. When trading commences on the Nasdaq, SpaceX's $1.77 trillion market capitalization will make it one of the world's most valuable publicly traded companies on its first day
.
While the financial scale of the IPO is historic, its most significant global impact may be on the structure of international capital flows. SpaceX and its lead underwriters have explicitly barred investors from mainland China and Hong Kong from participating in the IPO .
This exclusion stems from compliance concerns related to the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which govern the export of sensitive defense-related technologies . As a result, institutional investors, sovereign funds, and high-net-worth individuals from these regions are locked out of what is expected to be one of the most sought-after equity offerings
.
This barrier is creating immediate, observable market effects:
SpaceX's historic IPO is more than a record-breaking financial event. By setting new quantitative benchmarks and simultaneously enforcing new qualitative barriers to capital, the listing is set to redefine not just the top of the IPO league table, but the very architecture of global equity markets.