On 12 June, Elon Musk’s SpaceX will attempt the biggest stock market launch in history. The company plans to sell 555.6 million shares at $135 (£100) each on the Nasdaq in New York, aiming to raise at least $75bn. Unusually, up to a quarter of the shares could be reserved for individual investors rather than funds and banks, meaning ordinary UK savers can get a stake in the rockets-to-AI business.
SpaceX, based in Texas, is best known for space exploration and satellite communication, but it also owns the social media site X and the controversial AI platform Grok. Musk plans to use the money to expand current activities and fund new ventures: mining asteroids, colonising Mars and putting AI data centres in space. The sales prospectus warns humans must avoid “the same fate as dinosaurs” and plan for an “age of abundance” because the “light of consciousness” will not be tied to a single planet.
“SpaceX will launch the biggest ever IPO on 12 June, selling 555.6m shares at $135 each to raise at least $75bn.”
UK investors can bid for shares through platforms such as AJ Bell and Hargreaves Lansdown. “Normally, it is quite difficult for UK-based retail investors to access US IPOs, but a number of UK brokers and investment platforms are offering access to this one,” said Jason Hollands, managing director of BestInvest. “Minimum subscriptions are typically about £1,000, with applications closing next Wednesday.” The official price will be set on 11 June based on investor interest. If the IPO is oversubscribed, allocation details remain unclear.
Investors must decide whether the shares are worth $135. Once trading begins, the value could quickly rise or fall depending on market sentiment. There is plenty of scepticism about the feasibility of some of Musk’s ambitions, though his backers point out he has beaten doubters before.
Musk, already the world’s richest person, became the first to achieve a net worth of more than $500bn in October 2025, according to Forbes. A month later, Tesla shareholders approved a record-breaking pay deal that could be worth $1tn. The SpaceX flotation could push his net worth to about $1tn, making him a trillionaire. His foray into politics, including a controversial role in Donald Trump’s US presidential election victory before a bitter feud, has come at a cost: analysts attributed slumps in Tesla sales in 2025 partly to customers turning against him.
Born in Pretoria, Musk showed early entrepreneurial talent, selling homemade chocolate Easter eggs and developing his first computer game at age 12. His first wife, Justine Musk, wrote that even before making millions he was “not a man who takes no for an answer”. “The will to compete and dominate, that made him so successful in business, did not magically shut off when he came home,” she recalled. He dropped out of a physics graduate programme at Stanford to found two tech start-ups during the dotcom boom.
Whether the IPO will deliver on its sci-fi promises remains to be seen. But for those who buy in, the ride – to Mars or otherwise – is about to begin.