Next week, shares in Elon Musk's SpaceX will go on sale to the public for the first time in what is being billed as the biggest stock market launch in history. The company plans to sell 555.6m shares at $135 each on 12 June, raising at least $75bn.
The IPO values SpaceX at around $1.75tn, making it larger than rivals Anthropic and OpenAI, but smaller than tech giants such as Alphabet. Musk, already the world's richest person with a net worth exceeding $500bn according to Forbes, is on course to become the first trillionaire.
“Shares in Elon Musk's SpaceX go on sale to the public on 12 June, aiming to raise $75bn.”
SpaceX is currently owned by Musk and other private investors, but from next week millions of new shares will start trading on the Nasdaq in New York. Up to a quarter of the shares could be reserved for individual investors, a far bigger share than is typical for a large IPO, giving ordinary people a rare chance to buy into a company that plans to colonise Mars and put artificial intelligence data centres in space.
In the UK, brokers including AJ Bell and Hargreaves Lansdown are offering clients the chance to bid for shares. Jason Hollands, managing director of BestInvest, said: "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, sensing both strong client demand and, no doubt, a commercial opportunity." Minimum subscriptions are typically about £1,000, with applications closing next Wednesday.
Even those who do not buy directly may end up owning SpaceX shares through index tracker funds or pension funds that invest in the company. UK investment trusts such as Edinburgh Worldwide and Baillie Gifford US Growth already have stakes.
The shares will be listed at a price determined on 11 June based on investor interest. If the IPO is oversubscribed, allocation rules remain unclear. Once trading begins, the share price could quickly rise or fall depending on market sentiment.
SpaceX's prospectus is unabashedly ambitious, stating that humans must avoid "the same fate as dinosaurs" and plan for an "age of abundance" based in space, because the "light of consciousness" will not be tied to a single planet. Musk plans to use the funds to expand current activities and fund new ventures: mining asteroids, colonising Mars, and putting AI data centres in space.
But risks are significant. The sci-fi-style sales document has drawn scepticism about the feasibility of some ambitions. Musk's backers argue he has beaten doubters before.
Musk, who became the first person to achieve a net worth of more than $500bn in October 2025, has a history of controversial political interventions that analysts say have hurt his businesses, with Tesla sales slumping in 2025 partly due to customer backlash. His first wife, Justine Musk, wrote in a 2010 essay: "The will to compete and dominate, that made him so successful in business, did not magically shut off when he came home."
For investors, the question is whether SpaceX's Martian dreams are worth the price of admission.