# SpaceX’s Record-Breaking Wall Street Debut

An episode of [Big Take](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1578096201), 12 Jun 2026, 16 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/825d4e29-b616-46f4-afd7-ae2b0013005c/4dc0bec4-1f3e-430a-9df5-b46701425633/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=8b1dd624-a026-43e9-8b57-ae2b00130066

SpaceX went public today, with the largest IPO in history. Following months of buildup, shares opened at $150 and were trading at $161.11 at market close. On today’s Big Take podcast, host David Gura sits down with Bloomberg Tech’s Ed Ludlow to discuss the record-breaking deal and what it means for Elon Musk, everyday investors and other companies on the brink of going public. This is a developing story. We are live blogging at Bloomberg.com with the latest from across the globe. We have a special Bloomberg subscription offer for podcast listeners at Bloomberg.com/podcastoffer. Hosted by David Gura; Produced by Julia Press; Reported by Ed Ludlow; Edited by Paddy Hirsch and Jeffrey Grocott. Fact-checking by Rachael Lewis-Krisky; Engineering by Alex Sugiura. Senior Producer: Naomi Shavin; Deputy Executive Producer: Julia Weaver. Executive Producer: Nicole Beemsterboer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
[0:08] Speaker 2: We have an opening trade shares open for SpaceX. Then
[0:12] Speaker 2: as that crowd goes wild. SpaceX debuted on the Nasdaq
[0:16] Speaker 2: this morning after the largest IPO in history.
[0:19] Speaker 1: There are always problems on Earth. There are always things that
[0:22] Speaker 1: we wish to be better, that we want to solve
[0:24] Speaker 1: here on Earth, and we should solve them. But there
[0:27] Speaker 1: also have to be things that get you excited about
[0:30] Speaker 1: the future, that make you glad to wake up in
[0:34] Speaker 1: the morning because you can't wait to see what happens next.
[0:39] Speaker 1: And that's the future that SpaceX wants to bring to you.
[0:43] Speaker 2: Trading started at one hundred and fifty dollars a share
[0:46] Speaker 2: that's made thousands of current and former SpaceX employees very wealthy,
[0:50] Speaker 2: but none more so than Elon Musk himself. It's made
[0:54] Speaker 2: him the world's first trillionaire. The market has finally delivered
[0:58] Speaker 2: its first verdict on SPA, so now the focus will
[1:01] Speaker 2: be whether those games can hold As trading gets underway.
[1:05] Speaker 2: In the coming days, more than a dozen ETFs tied
[1:08] Speaker 2: to SpaceX are expected to launch, and SpaceX option contracts
[1:12] Speaker 2: will start trading on Tuesday. SpaceX successfully made the case
[1:16] Speaker 2: to investors that they should buy into Musk's vision that
[1:19] Speaker 2: the company will put data centers in space and transport
[1:23] Speaker 2: people to the Moon and to Mars, but it's unclear
[1:26] Speaker 2: when or even if SpaceX will deliver on that. I'm
[1:35] Speaker 2: David Gura, and this is the big take from Bloomberg
[1:37] Speaker 2: News Today. On the show, I sit down with Ed Ludlow,
[1:40] Speaker 2: the host of Bloomberg Tech, to talk about what SpaceX's
[1:44] Speaker 2: record breaking IPO means for financial markets, for Elon Musk,
[1:48] Speaker 2: and for other companies poised to go public. This is
[1:58] Speaker 2: a huge IPO. There has been no shortage and continues
[2:00] Speaker 2: to be no shortage of superlatives to describe it. Walk
[2:03] Speaker 2: us through a few of them. How big a deal
[2:05] Speaker 2: is this?
[2:06] Speaker 3: Well, literally the biggest deal in history. But like the
[2:08] Speaker 3: way to think about it is, well, why would SpaceX
[2:11] Speaker 3: need to raise seventy five billion dollars? SpaceX needs money
[2:15] Speaker 3: to buy GPUs and to build satellites that are data
[2:18] Speaker 3: centers for space. Money lets them do that more quickly,
[2:22] Speaker 3: and they plan to grow from this place where they're
[2:25] Speaker 3: like doing really well as a rocket company with very
[2:28] Speaker 3: successful satellite constellation based internet too out of this world.
[2:32] Speaker 3: You know something that's so far fetched and distant, and
[2:35] Speaker 3: you know money helps. That's simple as that.
[2:38] Speaker 2: How should we think about this company or how do
[2:39] Speaker 2: you describe it? So it's not just a company that
[2:41] Speaker 2: shoots rockets and to space.
[2:43] Speaker 3: SpaceX has a vision where in the end most of
[2:47] Speaker 3: the money it makes will be from selling AI software
[2:50] Speaker 3: to companies big and small around planet Earth and potentially
[2:53] Speaker 3: beyond Planet Earth. Clearly, there's a series of steps. So
[2:57] Speaker 3: in the first instance, they dominate the market of launching
[3:01] Speaker 3: rockets with something on them into orbit, and that can
[3:03] Speaker 3: be for a government or it can be for a
[3:05] Speaker 3: private company. They have this cash cow Starlink, which is
[3:10] Speaker 3: basically for you and I like on planet Earth. It's
[3:13] Speaker 3: Wi Fi that works really well. It just happens to
[3:16] Speaker 3: come from a satellite instead of coming from cables in
[3:19] Speaker 3: the ground. And the next phase of that is to
[3:23] Speaker 3: build data centers that are in a satellite form factor
[3:26] Speaker 3: to run AI models inference around Earth. So you take
[3:31] Speaker 3: all of those things I just talked about, The opportunity
[3:34] Speaker 3: is twenty eight point five trillion dollars as calculated by SpaceX,
[3:37] Speaker 3: and you just say, I either do or don't accept
[3:39] Speaker 3: that all of that economy happens on Earth, in orbit
[3:43] Speaker 3: around Earth, and eventually on the Moon on Mars.
[3:46] Speaker 2: Yeah, break down the level of emotion surrounding this IPO. Yes,
[3:50] Speaker 2: so that's to do with the size of the number,
[3:52] Speaker 2: is what they're hoping to raise the valuation. But there's
[3:53] Speaker 2: also just so much emotion here as well.
[3:55] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean IPOs are an opportunity to get access
[4:00] Speaker 3: to a company but also to a person. So for
[4:02] Speaker 3: lots of people in markets, you know, they want to
[4:05] Speaker 3: be able to buy a piece of Elon Musk. You know,
[4:08] Speaker 3: he's still regarded as the visionary, as the you know,
[4:11] Speaker 3: real life Tony Stark. Shout out to all my Marvel
[4:15] Speaker 3: fans for the bench capital firms and the private growth
[4:18] Speaker 3: ecuity firms that have backed SpaceX for a long time.
[4:21] Speaker 3: This will be the biggest payday for them in their
[4:23] Speaker 3: firm's histories, simple as that. And the kind of third
[4:26] Speaker 3: bucket it is that the retail investor like it will
[4:30] Speaker 3: be in the history books, It will be in the
[4:31] Speaker 3: textbooks looking back. You know, it's when all the math
[4:35] Speaker 3: is done, Retail investors will probably account for like more
[4:40] Speaker 3: money in this IPO than say Ali Barba raised in
[4:44] Speaker 3: its entire IPO.
[4:46] Speaker 2: SpaceX started trading today. It's going to take some time
[4:49] Speaker 2: before we're able to say was it success?
[4:51] Speaker 3: Yeah?
[4:51] Speaker 2: Was it a failure? Was disappointment? What does success look
[4:54] Speaker 2: like for this company? In the context of this public offering.
[4:57] Speaker 3: We always start with this caveat that Elon Musk is
[5:01] Speaker 3: often wrong on the timelines that he presents, and I
[5:04] Speaker 3: would say, very involved investors of this company will willingly
[5:09] Speaker 3: say that to me. You know, we accept that. He
[5:12] Speaker 3: will say this will happen, and I think it will
[5:15] Speaker 3: happen by this date. Often it doesn't, but it does
[5:17] Speaker 3: happen in the end, so they have full conviction he'll
[5:19] Speaker 3: get there, just not in the linear fashion that he outlines.
[5:25] Speaker 3: Success in the first instance is getting this starship system.
[5:30] Speaker 3: It is the most powerful launch system on paper that
[5:33] Speaker 3: man has ever created. To be fully reusable, everything be
[5:39] Speaker 3: that data centers in space, humans living and working on Mars,
[5:43] Speaker 3: an economy on the Moon is predicated on this rocket's
[5:46] Speaker 3: ability to carry payload one hundred one hundred and fifty
[5:51] Speaker 3: metric tons to orbit and beyond that doesn't happen yet,
[5:56] Speaker 3: and to be fully reusable, because otherwise the economics just
[6:00] Speaker 3: don't make sense. Starship has only ever done twelve test flights,
[6:05] Speaker 3: and no part of it, the booster nor the starship
[6:08] Speaker 3: spacecraft the top's ever successfully both relanded on Earth and
[6:11] Speaker 3: been reused. So it's like, Wow, we've got some way
[6:15] Speaker 3: to go.
[6:16] Speaker 2: Here, guys, how does this giant IPO change the way
[6:19] Speaker 2: that we look at companies or look at Wall Street?
[6:22] Speaker 3: With SpaceX, we've just focused endlessly on the idea that
[6:25] Speaker 3: this will be the biggest IPO initial public offering in history,
[6:30] Speaker 3: That an idea that this company that was such a
[6:33] Speaker 3: huge entity as a private company can pull off this mechanism.
[6:37] Speaker 3: But really it's about a company's ability to access capital
[6:42] Speaker 3: and that is not exclusive to private companies going public.
[6:46] Speaker 3: So irrespective of whether you're going public or you're doing
[6:49] Speaker 3: an equity offering or you're looking at the debt markets,
[6:52] Speaker 3: this is the level of capital that Wall Street's comfortable with,
[6:55] Speaker 3: and not just Wall Street, like, this is happening around
[6:57] Speaker 3: the world and that has changed the scale economics of
[7:01] Speaker 3: what is or is not a good return on equity.
[7:06] Speaker 2: After the break, what Tesla's trajectory could reveal about SpaceX
[7:09] Speaker 2: and what this deal means for anthropic and open AI
[7:12] Speaker 2: as they prepare to go public. The privilege to an
[7:25] Speaker 2: IPO is this road show where the company makes its
[7:28] Speaker 2: case with big Traditionally, yeah, it's two investors. Didn't even
[7:32] Speaker 2: seem necessary or bloomber reporting folks are saying it's four
[7:35] Speaker 2: times oversubscribed. What was that road show like leading up
[7:39] Speaker 2: to the first day of trading? The pricing the first
[7:40] Speaker 2: day of trading.
[7:41] Speaker 3: So traditionally you don't just set a price and say
[7:45] Speaker 3: we're sticking with it.
[7:46] Speaker 2: There's a range.
[7:46] Speaker 3: There's a range, and it's marketing. You go out to
[7:49] Speaker 3: all of the potential investors, the pool of potential investors,
[7:51] Speaker 3: and say, how you guys feel learning about this? But
[7:55] Speaker 3: my understanding is that basically Musk wanted to take the
[7:58] Speaker 3: leverage away from the big institution investors and said, I
[8:01] Speaker 3: am going to set this price that way. It doesn't
[8:06] Speaker 3: matter how much deployable capital you've got. I can just
[8:09] Speaker 3: select who I want to get access to this IPO.
[8:12] Speaker 3: So that's unusual to.
[8:13] Speaker 2: Pick up on what you just said. Who is getting
[8:15] Speaker 2: access to these years Elon Musk had a plan for that.
[8:17] Speaker 2: Who ends up getting access.
[8:19] Speaker 3: It's existing investors. And you know, Musk has been all
[8:22] Speaker 3: about loyalty. You know how SpaceX has managed it is
[8:26] Speaker 3: they don't use intermediaries Musk or the CFO phone you
[8:30] Speaker 3: you know, and say like do you want to participate
[8:32] Speaker 3: in this? These are people that they like. So that's
[8:36] Speaker 3: a big part of it, you know, the big long
[8:38] Speaker 3: only asset managers. Based on my reporting, like Musk and
[8:42] Speaker 3: the SpaceX team really wanted to bring people in that
[8:45] Speaker 3: they believe would hold the stock for a really long time. Tesla,
[8:49] Speaker 3: his other publicly traded company that he see of, has
[8:52] Speaker 3: a very big and loyal retail shareholder base and a
[8:56] Speaker 3: lot of them really believe that they would get sort
[8:59] Speaker 3: of preference access here. And so it'll be interesting to
[9:02] Speaker 3: see how those loyal Musk followers feel in the end,
[9:07] Speaker 3: you know, how they respond if they didn't get access
[9:09] Speaker 3: to the SpaceX ipo.
[9:11] Speaker 2: You bring up Tesla, and I'm curious what we can
[9:14] Speaker 2: learn from that company's trajectory that might be applicable here.
[9:18] Speaker 2: So it was a company that great point private, relied
[9:22] Speaker 2: on the devotedness of many Musk fans for a very
[9:25] Speaker 2: long time. You promised it was going to be something.
[9:27] Speaker 2: In fact, it's largely turned out to be. How applicable
[9:30] Speaker 2: is that that Tesla's story of what we're going to
[9:32] Speaker 2: see with SpaceX, you're going forward.
[9:33] Speaker 3: You know, I think a lot of very sophisticated people
[9:37] Speaker 3: in technology and those that are investors in Elon Musk
[9:41] Speaker 3: companies have cautioned against, at least caution me privately in
[9:45] Speaker 3: trying to say that SpaceX will follow the same story
[9:48] Speaker 3: another perfect perial check, check the tape. The issue is
[9:51] Speaker 3: that Tesla at that time was a sort of standalone,
[9:55] Speaker 3: committed party to a very nascent industry and went on
[9:58] Speaker 3: to dominate it. But you can't apply those same principles
[10:02] Speaker 3: to SpaceX. Indeed, like SpaceX is telling the world in
[10:06] Speaker 3: the end, we think the market we're going after is
[10:08] Speaker 3: twenty eight trillion dollars, but only two trillion of that
[10:11] Speaker 3: is our existing launch business and our starlink business. So
[10:15] Speaker 3: twenty six point five trillion is doesn't exist yet, it's new.
[10:19] Speaker 3: So modeling for that is, I mean, how do you
[10:22] Speaker 3: do that? It's science fiction to a lot of people.
[10:24] Speaker 3: It's like, you know, reading the SpaceX prospectus is like
[10:27] Speaker 3: reading a Christopher Nolan script, right, like from some sci
[10:29] Speaker 3: fi and so very sixtely to answer your question, a
[10:32] Speaker 3: lot of people will say the jump that Tesla made
[10:34] Speaker 3: from plucky battery electric carmaker to humanoid robotics and rubber taxi,
[10:39] Speaker 3: it's very hard to see SpaceX following that path.
[10:43] Speaker 2: Retail investors are going to have exposure to SpaceX through
[10:46] Speaker 2: index rights. It's going to be a part of a
[10:48] Speaker 2: Nasdaq one hundred. Walk us through why that's so significant.
[10:52] Speaker 2: It usually doesn't happen as quickly as it turns right.
[10:54] Speaker 3: Now, So, in very simple laymen's terms, the NAZAQ one
[10:57] Speaker 3: hundred is a bucket of sort of the biggest technology companies.
[11:00] Speaker 3: But they adjusted or amended their rules to fast track
[11:04] Speaker 3: inclusion the S and P five hundred, which is the
[11:07] Speaker 3: benchmark equities index which we all follow, but also many
[11:11] Speaker 3: money managers just track and follow. Did not do that
[11:14] Speaker 3: either way. Because SpaceX will become a part of those
[11:17] Speaker 3: specific indices, there will be all kinds of funds that
[11:22] Speaker 3: need to rebalance passive funds and that will have an
[11:26] Speaker 3: impact on financial markets.
[11:28] Speaker 2: There has been some skepticism about SpaceX's valuation. Yeah, you
[11:33] Speaker 2: walk us through. What the barecase here is why some
[11:36] Speaker 2: investors think it's way larger than it should.
[11:38] Speaker 3: Well, it's trading at a multiple that is one hundred
[11:42] Speaker 3: times sales, and if you look at recent history of
[11:46] Speaker 3: technology IPOs, that is a pretty pretty premium, even over
[11:51] Speaker 3: some of the sort of more out there listings that
[11:54] Speaker 3: we've had. And again the worry is, like the goals
[11:59] Speaker 3: this company have outlined are very out there and they
[12:03] Speaker 3: require immense spending, and a lot of people find it
[12:07] Speaker 3: very hard to see a world where one million satellites
[12:11] Speaker 3: that our data centers space to get built, deployed and
[12:14] Speaker 3: start running AI models. It's an idea hasn't ever happened before.
[12:20] Speaker 3: You know, there are some startups up there that have
[12:22] Speaker 3: a very limited like there's one satellite in orbit right
[12:25] Speaker 3: now that's running an n video h one hundred and so,
[12:29] Speaker 3: like you know that people are bracing that the valuation
[12:31] Speaker 3: comes down. Now what I would say elon Mask was
[12:34] Speaker 3: pushing maybe for a higher valuation. I think people did
[12:38] Speaker 3: make an effort to kind of find a middle ground
[12:41] Speaker 3: where the valuation made sense.
[12:42] Speaker 2: Had this IPO? Now our focus shifts to the next
[12:45] Speaker 2: big one, so it's open AI and anthropic. Yeah, why
[12:47] Speaker 2: is all of this happening now? Why is the environment
[12:50] Speaker 2: for these IPOs so ripe?
[12:51] Speaker 3: So what the leaders of Anthropic and open AI have said,
[12:57] Speaker 3: in the very limited ability that they have to speak
[12:59] Speaker 3: now that the confidential filings are in, is that the
[13:02] Speaker 3: going public is the only mechanism to get the level
[13:05] Speaker 3: of capital that they need. What's amazing about that statement
[13:09] Speaker 3: that I've paraphrased from several different individuals is the private
[13:12] Speaker 3: markets have been incredibly willing. So you know, just before
[13:16] Speaker 3: i'mthropic files confidentially go public, they raise sixty five billion
[13:20] Speaker 3: dollars in a private market round that valued them at
[13:23] Speaker 3: nine hundred and sixty five billion, months after they'd done
[13:26] Speaker 3: their previous round of thirty five billion. So, like it
[13:29] Speaker 3: is confusing to understand, Like you guys are saying that
[13:31] Speaker 3: the public markets are the only way, but they know
[13:35] Speaker 3: that all of the giants out there your Alphabet's the
[13:38] Speaker 3: parent of Google, Amazon, Meta, they are looking at all
[13:43] Speaker 3: of the breadth of the capital markets to get money.
[13:47] Speaker 2: I want to ask you about fomo or potential fomo here. Yeah,
[13:50] Speaker 2: do institutional investors feel like they have to invest in
[13:53] Speaker 2: a company like SpaceX Just the level of enthusiasm and yes,
[13:57] Speaker 2: optimism in many quarters is such that they have to
[14:00] Speaker 2: do it. They can't decline to do sothing.
[14:03] Speaker 3: What the existing investors on the cat table did tell
[14:06] Speaker 3: me is like, you are making an investment based on
[14:09] Speaker 3: a person Elon Musk. You are making a conviction call
[14:15] Speaker 3: with the intention of holding the stock for a long
[14:19] Speaker 3: period of time beyond a lock up period. You know,
[14:22] Speaker 3: it's not a sort of get rich quick play. The
[14:25] Speaker 3: market structure does not allow you to do that. And
[14:29] Speaker 3: whether you are a long only asset manager or you
[14:31] Speaker 3: are sovereign wealth fund, you know, people do look at
[14:35] Speaker 3: Elon musk track record. They look at what happened with Tesla,
[14:38] Speaker 3: and you know that's where it's analogous. They think he's
[14:40] Speaker 3: capable of delivering growth and therefore returns to shareholders.
[14:52] Speaker 2: This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gerra.
[14:55] Speaker 2: The show is hosted by Me, Sarah Holder, and Juan
[14:57] Speaker 2: ha show is made by Aaron Edwards, David Fox, Jeff Grocott,
[15:01] Speaker 2: Patty Hirsch, Rachel Lewis, Kriskey, Emma Monger, Laura Newcom, Naomi
[15:06] Speaker 2: Julia Press, Tracy Samuelson, Naomi Shavin, Alex Tagura, Julia Weaver,
[15:11] Speaker 2: Young Young, and Taka Yesuzawa. Our executive producer is Nicole
[15:15] Speaker 2: beemster boor to get more from the Big Take and
[15:17] Speaker 2: unlimited access to all of bloomberg dot com, subscribe today
[15:21] Speaker 2: at Bloomberg dot Com. Slash Podcast offer. Thanks for listening.
[15:25] Speaker 2: We'll be back on Monday.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.