June 12, 2026 at 1:33 PM PDT

Starlink is owned by SpaceX, which went public Friday.

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images

After its first day of trading as a public company, SpaceX closed up more than 19% at a share price of $160.95. That price puts the company's value at $2.1 trillion, the world's seventh largest by market cap. Elon Musk now runs two of the 10 largest companies in the world, with Tesla at No. 10.

We expected some volatility in SpaceX's price after its IPO, but there wasn't much. After being priced at $135 before the IPO, SpaceX opened at $150 for traders. It peaked in the early afternoon at more than $176, but it never fell much below $160 the rest of the day. 

We'll see next week what investors think as the hype of opening day dies down, and the reality of investing in a largely unprofitable business with big ambitions sets in. 

And we'll also have to see what today's success for SpaceX means for companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, as they prepare for possible IPOs later this year.

June 12, 2026 at 1:08 PM PDT

Workers prepare the SpaceX Starship ahead of a launch in Texas in April 2023. SpaceX employees have been subjected to grueling conditions in Elon Musk's rush to send humans to Mars. 

Patrick Fallon/Contributor/Getty Images

According to several news reports, including a detailed piece by The New York Times, thousands of current and former SpaceX employees could become overnight millionaires, thanks to today's IPO. 

Why does this coverage feel like a red herring? Probably because Elon Musk has become the world's first trillionaire, while other billionaires in his circle, along with a flock of Silicon Valley venture capitalists and private investment firms, are going to hit the jackpot again. 

The rest of us can barely afford to eat the proverbial cake. 

It's worth a reminder that SpaceX, which has over 22,000 full-time employees worldwide, is known for its treacherous workplace conditions -- long hours, crunch conditions and lax safety protocols -- and its stance against unionization. A 2023 Reuters investigation documented at least 600 previously unreported injuries at SpaceX facilities, which represent only a portion of the total case count -- this includes crushed limbs, amputations, electrocutions, head and eye wounds and one death. 

Often justified as part of a so-called urgent mission to Mars, SpaceX employees have paid the price for Musk's unrelenting push to colonize space at breakneck speed.

"Private companies' use of workers is the proverbial moving van," said Kathryn Anne Edwards, an independent economist and policy consultant. "Whatever size you get, you'll fill up with stuff." 

In other words, private companies exploit whatever gap exists between labor-market realities and labor regulations. In practice, that means paying the lowest wages possible, maintaining worse working conditions and opposing any display of worker power.

As SpaceX transitions from a private to a public company, it seems unlikely that transparency requirements will improve worker protections. Instead, the pressure to deliver quarterly earnings growth could push management to squeeze labor even harder. 

Edwards noted that many high-paid white-collar workers assume labor protections apply only to low-wage employees, but that's a mistake. In the tech industry, unfair and exploitative practices have been major issues. 

"One of the largest wage-suppressing corporate collusion cases was among tech firms in Silicon Valley," Edwards told me, referring to the 2010 case where some of the biggest and most influential technology companies deprived skilled employees of better job opportunities. That showed that even highly educated, well-compensated workers are not shielded from this reality.

June 12, 2026 at 12:22 PM PDT

If you buy shares of SpaceX, you're also buying Grok.

Thomas Trutschel/Getty Images

SpaceX isn't just a company that builds rockets that may or may not work. It also includes xAI with its controversial generative AI Grok chatbot, which has faced intense criticism over its sexualized deepfakes. Experts warn that xAI threatens not only the market but also consumer safety.

On Thursday, a day before the IPO, protesters took to the streets in Times Square, outside the Nasdaq global headquarters, with a banner reading #StopSpaceXChildNudes. As we noted in our article, the goal of the protest was to "tie the landmark financial offering to deepfake sexualized images of children generated by SpaceX's AI platform, Grok." 

The demonstration, which was organized by the advocacy group Safe AI Now, displayed a huge, highly unflattering inflatable caricature of a bare-chested Musk, with the words "SpaceX's Grok makes AI child porn" on its chest and back. 

An inflatable effigy of Elon Musk in Times Square on June 11, a day ahead of SpaceX's initial public offering.

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Grok drew international outrage earlier this year for allowing people to use its AI to create nonconsensual intimate imagery, sometimes referred to as deepfake porn. By one estimate, the chatbot's image generator created over 3 million sexualized images in 11 days, thousands of which had children as the subject. 

Investigations and lawsuits into xAI's child sexual exploitation and abuse haven't dampened investors' excitement for SpaceX stock, though.

"The $1.75 trillion evaluation of SpaceX, the largest in financial history as we know, just cannot be disentangled from child sexual abuse," Jenna Sherman, campaign director at sexual abuse survivor advocacy group UltraViolet, said on Thursday in a press conference.

xAI builds the Grok AI models.

Adobe Stock

This is far from the only time there have been grave concerns about Grok and safety. After an update last year, Grok, which is deeply embedded in the X social network, began spewing racism and anti-semitism, even referring to itself as "MechaHitler." 

As one xAI employee told The Verge: "Safety is a dead org at xAI." And a former xAI employee filed a lawsuit against xAI this week, hours before the IPO, alleging he was fired for raising AI safety concerns.

The catastrophic risks associated with AI -- including abuse, cybersecurity threats and bioterrorism -- are more pressing as models become more advanced and regulation fails to keep pace. 

Even compared to competitors like Google, OpenAI and Anthropic, xAI doesn't have the minimal safety precautions, said Tyler Whitmer, CEO of a legal tech advocacy group named LASST. "The gap between what xAI is doing and its peers is only going to get worse as the frontier pushes forward," Whitmer said. 

More importantly, the IPO doesn't disclose how these risks will be addressed. "Investors should be demanding more answers about this," Whitmer said. 

June 12, 2026 at 11:44 AM PDT

SpaceX's plan to park a million data centers in Earth's orbit has left scientists worried about a Wall-E-style orbital graveyard. 

Mark Garlick/Space Photo Library/Getty Images

The race to build AI data centers is driven by companies competing for control of the industry: OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Anthropic and Elon Musk's xAI, which is part of SpaceX. Much of SpaceX's path to profitability relies on the feasibility of building data centers in space. 

Musk predicted in a recent video interview that SpaceX would launch 1 million tons of satellites per year in the next three years. The company currently has about 10,000 satellites in space, totaling about 5,658 tons. 

Musk is no stranger to bold predictions, but many industry experts I've talked to says this one stretches credulity.

"The orbital configurations for the 1 million satellites are hilarious -- even SpaceX knows that the entire endeavor is complete fantasy," Sascha Meinrath, a professor of telecommunications at Penn State University, told CNET.

There are reasons why space is an attractive place for data centers. As SpaceX's S-1 filing with the SEC says, "Space offers effectively unlimited power and vast expanse to sustain uninterrupted operations as capacity grows."

The majority of Americans oppose data centers, which consume an astonishing amount of electricity and water. SpaceX currently faces two lawsuits over its ground-based data centers near the Tennessee-Mississippi border. The company is also being sued by tribal and conservation groups in Texas, which argue that its rocket launches are causing severe environmental damage in the area.

"SpaceX is harming our way of life here. Every time they launch a rocket, my apartment starts vibrating," Bekah Hinojosa, a community organizer with the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, one of the plaintiffs on the Texas lawsuit, told CNET.

But orbital data centers aren't without risk. Scientists have raised alarms about the damage to the Ozone layer from satellite de-orbiting, the growing problem of space debris and even potential casualties on the ground. 

You can read more about it in my article: SpaceX's 1M AI Satellites Will Create Space Junkyard, Experts Warn. 

June 12, 2026 at 11:32 AM PDT

Musk was already the richest person in the world.

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Elon Musk is still the richest person in the world, but he hit a new milestone on Friday: the first trillionaire. SpaceX's public offering pushed him into a new stratosphere of wealth.

Musk doesn't have $1,000,000,000,000 in a bank account somewhere. Much of his wealth is tied up in his companies, SpaceX and Tesla; he is CEO of both companies.

He has a 42% equity stake in SpaceX, meaning he owns less than half the company. With SpaceX shares trading around $170 apiece, that makes Musk's slice of the pie worth more than $900 billion. Musk disclosed in pre-IPO paperwork that he owns about 717 million shares of Tesla stock. Those are valued at around $400 apiece, which gives Musk about $286 billion from Tesla. 

Musk's milestone comes at a time of dramatic wealth inequality in the US. The median household income for the US was $83,730 in 2024, according to the Census Bureau. The median US household had a net worth of $191,100 in 2023, according to the Census Bureau -- just $61,930 if you exclude the equity in a home. Inflation, the measure of the steady increase in the price of goods, is at a three-year high at 4.2%.

June 12, 2026 at 10:21 AM PDT

The IPO is likely to deliver a major windfall to Musk while leaving ordinary investors exposed to massive risk. 

sementsova321/Adobe Stock

SpaceX's IPO looks like a rigged deal to make Elon Musk richer while the rest of us take the hit in our retirement accounts, one US senator said this week.

Ahead of today's SpaceX IPO, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, wrote to the Securities and Exchange Commission requesting an investigation into the SpaceX stock sale. She argues that it has "the most rigged corporate structure in history" and "sets a dangerous precedent for future IPOs." 

Warren warns that the IPO is tilted against everyday savers, who could end up risking their investment funds while Musk and Wall Street insiders, including senior Trump administration officials, reap the benefits. 

A recent investigative video by the nonprofit newsroom More Perfect Union, We Uncovered a Hidden Wealth Transfer in the SpaceX IPO: You're Holding the Bag, explains why. 

In that video, business journalist Eric Gardner demonstrates how Musk convinced Nasdaq to fast-track SpaceX into its index, a move that exposes tens of millions of people to overvalued shares for a stock designed to shoot up at launch and then completely tank. 

"It's a massive wealth transfer from ordinary Americans to insiders under the guise of an IPO," Gardner told me via email. 

Let's unpack that. This is not a regular IPO where investors choose to buy voluntarily. Under normal rules, a new company must wait up to a year (called "seasoning") before it can be added to major indexes like the Nasdaq 100. 

This spring, however, Nasdaq quietly changed its rules -- without SEC approval -- to fast-track SpaceX's inclusion. The S&P 500 index, considered the primary benchmark for the US stock market, decided not to change its rules from the standard 12-month waiting period.

According to Gardner, the fast-entry change could mean that major index providers and retirement accounts tied to the Nasdaq 100 and Russell 1000 benchmarks are legally obliged to buy these stocks, even if those investors would never have picked them on their own. 

Passive index funds are often sold as low-cost, hands-off investments for everyday people, including through 401(k)s. But now, anyone who holds an index fund that's fast-tracking SpaceX is buying into a risky company at an overly inflated price, which analysts say is double what the company is worth. 

"Households could become heavily exposed without making an active choice," Gardner told CNET.

Many financial experts warn that SpaceX's public offering has all the hallmarks of a corporate "pump and dump" scheme, designed to peak early and leave late buyers stranded.

June 12, 2026 at 9:34 AM PDT

SpaceX went public on the Nasdaq exchange Friday, with shares starting trading at $150.

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Lots of Robinhood users reported issues with the trading app right about the time SpaceX shares started trading. Outage reports on Downdetector peaked around 4,800 at 11:48 a.m. ET, right about when you could finally actually buy a share of SpaceX. (Downdetector and CNET are owned by the same company, Ziff Davis.)

"Robinhood saw record-breaking traffic today," a Robinhood spokesperson told CNET. "As a result, some customers experienced latency and intermittent issues. Essential systems have recovered and our teams are closely monitoring."

People reporting errors on Downdetector were not happy. Some said only the app was down, while others said both the app and the desktop interface were down. 

And the timing could be significant. We expect lots of volatility in the price of SpaceX today and for the next couple of weeks. While shares started trading around $150, the price was $160 or above just moments later. 

June 12, 2026 at 8:55 AM PDT

SpaceX started trading Friday on the Nasdaq.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

SpaceX started trading on the market under the ticker SPCX about 10 minutes before 12 p.m. ET, at a price of $150 per share, which quickly jumped to $160. That's higher than the $135 at which shares were initially priced. 

A roughly 19% increase might sound small if you're looking at a typical tech stock IPO, where shares can increase drastically on the first day. However, when dealing with SpaceX, a company with a $1.7 trillion valuation, this jump is a mind-boggling sum of money. It adds nearly $330 billion in market value in a matter of minutes. 

We expect a lot of price movement in the first hours and days as the market figures out what exactly this company is worth. This opening pop validates the concerns of some financial experts, who worry about the scope of retail hype around SpaceX's overvaluation. 

June 12, 2026 at 7:59 AM PDT

"Today we make history -- again," said SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell in her opening remarks.

Shotwell and Musk both spoke moments before the Nasdaq opening bell rang. Here are their full remarks. If you don't have an X account or don't want to watch on X, you can check out the Associated Press's video on YouTube.

June 12, 2026 at 7:29 AM PDT

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches as part of a Starlink satellite internet mission.

Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images

This is the Falcon 9 rocket during liftoff.

SpaceX

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket out of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 8:37 a.m. ET the morning of the IPO. The rocket is part of the Starlink 10-54 mission and is carrying 29 Starlink broadband satellites.

June 12, 2026 at 6:40 AM PDT

Elon Musk speaks via video from Texas before the Nasdaq opening bell. 

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Speaking from Starbase, Texas, ahead of the Nasdaq's opening bell, Musk outlined SpaceX's mission, which is eventually to take people to the moon and Mars and beyond. "That's what SpaceX is all about: to take the fiction out of science fiction," he said.

Musk said he didn't think SpaceX would succeed when it began in a warehouse in El Segundo, California, in 2002. 

"I gave SpaceX less than a 10% chance of succeeding at all," he said. "In fact, I told people this. I said we're probably going to fail, but we should probably try, because if there's not a new company that enters space, we will never be a truly spacefaring civilization."

June 12, 2026 at 6:30 AM PDT

June 12, 2026 at 5:55 AM PDT

kovop58/Adobe Stock

There's one major omission from the list of companies under Elon Musk's umbrella: Tesla. The auto company, which also makes robots, solar panels and batteries, is separate and already publicly traded.

Tesla's IPO was in 2010, valuing the company at $1.7 billion, with shares sold at $17 apiece (that valuation is about $2.6 billion in today's dollars). SpaceX's current $1.7 trillion valuation is about 1,000 times Tesla's IPO valuation if it were done today, despite the fact that SpaceX isn't a profitable company and Tesla is one. 

Naturally, times have changed: Tesla is currently worth about $1.5 trillion.

No company is truly analogous to SpaceX. But if we look back at the IPOs of other major tech companies, Musk's company's valuation is still in a league of its own. Meta, then Facebook, had $38 shares and raised $16 billion at a $104 billion valuation in 2012. Alphabet, Google's parent company, was valued at $23 billion in 2004. (Meta is currently worth about $1.45 trillion; Alphabet is worth $4.3 trillion.)

June 11, 2026 at 5:18 PM PDT

Starlink's satellite internet service has over 12 million active subscribers globally. 

Mike Mareen/Adobe Stock

Starlink is SpaceX's satellite internet service, and the only part of the company that's actually profitable. Last year, it generated $4.42 billion, largely subsidizing xAI's $6.35 billion losses. 

"There are lots of good reasons not to invest in it, but on the other hand, SpaceX has a history of defying conventional wisdom," says Eric Berger, senior space editor at Ars Technica and author of the book Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX. "It has certainly done that in launch, and it has done that in operating Starlink."

While HughesNet and Viasat had offered satellite internet since the dial-up days, Starlink revolutionized the technology when it launched its first satellites into low Earth orbit in 2019, providing a modern internet connection virtually anywhere in the world. Despite inspiring a slew of competitors, Starlink has dominated the skies. It currently has 10,300 satellites in the sky; the next closest are 654 for OneWeb and 329 for Amazon Leo.

"SpaceX has just moved so far and so fast," says Tim Farrar, a satellite industry consultant. "People like to talk about this as a race. Is anyone even competitive with SpaceX?"

While Starlink has been SpaceX's sole profit engine, how much room it has to grow is an open question. The technology has been a godsend in rural areas, but most Starlink customers in the US don't even meet the FCC's minimum broadband speed requirements (100/20 Mbps). Despite consistent improvements, one study from last year found that Starlink can only serve 6.66 households per square mile before service starts to dip below that threshold. 

Starlink's not an especially attractive alternative where cable or fiber (or even 5G home internet) are available, but there are still billions of people without broadband where it would be a game changer, and Musk has increasingly promoted Starlink's direct-to-cell potential over the past year. But more and more, SpaceX has been putting its eggs into the AI basket. 

"They're not really a space company anymore as much as an AI company," says Berger. "Which is such a weird thing to say about a company that's clearly the best spaceflight company in the world."

June 11, 2026 at 4:31 PM PDT

IPOs can be volatile, especially for retail investors. SpaceX is no exception. 

Sundry Photography/Adobe Stock

I just did a quick Google search for SpaceX IPO. How many hundreds of articles are we actually expected to read about this? 

Given the buzz around Friday's big IPO, there are a few misconceptions worth addressing upfront. While many people view SpaceX as a massive, dominant space enterprise, it's more complicated than that. 

"In reality, it's a very successful but fairly small satellite launch company, bolted onto a stagnant money-losing social media company and a money-incinerating AI company, and then sprinkled with a lot of hype about humankind going interplanetary," said Robin Wigglesworth, editor of the Financial Times' finance blog, Alphaville. 

In other words, perhaps it's more akin to a vertically integrated space and communications company with ambitious, high-risk side bets. Sure, at its center, SpaceX is a launch company that designs rockets (like the Falcon 9 and Starship) and sells access to space. But around that, it has those related businesses -- most notably Starlink, its satellite internet network, and xAI, which SpaceX acquired in February 2026. And since xAI includes the social media platform X and X's chatbot, Grok, they're also under the SpaceX umbrella. 

X hasn't been durable in terms of revenue. And, like most cash-burning AI enterprises, xAI is expensive to run and is reporting large losses. 

One could say the SpaceX ecosystem revolves around a single goal: building the infrastructure needed for global connectivity and, eventually, space settlement. But a major concern is that SpaceX's overall package is driven more by hype and momentum than by its proven profitability. 

Wigglesworth said the biggest immediate risk is straightforward: The stock could drop soon after it begins trading. That outcome would affect both the company and investors, though it wouldn't necessarily signal broader economic trouble. As he noted, IPOs "do badly all the time." 

In the first few weeks after the IPO, price movements may be misleading. The opening day can be volatile, with banks helping stabilize prices and strong retail demand potentially pushing shares higher. We'll also see index funds start to buy in, which can help nudge the price up a bit. 

However, as Wigglesworth pointed out, the more meaningful test will come after a month, when the market determines whether there is sustained demand "for a company trading at some of the juiciest valuation multiples we've seen in history."

So here's another misconception to address: If SpaceX is popular, it's safe to buy, right? 

I didn't have to read too many articles to get an answer to that. 

"Popularity and renown are bad indicators for what makes a successful investment," Wigglesworth told me. "Even good companies can be bad investments at a dumb price." 

June 11, 2026 at 3:25 PM PDT

SpaceX has been advertising all over Wall Street ahead of its IPO Friday.

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The IPO, as planned, is expected to value the company around $1.75 trillion. But not everybody agrees that the company is worth anything near that. Take the analysts at Morningstar, who looked at the company's core business lines and came up with something significantly less.

An analysis published last week by Morningstar's Nicolas Owens and Suryansh Sharma put the company's value at $780 billion -- about half what SpaceX has said. They said the rocket business has the biggest upside, while Starlink will continue to be the main driver of cash for the company, although its opportunity to grow is more limited than SpaceX estimated. 

"In SpaceX's registration statement, it identifies a combined USD 1.6 trillion total addressable market for its mobile and broadband services," they wrote. "The figures equal or exceed all current global spending on mobile and broadband services outside Russia and China."

As for xAI, the Morningstar analysts are underwhelmed. They said they saw that space as competitive and that it "also poses a material threat of value destruction to the company."

June 11, 2026 at 1:09 PM PDT

An IPO is an initial public offering.

Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images

There are no dumb questions here. An IPO is an initial public offering, which is when a private company decides to "go public." It's a business and financial process that allows anyone, not just employees, to buy shares of a company on a stock exchange, like the Nasdaq. 

During this process, companies have to disclose previously unpublished information about how their businesses operate -- how much money they make, how they spend it, what risks threaten their work and how they plan to address them. This information is vital to how Wall Street reacts; it determines the success of a launch. It also gives us new insights into how the business operates.

Once a company is public, it must publicly share its performance during quarterly earnings calls. These reports, especially recent ones from big tech companies, have been essential sources of light into the black box operations of rapid AI development, spending and future plans. The market's reaction to these reports is also a useful litmus test for understanding how we're all reacting to these changes.

Even if you never interact with SpaceX as a public company -- you don't own stock, you don't have Starlink internet or post on X -- the sheer magnitude of SpaceX's IPO means it will likely affect your life in one way or another. Most likely, SpaceX will become part of big index funds, where many people's retirement and pension plans are invested. So you may be unknowingly tying your financial future to the success, or failure, of Elon Musk's megacorporation.

June 11, 2026 at 12:42 PM PDT

SpaceX's $75 billion IPO is expected to be the biggest ever.

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Retail investors have placed over $100 billion in orders for SpaceX's upcoming IPO, underscoring strong interest in the company as it approaches what could be the largest public offering ever. Demand for SpaceX stock is significantly higher than the number of shares being sold, or roughly three to four times oversubscribed. 

Why? One reason is that SpaceX, which holds a dominant market share in the global commercial launch and satellite internet industries, has long been a private company. This is the first chance for most of the public to invest. 

But behind that is what Wall Street sees as massive growth potential. Goldman Sachs, the lead underwriter for SpaceX's planned public offering, projects SpaceX's AI revenue will skyrocket tenfold in the next several years, from $3.2 billion in 2025 to to $322 billion by 2030. Meanwhile, major industry reports, including those from Novaspace, project the broader global space economy to hit the $1 trillion milestone by 2034.

According to Karee Venema, senior investing editor at Kiplinger, that demand could be why SpaceX and CEO Elon Musk took an unconventional approach. SpaceX launched its IPO marketing by saying that it's selling 555,555,555 shares at $135 a share. Those optimistic projections for growth are probably why "investors are likely willing to pay such a premium for the IPO," Venema told CNET. 

But an oversubscribed stock, where demand heavily outweighs supply, comes with risks for investors, like increased volatility and large price moves in the shares once trading begins, according to Venema. 

High demand often causes a massive price "pop" on day one, followed by sharp drops when early investors cash out. There's also a degree of underwriter favoritism, where large institutional investors usually get priority over individual retail investors for the limited shares.

Venema also pointed to the so-called Musk effect, which refers to the sudden shifts in a company's valuation and public perception driven by Musk's personal actions, statements and overall branding. That phenomenon can be a double-edged sword, as seen in 2025, when Musk dedicated significant time to the Trump administration's unconventional Department of Government Efficiency, and Tesla's revenue and stock price fell sharply. 

That same Musk effect can generate unparalleled market enthusiasm and premium valuations. "Regardless of your personal feelings for Musk, he has done extraordinary things and a lot of folks want to be a part of it -- as evidenced by the excitement around the SpaceX IPO," Venema said. 

If you want to buy stock in SpaceX, Venema recommends you understand the dangers associated with IPOs and only buy shares with money you can afford to lose. First and foremost, talk to a financial adviser before investing.