New York [US], June 12, (ANI): SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell rang the market opening bell ahead a few hours ahead of the SpaceX commencement of trading on Nasdaq. The firm's CEO Elon Musk participated in the event virtually from Texas, while Shotwell along with a few SpaceX employees including the company's CFO Brett Johnsen, was at Nasdaq building in New York.

The SpaceX stock will start trading in a few hours under the ticker SPCX on Nasdaq giving an opportunity to individuals to freely trade in the company's shares.

SpaceX raised USD75 billion selling around 556 million shares priced at USD135 apiece at a valuation of USD1.77 trillion. Musk, who owns the bulk of the shares himself and dominates voting rights, became world's first trillionaire with majority of his earnings coming from the SpaceX holding.

The SpaceX IPO saw blockbuster investor demand catapulting the company into an elite club of names with more than a trillion-dollar valuation.

The rocket, satellite internet and AI company has ambitions ranging from multiplanetary civilisation to establishing data centres in space.

'Founded in 2002, SpaceX is the only company building the integrated hardware and software infrastructure of the future across space, connectivity, and AI,' SpaceX said in its prospectus.

The AI unit xAI was founded in 2023 and acquired by SpaceX in early 2026. The company is rapidly scaling its compute infrastructure and boasts one of the largest compute clusters - COLOSSUS and COLOSSUS II.

The company is also planning Terafab facility, a chip manufacturing initiative with Tesla and Intel that aims to further extend the vertical integration to chip design and manufacturing.

SpaceX will soon be a part of Nasdaq 100 index as the stock exchange changed its rules in March for speedier entry of megacap listings. The inclusion will automatically make SpaceX a part of many passive index funds indirectly making the company a part of many individuals' portfolio.

The SpaceX IPO has also come as a boon for thousands of current and former employees by making them millionaires.

A larger-than-usual tranche of the shares on offer were for retail investors among whom many are a dedicated legion of Musk's fanbase.

Going against the norms, Musk fixed the IPO price at USD135 per share instead of going the usual route of setting a price range. That process allows to gauge investor interest for the IPO at various price points but Musk wanted to keep a take-it-or-leave-it approach and fixed the price at USD135 apiece.

Even at that price point, there was massive interest for the SpaceX shares as the offer was oversubscribed 4x getting bids not just from individual investors but big asset managers and high networth individuals. A WSJ report said that Blackrock has placed an order worth USD5 billion for SpaceX shares.

The SpaceX debut is happening at a pivotal moment for AI as the wave sweeps stock markets lifting many AI-linked shares to record highs. The listing will also be a test that will gauge investor appetite for upcoming big-ticket AI listings with Anthropic and OpenAI slated to go public later this year. (ANI)