An unprofitable company has once again rewritten the history of global capital markets.
SpaceX, the space and artificial intelligence (AI) company led by Elon Musk, listed on the U.S. Nasdaq on the 12th local time. The stock ticker is “SPCX.” The offering price was $135 per share, but trading opened at $150, and the stock finished its first day up 19%, putting its market capitalization at $2.12 trillion (about 3,200 trillion won). At one point during the session, it surged more than 30%, briefly pushing its valuation to as much as $2.25 trillion.
The listing set no shortage of records. SpaceX sold 555.56 million shares and raised $75 billion (about 114 trillion won).
That more than doubles the $29.4 billion record set by Saudi Aramco in 2019, making it the largest initial public offering in history.
By market capitalization, it ranked sixth in the world, behind Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon. Founder Musk’s wealth surpassed $1 trillion (about 1,500 trillion won), making him the first “trillionaire” in human history.
The glamorous figures reflect a shift in the company’s business model. Founded in 2002, SpaceX began as a rocket company that lowered the cost of space launches through technology that recovers and reuses rockets once they have been used.
But today, most of the company’s revenue comes not from rockets but from Starlink, its satellite internet business. It provides internet service via satellites in areas where laying fiber-optic cables on the ground is difficult, and has been rapidly expanding its global subscriber base.
The transformation did not stop in space. In February, SpaceX acquired Musk’s AI startup xAI. Through that deal, the data centers, generative AI model “Grok,” and social media platform X, formerly Twitter, became part of SpaceX’s business lineup. It has become a conglomerate spanning rockets, satellites, AI, and social media.
The picture Musk is drawing is even larger. He said the capital raised will be used to deploy more than 100,000 communications satellites into Earth orbit and to build AI data centers in space.
The idea is to turn outer space, free from power shortages and cooling constraints on the ground, into a stage for AI computation. That is why the market sees SpaceX not as just a space company, but as a next-generation platform combining satellite communications and AI infrastructure.
The problem is that all of this valuation rests on losses, not profits. According to its securities filing, SpaceX has accumulated a total deficit of $41.3 billion (about 56 trillion won) since its founding in 2002.
That is the result of massive investment in launching satellites and developing the next-generation Starship rocket. Corporate value is normally assessed on the basis of earnings, but SpaceX’s 3,200 trillion won valuation is priced on future potential rather than current performance.
The backdrop to this valuation was the frenzy surrounding AI investment. Even amid a war in the Middle East that has lasted for four months, U.S. stocks continue to hit record highs thanks to AI-related companies.
Goldman Sachs President John Waldron called the listing a signal of strong market demand to fund the AI boom.
Robert Greifeld, former chairman of Nasdaq, noted that the company’s shares are trading not on results but on the aspiration of what humanity may achieve in the future. In other words, expectations for the future have become the price.
Musk also secured tight control. While ordinary investors receive one vote per share, the shares he holds carry 10 votes per share under a dual-class structure. Even after the listing, he will retain about 85% of the company’s voting power. It is the same structure used by Alphabet and Meta: take capital from the market, but leave control with the founder.
The question now is whether expectations will turn into results.
The validity of a 3,200 trillion won valuation for an unprofitable company must now be answered by quarterly earnings. Deploying 100,000 satellites and building space-based data centers remain blueprints at the conceptual stage, and commercialization of the next-generation Starship rocket is still a challenge that must be proven. If expectations do not translate into real profits, a stock price built on future value could swing just as quickly.
The market is also looking ahead to the next contenders. Greifeld predicted that AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic would pass through the door of the IPO market later this year, following SpaceX. The success of this record-breaking IPO is being interpreted as opening the gate for massive public offerings in the AI era.
For Korean investors, this is not someone else’s story. SpaceX has proposed allocating about 30% of the offering shares to retail investors, and the growth narrative of satellite communications and AI infrastructure is also likely to ripple through related industries in Korea.
Still, since views coexist that the stock is driven by aspiration rather than earnings, this is a moment to weigh the excitement of a record-setting debut against the hard fact that it remains an unprofitable company.