SpaceX's $135 IPO: What Happened, and Why the Stock Jumped 20% on Day One

SpaceX went public on June 11, 2026, at $135 per share, raising more than $75 billion — making it one of the largest initial public offerings ever, according to the New York Times. The stock immediately jumped nearly 20% when it began trading, per Yahoo Finance. That pop means the company was worth well over $150 billion by the end of the first trading day.

How the deal was structured

The company sold 555.6 million shares at the $135 price. But there's a wrinkle: the banks underwriting the deal — the firms that organized the IPO — kept the right to buy up to another 83.3 million shares at the same price if demand stayed strong. SEC filings confirm this. This option, called a "greenshoe," is standard in big IPOs. If fully used, it would add roughly $11 billion more to what the company raised.

Think of the greenshoe as a safety valve. If the stock stays popular and trades above $135, the underwriters buy those extra shares in the open market and pocket the difference. If the stock falls below $135, they exercise the option as a way to support the price and cover their short position. Either way, the goal is to calm down wild price swings in the first few weeks.

A global offering

SpaceX didn't just sell to American investors. The company filed paperwork with regulators in Australia and the European Union ahead of the U.S. IPO. An Australian prospectus was lodged June 4, 2026 — four days before pricing. A separate prospectus for Europe, approved by BaFin (the German regulator) on June 5, 2026, set a maximum price of $162 per share. That ceiling is a regulatory requirement in Europe — regulators demand to know the highest price a company might charge before the books open — but it gave the underwriters a boundary to work within across three separate countries.

This multi-country coordination is a lot of work. SpaceX had to satisfy the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Australia's ASIC, and Germany's BaFin at the same time. The BaFin approval also gave the shares passport rights across the entire European Economic Area, suggesting the banks were hunting for serious European institutional investors.

The 20% jump: leaving money on the table?

A 20% first-day gain on an IPO this size is not routine. The float — the number of shares available to trade — was large enough that this can't be blamed on thin supply or a tight lock-up (a temporary ban on early shareholders selling). The price jump suggests one of two things: either the banks priced the IPO at $135 as a calculated conservative choice to ensure a smooth debut, or they simply misjudged what investors would actually pay.

If the price had landed at, say, $155 instead, the base offering alone would have raised another $11 billion. That's not hypothetical money — it's cash SpaceX left on the table on day one. Only the order book data — the private record of what big investors bid for shares — can tell us whether this was strategy or mistake. That data stays private, so we'll never know for certain.

Class A shares and voting control

SpaceX uses a multi-class stock structure. This is a formal arrangement where different share types carry different voting rights, even though they may have equal economic value — meaning a dollar gain is the same, but the say you get in company decisions is different. This setup lets Elon Musk and other long-time SpaceX owners keep majority voting control even as the company raises capital and sells stakes to the public. Anyone buying SpaceX stock should read the prospectus carefully to understand how many votes each share carries and whether that can change over time.

What happens next

The underwriters' greenshoe option expires in 30 days — a standard window. Until then, if the stock stays above $135, the underwriters will stabilize the price by buying shares in the market. That provides a soft floor under the stock for several weeks. Once that window closes, the price can move freely based on company news and investor sentiment.