Price is set, but retail still up in the air

Nothing about SpaceX‘s initial public offering is ordinary. The rocket maker is aiming to raise a record sum, by a wide margin, at a historic valuation, and will be controlled by Elon Musk, who’s also CEO of Tesla, another trillion-dollar company. 

When it comes to the mechanics of the share sale, SpaceX is offering a take-it-or-leave-it price of $135, rather than providing a range and then pricing the deal based on demand, as is customary in IPOs. 

But as the stock offering gets underway on Thursday, certain customs will be familiar to Wall Street. At some point, all of the IPO shares — roughly $75 billion worth — have to get allocated to the underwriters and asset managers so they can reach their clients before trading begins on Friday.

“Elon has dictated the price, and, assuming investors go for it, you can check that box,” said Lise Buyer, founder of IPO consultancy Class V Group. “But somebody still has to determine where the shares are going.”

In a typical offering, the pricing takes place the evening before the market debut. In the weeks leading up to that point, the issuer, in tandem with the underwriters, provides a price range and then lifts it if investors are showing signs of enthusiasm. 

For example, when artificial intelligence chipmaker Cerebras was gearing up for its IPO last month, the company first said it would sell shares at between $115 and $125 a piece. The next week, it upped the range to between $150 and $160. 

The IPO price should reflect how investors feel about the final range, with companies generally preferring to price at or above the high end. Cerebras ultimately priced its offering at $185, a sign of Wall Street’s bubbling excitement for a pure-play AI IPO. The stock popped when it opened the next day, closing up 68% at over $311. 

SpaceX is skirting the whole buildup process.

Heading into its abbreviated roadshow last week, the company said $135 is the share price and $1.77 trillion is the anticipated market cap. That’s for a company that generated $18.7 billion in revenue last year and recorded an operating loss of $4.2 billion. 

Among the nine public trillion-dollar companies, the smallest by revenue is Micron with $58 billion over the past year, and the least profitable is Musk’s other company, Tesla, with $3.8 billion in 2025 net income. 

“It’s not like investors are home doing math,” Buyer said. “There’s zero math that makes any sense whatsoever.” 

Because the price is set, Buyer said, SpaceX could start working to allocate the shares earlier than normal and not have to wait until the actual pricing takes place. That could be particularly useful because of how many shares need to be distributed. 

SpaceX has told investors that it plans to stop taking orders on…