Liftoff: SpaceX Gray-Market Trading Signals 35% IPO Pop

ZeroHedge
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The short version

  • Risk assets are catching a bid Friday morning, with S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures both up roughly 30 bps.
  • Treasurys are also rallying, with yields down 8 to 10 bps across the curve, led by the belly, and the 10-year yield is around 4.45%.
  • The timing could not be better for Elon Musk.
  • SpaceX shares are set to hit public markets in the coming hours, potentially making Musk the world's first trillionaire on paper and minting roughly 4,000 employee millionaires.
  • SpaceX's public market debut comes as themes of artificial intelligence and the space economy ramp up.

The story

Liftoff: SpaceX Gray-Market Trading Signals 35% IPO Pop

Trader sentiment has sharply reversed after President Trump canceled the planned strikes and negotiators signaled progress toward a potential U.S.-Iran peace deal.

Risk assets are catching a bid Friday morning, with S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures both up roughly 30 bps. Treasurys are also rallying, with yields down 8 to 10 bps across the curve, led by the belly, and the 10-year yield is around 4.45%.

The timing could not be better for Elon Musk. SpaceX shares are set to hit public markets in the coming hours, potentially making Musk the world's first trillionaire on paper and minting roughly 4,000 employee millionaires. SpaceX's public market debut comes as themes of artificial intelligence and the space economy ramp up.

Already, pre-IPO trading in the derivatives linked to SpaceX shows a potential first-day surge of 30% to 50%.

IG International pricing implied a market value near $2.4 trillion on Friday morning, more than 35% above the company's $135 IPO price and $1.77 trillion valuation.

On Hyperliquid, SpaceX-linked perpetual futures traded at $175-$180, implying a valuation above $2.3 trillion, with 24-hour volume of more than $224 million and open interest of over $252 million.

Late in the U.S. cash session on Thursday, SpaceX filed a free writing prospectus (FWP) which confirmed the company sold 555.6 million shares at $135 each, for a total size of $75 billion (excluding the greenshoe), making history with the biggest-ever IPO, launching it into the top ranks of the largest public companies and putting founder Elon Musk on the verge of becoming the world's first trillionaire.

For context, SpaceX is more than double the size of the previous largest IPO - Saudi Aramco's $29.4 billion listing in 2019. The SpaceX registration statement was declared effective on Thursday.

The pricing details are shown below.

At $135, SpaceX will have a market value of $1.77 trillion. Accounting for employee stock options and restricted share units, the pricing gives it a fully diluted valuation of about $1.8 trillion. SpaceX's market value will rank it among the top 10 public companies globally, and make it larger even than Musk's own Tesla.

According to Polymarket, there is a 84% chance the IPO closes above its offering price tomorrow, and a 46% chance it rises more than 20%.

Odds on Polymarket are surging that today's market cap will close between $2 and $2.5 trillion. 

Will SpaceX's market cap be between $2.0T and $2.5T at market close on IPO day?
Yes 59% · No 42%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

According to Bloomberg data, Wall Street analysts, including one from New Street Research, Oppenheimer, and KGI Securities, have all rated SpaceX "Buy" with an average 12-month price target of $189.

Oppenheimer analyst Timothy Horan published a note on Thursday, initiating coverage of SpaceX with a $190 price target and a "Buy" rating.

Horan's bull thesis:

We believe SPCX intends to converge communications and cloud/AI using space- based infrastructure. We see potential for SPCX to leverage terrestrial compute expertise as a bridge (and possible back-up plan) to enable key scale and cost advantages. We see it as the only vertically-integrated AI company with the required capital, data, LLMs, hardware, manufacturing and engineering talent. We note significant regulatory, technology, execution, keyman and investor expectation risks remain and that thermal management of chips for space applications in space within four years appears challenging. However, its space infrastructure appears structurally advantaged. We note terrestrial DC capabilities include highest velocity/lowest cost DCs (Colossus) which combined with V3s and Cursor will drive 2027-30E revenues. We initiate coverage with an Outperform rating/$190 PT at the IPO price of $135.

His key points:

  • Robust public currency is key to business strategy. We believe access to capital is essential for CEO Elon Musk's long-term AI vision in order to fund dominant communications and compute capacity along with acquisitions of AI companies. Eventual Tesla merger is plausible, but near term we believe the cos. will remain a quasi-vertically integrated ecosystem to provide access to capital.

  • Large markets, but critical technology risk remains. We believe SPCX could address a $10T TAM by 2035E, but note that critical enabling-technology commercialization for space-based DCs remains uncertain, notably for thermally resistant chips, and costs could prove noncompetitive even if SPCX successfully builds chips. Should technology development be delayed, we see potential to leverage core expertise in terrestrial DC buildouts to support AI plans.

  • Starship is crucial for success. SPCX is targeting 10K launches/year (27/day) totaling ~1.4B kg to deploy 1M datacenters and 100K communication satellites to support 1TW of its own manufactured chips. We believe this is only possible with capital/Starship, the most complex machine ever built. We expect growth to accelerate in 2027E as Starship enters commercial service and as AI LLMs/ infrastructure begin to see market traction.

  • LEO communications capacity to grow 100x, at a $10/subscriber/month cost. Goal is to have a majority of AI compute, offered in space at lowest cost. We see 230M broadband subs in a decade, and 240GW of compute vs. global current capacity of 100GW. The communications technology is solved, the compute is not. There are a half dozen other, large long-term industries.

  • Expect high volatility, with shares trading up initially. We anticipate an initial demand/supply imbalance on SPCX shares given broad retail demand and accelerated index inclusion. Our $190 PT ($2.5T firm value) is based on our DCF and 2035E revenue/EBITDA of ~$0.9T/$0.5T, requiring ~$1.6T in cumulative CapEx/spectrum and $300M more funding.

Separately, IG analyst Fabien Yip noted, "Demand has been good for the IPO and there is a lot of interest in the pre-IPO trading as well," adding, "We have had so far even with the valuation looking stretched. If the pre-IPO pricing momentum sustains, it will set a precedent for the next mega-IPOs."

Yet Morningstar analysts, Elizabeth Warren, and lefty pension funds have all tried to kill the hype cycle leading up to today's world's largest IPO.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 07:20
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