Author｜Yang Licheng

Editor｜Chen Xiaoran

On June 12, 2026, at the Starship base in Boca Chica, Texas, there was no traditional Wall Street crystal bell to mark the occasion. Elon Musk, wearing a well-worn black baseball cap, stood alongside a dozen engineers in work uniforms in front of a large screen.

When the Nasdaq trading interface flashed the ticker symbol SPCX and the stock price climbed from its IPO price of $135, there were no cheers—just a few quiet clinks of energy drink cans. For this team, accustomed to explosions, setbacks, and late-night debugging sessions, going public was simply another milestone on a much longer journey.

By the close of the market, SpaceX’s valuation stood at $2.11 trillion, surpassing both Meta and Tesla to become the world’s seventh-largest publicly traded company. The enthusiasm carried over into Monday, June 15, when shares opened at $171.81.

The $75 billion raised shattered Saudi Aramco’s seven-year record for the largest global IPO. Musk’s personal net worth soared past $1 trillion, making him history’s first trillionaire.

Twenty-four years earlier, the South African entrepreneur who had cashed out $100 million from PayPal to pursue aerospace ambitions was ridiculed by the entire industry. Over two decades, he built a business empire spanning automotive, aerospace, energy, brain science, and social media.

Musk’s empire has always been built on defying the odds—on pursuing what “everyone said was impossible.”

In 2002, at age 29, Musk cashed out his PayPal stake following its sale to eBay. Instead of settling into Silicon Valley’s comfort zone, he made two seemingly reckless decisions: to build reusable rockets and electric vehicles.

At the time, aerospace was dominated by Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and NASA, with no successful precedents for private companies. Electric vehicles were a niche market ignored by Detroit’s automotive giants—even General Motors had abandoned its EV1 program.

Against this backdrop, Musk bet most of his fortune on SpaceX and invested in Tesla, gradually seizing control of both ventures.

2008 marked Musk’s lowest point. SpaceX’s Falcon 1 failed three times, with funds barely sufficient for a fourth launch. Tesla’s Roadster faced production deadlocks, supply chain collapses, and cash shortages, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy for weeks.

The fourth launch, on September 28, 2008, succeeded. Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit.

That success saved SpaceX—and indirectly Tesla. NASA awarded a $1.6 billion commercial resupply contract, providing the financial breathing room needed to pull Tesla back from collapse.

That double crisis became etched in Musk’s business philosophy: always reserve capacity for trial and error, always believe in the last attempt. This relentless conviction later defined all his ventures.

The 2010s were Musk’s “decade of deification.” SpaceX secured NASA’s crewed spaceflight contract, and Falcon 9 achieved vertical first-stage recovery, slashing launch costs by an order of magnitude and rewriting global aerospace rules. Tesla’s Model S redefined electric vehicles with intelligence and range, growing into a trillion-dollar auto giant after its 2010 Nasdaq debut.

The “Iron Man” label stuck. In 2016, Musk unveiled three new projects: Neuralink for brain-computer interfaces to address human-AI symbiosis; The Boring Company for underground tunnels to ease urban congestion; and the merger with SolarCity to integrate solar storage with Tesla’s energy business.

Critics dismissed his multi-track strategy as “PPT entrepreneurship.” Few grasped his underlying logic: Tesla for ground transportation electrification, SolarCity for clean energy, Boring Company for urban spatial efficiency, Neuralink for AI-era human-machine interaction, and SpaceX for Mars transport—all orbiting the goal of “human multi-planetary survival.”

Musk once admitted in interviews to working 120-hour weeks, often sleeping on factory floors. He owns no property, reinvesting all his wealth into his next gamble.

By 2021, Tesla’s valuation topped $1 trillion, making Musk the world’s richest person. In 2022, he forcibly acquired Twitter for $44 billion, renaming it X and launching a disruptive overhaul.

An 80% layoff, the disbanding of content moderation teams, and the introduction of paid Blue Verified badges caused advertisers to flee, halving the company’s valuation. Musk’s frequent comments on COVID, policies, and other topics drew media and investor backlash.

Meanwhile, SpaceX quietly achieved critical technological milestones.

Starlink satellites launched at a rate of two batches per month, expanding from 1,000 to nearly 10,000, with users surging from millions to over 10 million, transforming from a cash drain into a cash cow. Starship prototypes iterated through explosions, breaking the atmosphere, validating hot-staging techniques, and testing controlled re-entry—each step silent but solid.

SpaceX’s IPO had been speculated about for a decade.

Musk repeatedly vowed to delay going public until Mars colonization became routine and Starship achieved regular flights. The 2026 IPO’s rationale lay in the prospectus numbers.

Financial disclosures showed 2025 revenue at $18.674 billion but net losses of $4.937 billion, with cumulative losses exceeding $41.3 billion since inception.

Starship R&D was a bottomless pit, with each test flight costing tens of millions. Next-gen Raptor engines, orbital refueling, and lunar lander projects demanded sustained billions in investment. Starlink’s spectrum acquisitions, V3 satellite deployments, and direct-to-phone expansions required hundreds of billions more. The 2026 merger with xAI for space-based AI computing added urgency to the funding gap.

What gave markets confidence was Starlink’s proven business model. By 2025, Starlink generated $11.387 billion in revenue (60.98% of total), with $4.423 billion in operating profit. By Q1 2026, approximately 9,600 Starlink satellites orbited Earth (75% of global active satellites), with over 10.3 million subscribers across 164 countries.

From accusations of being “space junk” to becoming the world’s largest satellite internet operator, Starlink validated its commercial worth in a decade, becoming SpaceX’s IPO “anchor.”

Starship represented the IPO’s imagination space.

In May 2026’s 12th test flight, the third-gen Starship validated engine redundancy, satellite deployment, and controlled splashdowns, inching closer to full reusability. Once operational, Starship could cut launch costs to 1% of Falcon 9’s, enabling 60-satellite deployments per launch, point-to-point space travel, lunar bases, Mars landings, and even low-Earth orbit AI computing centers—the core reason for the capital market’s 100x price-to-sales valuation.

This IPO shattered all Wall Street norms. There was no pricing range—just a fixed $135 issue price. 30% of shares were reserved for retail investors (compared to 5–10% in typical large IPOs). A dual-class share structure was implemented: public Class A shares with one vote each, and Musk’s Class B shares with ten votes each, giving him 82% voting control with 42% ownership.

In essence, public shareholders bought income rights—Musk alone decided all major moves. Wall Street understood the risks but feared missing “the next Tesla.” Pre-IPO subscriptions exceeded $350 billion, oversubscribed fourfold, with sovereign funds and retail investors alike clamoring to participate.

Controversy never ceased. Famed short-seller Jim Chanos called it a “hope-and-dreams IPO,” arguing that a company with less than $20 billion in annual revenue supporting a $2 trillion valuation at 110x price-to-sales—far exceeding NVIDIA and Tesla—was a bubble.

On IPO day, Musk avoided emotional speeches, posting only: “This is just the beginning.”

The $75 billion raised will fuel Starship R&D, Starlink expansion, and AI initiatives. Synergies across his empire will sharpen: Starlink’s global network can support the X platform and Tesla Autopilot with real-time data; Starship’s low-cost launches can deploy space-based AI computing centers for xAI’s model training; Tesla’s battery and energy tech can power future lunar/Mars bases; Neuralink’s brain-computer interfaces may solve consciousness interaction for long-haul interstellar travel.

Seemingly disparate ventures all orbit the goal of “human multi-planetary survival,” with SpaceX as the core engine.

To this day, Musk remains Earth’s most controversial figure—obsessive, autocratic, blunt, with a brutal management style, perpetually at the storm’s center.

Yet this near-mad obsessiveness let him achieve what “experts” deemed impossible. Twenty-four years ago, no one believed private rockets were feasible; fifteen years ago, no one believed EVs could disrupt fuel cars; today, many doubt Mars landings. But Musk never cared about belief—he just led teams through trial and error, rebuilding after failures until the impossible became reality.

SpaceX’s IPO isn’t an endpoint but another ignition for this interstellar spacecraft. And the captain, as always, remains singular.