SpaceX Surges 20% on Nasdaq Debut — Opens at $150, Hits $162, and Brings $1.2 Billion in Bitcoin Exposure to Public Markets

SpaceX shares opened at $150 on Friday and climbed as high as $162 in volatile early trading — a roughly 20% gain from Thursday's $135 IPO price — marking a strong start to the most closely watched stock market debut in recent memory and confirming the kind of first-day pop that the offering's 4x oversubscription and $250 billion in total demand had signaled was likely. The numbers: largest IPO in history, now trading even higher SpaceX sold 555.6 million shares to raise $75 billion — the largest IPO ever completed, surpassing Saudi Aramco's previous record by nearly three times. The $135 IPO price had valued the company at approximately $1.8 trillion. With shares trading as high as $162 in early Friday action, the implied market capitalization at the day's highs approaches roughly $2.1 trillion — putting SpaceX within range of the $2.4 trillion valuation that crypto-traded pre-IPO contracts on platforms like Hyperliquid had already been pricing ahead of the listing. Trading under the ticker SPCX on Nasdaq, the debut gives public market investors their first opportunity to own shares in a company that has fundamentally reshaped the commercial space industry through reusable rocket technology and built one of the world's largest satellite networks through Starlink. The business: $19 billion in revenue across three pillars SpaceX generated approximately $19 billion in revenue last year across three primary business lines: launch services, government contracts, and Starlink operations. Starlink has emerged as a particularly significant growth driver, with satellite internet service reaching customers in remote areas where traditional broadband infrastructure is difficult or impossible to deploy — a business that grew 50% year-over-year to $11.4 billion in 2025 according to earlier reporting, before the new AI compute contracts with Anthropic and Alphabet that are projected to add a $26 billion annualized revenue stream. The Bitcoin angle: $1.2 billion in exposure for new shareholders Beyond the rocket and satellite business, SpaceX's public listing gives investors indirect exposure to one of the larger Bitcoin holdings among publicly traded companies. SpaceX held 18,712 BTC as of March 31, according to company disclosures — worth approximately $1.2 billion at Bitcoin's recent price around $63,500. This positions SpaceX as the eighth-largest public Bitcoin holder globally, a fact that prompted Strategy chairman Michael Saylor's congratulatory message to Elon Musk on Friday, noting that with SpaceX now public, two of his newly coined "Mag8" companies — SpaceX and Tesla — hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets. Every investor who buys SPCX shares on Friday's debut is, by extension, gaining proportional exposure to that $1.2 billion Bitcoin position alongside the company's core aerospace and satellite businesses. Bitcoin and crypto markets: muted reaction so far Despite the magnitude of the SpaceX debut, Bitcoin's reaction has been notably restrained. BTC was roughly flat at $63,400 during SpaceX's opening trades — a continuation of the steadiness around $63,000 that defined Bitcoin's price action through the IPO period. AI-related crypto stocks saw only modest gains. The muted crypto reaction is itself informative. Standard Chartered's Geoffrey Kendrick had theorized that the SpaceX IPO could mark the end of the specific selling pressure caused by ETF holders liquidating Bitcoin positions to fund IPO participation — with total ETF redemptions exceeding $5.72 billion since mid-May, some portion anecdotally tied to SpaceX allocation needs. Bitcoin holding steady rather than dropping further during the actual debut session is consistent with that theory: if SpaceX-related selling pressure was front-loaded into the weeks before the IPO, the listing itself would not be expected to trigger additional Bitcoin weakness. Whether Bitcoin's stability during SpaceX's debut translates into the broader demand recovery Kendrick is watching for — continued Strategy buying, a return to positive ETF inflows, and falling oil prices — remains the key question heading into next week's June 17 FOMC meeting, the first under Fed Chair Kevin Warsh and the next major catalyst for both equity and crypto markets. What the 20% pop signals A first-day gain of this magnitude, on an IPO of this scale, with $250 billion in demand against $75 billion in supply, was largely expected given the oversubscription dynamics. The more important signal may be what happens in the days following — whether SPCX holds its gains, retraces toward the IPO price, or continues climbing toward the $2.4 trillion valuation that crypto markets had already priced in. Analyst alichatts' warning about historical parallels to Coinbase's 2021 IPO — which preceded a 50% Bitcoin correction — remains the cautionary counterpoint to Friday's enthusiasm, particularly if SpaceX's post-debut trajectory mirrors the "euphoria precedes correction" pattern that has accompanied several of history's largest IPOs.