SpaceX Opens at $150 on Nasdaq, Trades as High as $165 in Its First Hour

SpaceX began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX at approximately 11:46 a.m. ET on 12 June 2026, opening at $150 per share — 11% above its IPO price of $135, set the previous evening. In the first hour, the stock reached a session high of $168.75, up 25% from the offer price, before pulling back to trade around $160 to $165. Trading volume in the opening session exceeded $11.4 billion.

At those intraday prices, SpaceX's market capitalisation crossed $2 trillion, placing it ahead of Broadcom, Tesla, and Meta by market value and making Elon Musk a trillionaire on paper. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's President and Chief Operating Officer (CEO), rang the opening bell at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York. Musk joined from Starbase, Texas.

What the opening price reflects

The $150 open came in below the $165 to $175 range that perpetual futures markets had been pricing in the days before the debut, and below the $172 indication that circulated during the morning's price discovery process. Jay Ritter, an IPO expert and professor at the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business, described the opening as disappointing relative to prediction market expectations, while noting that at this scale, even an 11% opening pop produces a larger absolute gain for IPO allocants than any prior listing has delivered, as reported by CBS News.

The fintech infrastructure that pre-positioned investors ahead of the Nasdaq debut is worth noting here. Crypto traders holding SpaceX perpetual contracts via Bybit and Kraken — instruments that tracked the pre-IPO price — saw those contracts convert automatically to standard SPCX perpetuals once trading opened, with no action required from holders.

What comes next in the IPO wave

SpaceX is the first of three anticipated mega-IPOs tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure. Both OpenAI, which filed a confidential S-1 earlier this year, and Anthropic, which began its own IPO process, are expected to move toward public listings later in 2026. The SpaceX debut is the first stress test of investor appetite for companies at the intersection of AI ambition and unresolved profitability — a question the S-1 filing set out in detail and today's trading has begun, but not finished, answering.

Editor's note

Every piece published on The Bright Minded goes through careful verification, but mistakes can happen. If you spot an error, have additional information, or want to flag anything, write to rosalia@thebrightminded.com.