{"id":16512,"date":"2026-06-14T10:21:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T10:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=16512"},"modified":"2026-06-14T02:38:48","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T02:38:48","slug":"wsj-the-spacex-ipo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=16512","title":{"rendered":"WSJ: The SpaceX IPO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Appearing in yesterday’s Journal. I agree. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The IPO (Initial Public Offering) went live a bit before noontime Friday. Everyone is happy – SpaceX got their $75 billion, the consortium of Investment Banks got $1 billion dollars in fees to split amongst themselves, many thousands of the 22,000 SpaceX employees became instant millionaires – a few became billionaires – and the stock closed above $161, a 20% gain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Shares in SpaceX skyrocketed following its record $75 billion initial public offering on Friday, apparently making Elon Musk the world\u2019s first trillionaire\u2014at least on paper. In our political age of envy, the press and Democrats are preoccupied by his otherworldly wealth. But deserving more attention is how he has enriched the country by building a remarkable company.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the close of trading on Friday, SpaceX<\/a> boasted a $2.1 trillion\u2014yes, trillion\u2014market valuation. The company raised $75 billion in its public debut, nearly three times more than the previous largest IPO (Saudi Aramco in 2019). It will need that money and multiples more to achieve Mr. Musk\u2019s ambition of colonizing Mars and mining asteroids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the IPO had happened in China, the press would be mourning America\u2019s economic decline. Instead, they are lamenting Mr. Musk\u2019s riches. \u201cElon Musk<\/a> is the world\u2019s first trillionaire,\u201d Bloomberg News writes. \u201cHe could theoretically do a lot with all that money\u2014like fund 68 US election cycles or buy every carmaker in the US, Europe and Japan.\u201d The grievance mood is strong these days at Bloomberg and most of the rest of the financial press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Musk\u2019s wealth largely consists of shares in SpaceX and Tesla<\/a>. Their current stratospheric values could crash if the companies fail or investors lose faith in Mr. Musk. And mom and pop investors should know the risks in buying SpaceX shares. In any event, Mr. Musk\u2019s wealth is a tribute to U.S. entrepreneurship and innovation, which are byproducts of its free-market system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Musk, an immigrant from South Africa, launched the rocket company in 2002 with money he made from his PayPal<\/a> startup. \u201cIt is certainly hard to believe that little company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo is now going public with the largest IPO ever,\u201d he said Friday. SpaceX faced many early setbacks. Its Falcon 1 failed three times before reaching orbit in 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few months later, NASA<\/a> awarded SpaceX a contract to supply the International Space Station. SpaceX later developed reusable rockets that greatly reduce launch costs, which the Chinese are still trying to achieve. Its success, which came through trial and failure, has ended U.S. reliance on Russia to transport astronauts to the space station and launch American satellites. The company is the leading edge of what could be the space economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2015 SpaceX launched Starlink, an internet satellite company that has helped Ukraine resist Russia\u2019s invasion and dissidents living under authoritarian regimes like Iran to communicate. Mr. Musk this year merged his social-media company X.com and xAI startup with SpaceX, providing them with a vehicle to go public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SpaceX has created thousands of jobs in working-class communities where it operates. That includes Hawthorne, Calif., Bastrop and McGregor in Texas, Memphis, Tenn., and Southaven, Miss. Its workers\u2014including hourly blue-collar workers\u2014receive stock options, which has allowed them to share in the company\u2019s success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By one estimate, the IPO has made millionaires of 4,400 SpaceX current and former employees, including 400 who hold shares worth more than $100 million. If you listen to union leaders and progressives, billionaires get rich by exploiting workers. SpaceX couldn\u2019t succeed without its workers\u2014as it notes in its IPO prospectus\u2014and they would leave if they felt abused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The IPO is giving workers and retail investors a chance to share in any future growth. It\u2019s also allowing venture investors to cash out and pour their windfalls into new startups working on innovations that could improve and even save lives\u2014e.g., cancer vaccines. Who knows which of these companies could someday be worth a trillion dollars?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With their envy of success and wealth, our political class ignores that financial rewards are what spur investors and entrepreneurs to take risks on companies that make all Americans better off. You don\u2019t have to like Mr. Musk to appreciate what he has built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Appearing in yesterday’s Journal. I agree. The IPO (Initial Public Offering) went live a bit before noontime Friday. Everyone is happy – SpaceX got their $75 billion, the consortium of Investment Banks got $1 billion dollars in fees to split amongst themselves, many thousands of the 22,000 SpaceX employees became instant millionaires – a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,9,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-and-politics","category-investing-and-business","category-science-and-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16515,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16512\/revisions\/16515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}