SpaceX is heading toward one of Wall Street’s most anticipated IPOs, but the recent record for blockbuster listings is a lot less glamorous than the hype machine suggests. A Reuters review of the 50 highest-valued IPOs in the past five years found that investors would have done better with an S&P 500 fund about three-quarters of the time, even before you factor in the headaches of actually getting allocation at the offer price.
That is the uncomfortable truth behind every ”next big thing” flotation: rich valuations can leave very little upside for the people arriving at the public market party late. SpaceX, which filed its prospectus on Wednesday and could launch a share sale as early as June 11, is already being talked about in the same breath as OpenAI and Anthropic, thanks to the current appetite for AI and adjacent moonshots. The market loves a story. It does not always love the math.
The SpaceX valuation is already doing the heavy lifting
SpaceX is expected to trade under the ticker ”SPCX” and target a $1.75 trillion valuation, a level that would leave every previous Wall Street stock listing in the dust. Elon Musk is also making some shares available to retail investors through Robinhood, SoFi, and other platforms, which sounds democratic until you remember that getting in ”early” on a deal like this may still mean paying a price that assumes near-perfection.
At that valuation, SpaceX’s price-to-sales ratio would be nearly 100, versus Nvidia’s 24. The company also lost nearly $5 billion last year. Those numbers do not make the deal impossible; they just explain why investors keep paying for narrative, not earnings, and why the bar for a strong post-listing run gets higher the more ambitious the pricing becomes.
- SpaceX expected valuation: $1.75 trillion
- Expected ticker: ”SPCX”
- Potential share sale date: as early as June 11
- Last year’s loss: nearly $5 billion
Recent IPO winners are the exception, not the rule
There are bright spots, of course, because Wall Street would be boring without them. Astera Labs has surged over 700% since its 2024 IPO, while Arm Holdings has gained about 400% since its 2023 debut, both handily beating the S&P 500 over the same stretch. Cerebras Systems also jumped after its May 14 IPO, though it has already given back part of that early pop.
But the losers are the cautionary tale. Didi Global was delisted in 2022 and is down about 74% from its IPO price, while Rivian Automotive has fallen 82% since 2021 and is still burning around $1 billion in cash every quarter. Figma, which nearly quadrupled on its first trading day last July, is now down 35% from its $33 IPO price as investors worry generative AI could swallow part of its business model.
What the next mega-listings will test
SpaceX is likely to become a template, not just a stock. If it prices at the level now being discussed and still holds up, it will encourage more giant private companies to test public markets on their own terms, with OpenAI and Anthropic waiting in the wings. If it stumbles, the message to founders will be simpler: even the strongest brand can run out of oxygen when the valuation is doing all the selling.
That is the real gamble here. Public investors may get a rare chance to buy a famous private company without waiting for years, but the historical record says the market often charges a steep premium for the privilege. SpaceX could still break that pattern. The odds, however, are not exactly inspiring confidence.