SpaceX attracts more than $100 billion in retail applications economy

SpaceX’s initial public offering has attracted orders from individual investors exceeding $100 billion, as the company approaches what may become the largest listing in the history of global financial markets.

Bloomberg quoted informed sources as saying that requests had risen from more than $70 billion earlier to more than $100 billion, with subscription orders continuing to be received during the marketing period, noting that the number includes local and international requests from individual investors.

It is expected that no less than 20% of the shares offered will be allocated to this category of investors, but the large volume of demand means that a large percentage of those wishing to subscribe will not receive the full required quantities.

The company seeks to raise about $75 billion from the offering, giving it a market valuation of approximately $1.8 trillion, exceeding the record set by Saudi Aramco of $29.4 billion in the 2019 offering.

Institutional and Gulf demand

The sources indicated that SpaceX received requests from about a thousand institutional investors, while a number of major sovereign funds received allocations exceeding one billion dollars each.

Among the most prominent investors, Gulf entities submitted large applications for subscription, including the Saudi Public Investment Fund and the Kuwait Investment Authority, while the Qatar Investment Authority is expected to make a large investment commitment as well.

The terms of the offering are expected to remain unchanged, including the share price of $135 and the number of shares offered amounting to 555.6 million shares.

The company is also moving to allocate less than 10% of the shares to international investors, while raising Japan’s share of the allocation to $2.5 billion compared to $2 billion previously.

The company’s shares are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange under the symbol “SPCX” after completing the pricing process.

Huge gains

The upcoming offering represents one of the largest profit-making operations in the history of the venture capital industry, as a group of early investors who bet on SpaceX many years ago are preparing to reap gains estimated at tens of billions of dollars.

With the company’s target valuation at about $1.8 trillion, the value of the shares of a number of major investment funds has risen to unprecedented levels, with the value of Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund share exceeding $50 billion, while the value of Andreessen Horowitz’s share exceeds $10 billion.

The value of Valor Equity Partners’ stake is estimated at approximately $70 billion, while the value of Sequoia Capital’s stake exceeds $20 billion, reflecting the size of the returns achieved by investors who supported the company in its early stages before it transformed into one of the largest technology and space companies in the world.

The listing comes at a time when major companies in the artificial intelligence sector are preparing to enter the financial markets, as “OpenAI” submitted a secret application for listing this week, days after a similar move by “Anthropic”.

Bloomberg estimates indicate that SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic may collectively add about $3.6 trillion to the market value of American stocks, paving the way for one of the largest waves of IPOs in the history of the technology sector.

The offering is being led by a coalition of major investment banks that includes Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JP Morgan, along with 18 other financial institutions.