SpaceX closed the order books on the largest initial public offering in history at 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday, June 10, 2026, with institutional demand running at three and a half to four times the $75 billion the company is raising. For anyone deciding whether to chase the stock when it opens Friday, the final 48 hours have produced a genuinely split signal: a $250 billion wall of orderson one side, and a three-week, 27% slide in the most active SpaceX pre-IPO market on the other.
The offering itself is fixed. SpaceX is selling 555.6 million shares at $135 each, raising roughly $75 billion at a valuation of about $1.8 trillion, far surpassing Saudi Aramco's $29.4 billion record from December 2019. Pricing is expected Thursday, June 11, and shares begin trading Friday, June 12 on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas under the ticker SPCX.
Institutional Demand Tops $250 Billion as Books Close
Banks led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley stopped taking institutional orders at the 4 p.m. ET deadline on Wednesday, Bloomberg reported. A source told Reuters on Tuesday, June 9 that total investor demand had passed $250 billion, with the oversubscription rate running at three and a half to four times the offering, and that long-only funds, not just fast-money hedge funds, had placed sizable orders.
The largest single tickets were enormous. Several institutional investors each submitted orders of roughly $10 billion or more, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. The same day, Morgan Stanley hosted about 300 institutional investors at its Manhattan headquarters for meetings with SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen, a session led by Morgan Stanley Co-President Dan Simkowitz.
One caution applies to every oversubscription headline: institutions routinely inflate orders in hot deals because they expect to be cut back at allocation. A $250 billion book does not mean $250 billion of committed capital at $135. Because SpaceX chose a fixed-price structure with no bookbuild range, the demand cannot lift the offer price either. It only determines who gets shares, and how few.
Why Is the SpaceX Pre-IPO Market Falling Before the Debut?
The only venue where a SpaceX-linked price has been moving with real money attached tells a more cautious story. A 5x-leveraged perpetual futures contract on the crypto platform Hyperliquid, trading under the ticker SPCX, has become the de facto gray market for the stock. CoinDesk reported on Wednesday, June 10 that the contract traded near $157, down about 27% from its mid-May launch price of around $216, after briefly touching $230.
The mechanics matter. The Hyperliquid contract is a cash-settled derivative that confers no shares, no allocation rights, and no claim on SpaceX. But unlike an IPO indication of interest, which costs nothing to inflate, perp traders lose actual money when they are wrong. In May, the contract implied SpaceX would open roughly 60% above the $135 offer price. As of Wednesday, the implied first-day premium had compressed to about 16%.
That is still a premium, not a bet against the company. CoinDesk noted two benign explanations: crypto markets have weakened broadly into the IPO, with bitcoin trading below $61,500 on Wednesday, and some traders may be selling the contract to raise cash for actual SPCX allocations. The uncomfortable fact remains that the one market with skin in the game has marked down SpaceX's debut for three consecutive weeks while the official order book swelled.
Steve Eisman Says the Entire Company Is Being Bet on AI
The most prominent named dissenter is Steve Eisman, the investor who shorted subprime mortgages before the 2008 crisis and was portrayed in "The Big Short." Appearing on CNBC's Squawk Box on Monday, June 8, Eisman said he is "not a fan" of the offering and is steering clear, though he made clear he is not shorting it.
His case rests on capital intensity. SpaceX's capital expenditures equaled 42% of revenue in fiscal 2023, when Starlink drove the story. By the first quarter of 2026, after the company absorbed xAI and pivoted hard into AI infrastructure, capex had swollen to 215% of revenue, per Eisman's reading of the prospectus. "It's not even space that's so hard. It's the AI," he said. "Grok, with all due respect to Elon Musk, is not a world-class AI company and I don't think anybody speaks of Grok as being at the leading edge."
Eisman pointed out that SpaceX's own prospectus pegs its total addressable market at $28.5 trillion, with more than 85% tied to AI rather than launch or Starlink. "Even if everything you say about SpaceX and Starlink is true, the entire company is being bet on AI in terms of its future, not on space and not on Starlink," he said, adding that the filing's asteroid-mining ambitions struck him as "amusing" and unlikely anytime soon. He is not the only skeptic with a number attached: Morningstar analyst Nicolas Owens maintains SpaceX is worth less than half its stated IPO valuation target.
What Should Retail Investors Expect on Debut Day?
Retail buyers get a longer runway than the institutions. Bloomberg reported that individual investors can keep submitting orders through select brokerage platforms past the Wednesday institutional deadline, and that SpaceX has reserved up to 30% of the offering for retail, an unusually large carve-out for a deal of this size. TechTimes has covered the buying mechanics and the 94-times-sales valuation math separately.
The debut also lands in the hottest IPO window in years. Wednesday, June 10 alone brought 19 IPO pricings, according to IPOScoop's 2026 pricing calendar, against eight on Tuesday. The day's marquee deal before SpaceX was cancer biotech Parabilis Medicines, which priced an upsized $670 million IPO at $20 per share, a record raise for a venture-backed biotech, and opened at $33.35 on Wednesday for a 67% first-trade gain.
Those two data points frame Friday's realistic range. If SPCX opens near the Hyperliquid price of $157, a $135 allocation gains about 16% at the open, well short of the 60% premium the gray market implied in May. A four-times-oversubscribed book argues most retail orders will be scaled back hard, meaning the investors most eager to buy may end up doing so in the open market at whatever premium survives. The week's pattern of huge demand meeting a falling gray-market price suggests the debate will be settled within minutes of the Friday open.
This article is not investment advice.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does SpaceX stock start trading?
SpaceX is expected to finalize pricing on Thursday, June 11, 2026. Shares are scheduled to begin trading on Friday, June 12 on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas under the ticker SPCX.
How oversubscribed is the SpaceX IPO?
A source told Reuters on June 9 that demand surpassed $250 billion against a $75 billion raise, putting oversubscription at three and a half to four times. Several institutions individually placed orders of roughly $10 billion or more, according to Bloomberg.
Why did the SpaceX gray market fall 27%?
The Hyperliquid SPCX perpetual slid from about $216 in mid-May to near $157 on June 10 as traders cut the implied first-day premium from 60% to about 16%. CoinDesk noted broader crypto weakness and cash-raising for IPO allocations may explain part of the drop.
Can retail investors still buy SpaceX IPO shares?
Yes, individual investors can submit orders through select brokerage platforms beyond the June 10 institutional deadline, per Bloomberg. SpaceX reserved up to 30% of the 555.6 million-share offering for retail, though heavy oversubscription means allocations are likely to be cut back.
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