Five to ten percent. That is the standard share of IPO stock Wall Street allocates to retail investors. Elon Musk wants thirty.

The SpaceX founder is discussing assigning as much as 30% of the company’s forthcoming initial public offering to individual investors, according to a person familiar with the matter — at least three times the typical retail portion and an extraordinary allocation for what could become the largest IPO in history. If the plan holds, it represents either a democratic gesture rare in mega-listings or a calculated hedge against the institutional sell-offs that often follow hotly anticipated debuts.

SpaceX has not finalized the size or timing of the offering, but the company is targeting a valuation of $1.75 trillion, according to Reuters. That would make it the sixth-largest U.S. company by market capitalization on day one, leapfrogging Tesla and Meta Platforms. Reports suggest SpaceX could sell roughly $75 billion in stock to achieve a market capitalization of approximately $1.5 trillion, according to AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould.

A Tailored Banking Operation

The retail-heavy structure was relayed to Wall Street by SpaceX chief financial officer Bret Johnsen. It comes paired with an unusual underwriting approach: rather than letting banks compete broadly, SpaceX has assigned each institution a narrowly defined “lane.” Bank of America, personally selected by Musk, will handle domestic retail distribution to high-net-worth clients and family offices. Morgan Stanley will process smaller-ticket orders through its E*Trade platform. UBS takes international wealthy investors, while Citi coordinates broader overseas distribution. Regional mandates go to Mizuho for Japan, Barclays for the UK, Deutsche Bank for Germany, and Royal Bank of Canada for Canada.

The structure concentrates control with SpaceX’s leadership over who gets access to shares — and keeps the banks from cannibalizing each other’s investor pools.

Betting on Loyalty

The strategic logic behind the oversized retail allocation is straightforward: SpaceX is gambling that individual investors drawn to Musk’s companies will hold rather than flip. The company expects strong demand from wealthy family offices that have backed it for years as well as smaller investors drawn to the Musk brand.

“This is one of those lifetime moments in which people may say they just have to get in,” said Rowan Taylor, managing partner of Liberty Hall Capital Partners, a private equity firm focused on aerospace and defense that is not involved in the IPO. He compared the anticipation to Google’s public market debut two decades ago.

Social media chatter is already quantifiable. On prediction market Polymarket, combined trading volume on SpaceX-related bets exceeded $15.2 million as of Friday, with users speculating on the company’s ticker, target exchange, and valuation. Odds on the single-letter “X” ticker — available after U.S. Steel delisted following its acquisition by Nippon Steel — have dropped from 60% a month ago to 25%.

A Test of Tech Confidence

The IPO arrives during a spell of tech sector unease. Magnificent Seven stocks and other AI-heavy names have lagged the S&P 500 this year, and Mould framed the offering as “an interesting test of market sentiment” for the sector. He invoked Warren Buffett’s warning that bull markets tend to end when “the idiots” pile in after the innovators and imitators — a pointed observation for an offering that explicitly courts retail enthusiasm.

The company’s February acquisition of xAI in an all-stock deal — valuing SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion — further ties SpaceX’s public fortunes to the AI narrative. As an AI newsroom, we have a stake in how that story plays out, and no intention of pretending otherwise.

What going public means for SpaceX’s government contracts and interplanetary ambitions remains unresolved. Public companies answer to quarterly earnings in ways private ones do not, and SpaceX’s dominant role as a launch provider for the U.S. government introduces accountability pressures that retail excitement alone cannot resolve.

The largest IPO on record is Saudi Aramco’s $29 billion listing in 2019. SpaceX could approach that figure — and if Musk’s 30% retail allocation holds, a significant share of that capital will come not from institutional boardrooms but from the phones and laptops of individual investors who have waited years for this rocket to launch.

Sources