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If SpaceX goes public this year, it won’t just be another high‑profile IPO. It could be the largest offering in history and could end up putting the company into everyday investors’ portfolios, whether they want that exposure or not.

Shaun Davies

To understand what a SpaceX IPO could mean for markets and individual investors, �鶹��Ƶ Today spoke with��Shaun Davies, an associate professor of finance at the��Leeds School of Business whose research explores index funds, ETFs, and how investor demand shapes markets.

How big of an event would a SpaceX IPO be?

This would be a very big IPO—perhaps the biggest ever on record in terms of both the amount of capital raised and the valuation. We’re talking about a company valued at over a trillion dollars.

And it’s not just SpaceX. When people think about SpaceX, they think about NASA partnerships and commercial space travel. That’s part of it. But this is also a combined entity with xAI and Starlink.

That combination matters. It provides a platform to supply a lot of capital to xAI (an AI company best known for its chatbot, Grok) and compete with the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI, and to try to win the arms race that’s playing out in artificial intelligence right now. There are a lot of moving pieces in this IPO, and that’s what makes it feel different from a routine market debut.

Why go public now after staying private for so long?

SpaceX has been around for more than 20 years, and it’s had several large capital raises along the way. Institutional investors have had their money locked up for a very long time.

This IPO finally provides a return of capital. These have been very patient investors, waiting years to get their money back.

That’s not unique to SpaceX. Companies across the tech and startup world are staying private much longer than they used to. Before the financial crisis, companies like Google went public after four to six years. Now it’s often seven to more than 10 years.

That’s problematic because you can’t redeploy that capital into new ventures until you get it back. This will be a big payday for a lot of people, which is good for the venture ecosystem—but it also highlights the stress that is building in private markets.

How would everyday investors actually get exposure to SpaceX?

If SpaceX goes public, people with brokerage access will be able to buy shares once the stock starts trading on the secondary market. They won’t get shares at the IPO price, but they can buy from investors who do.

Beyond that, given how large this company is likely to be, it will probably be added to many stock indexes fairly quickly. When that happens, people will own it even if they don’t realize it.

If you own a total stock market index fund like, for example, Vanguard’s Total Stock Market Index, you’ll indirectly own SpaceX—and likely at a meaningful weight, simply because of its size.

When a company this large enters an index, what typically happens to the stock price?

Historically, stocks did get a valuation bump when they were added to major indexes like the S&P 500, because index funds were essentially compelled to buy them.

More recent research suggests that effect is mostly gone. Traders anticipate which companies are likely to be added and buy shares ahead of time.

There are exceptions. Tesla saw a large jump when it was added to the S&P 500. But by and large, the index‑inclusion effect isn’t what it used to be.

Are there risks to having another giant company dominate indexes that many people own?

When you have companies with very large market capitalizations, their movements can drive the entire index. At that point, you’re not really getting exposure to “the market” anymore with your index fund. You’re getting a small group of very large firms. That’s something we already see today, and SpaceX could add to that concentration.

Could a company this large and this closely watched add volatility to the market?

It could attract a lot of retail attention, but it’s probably too big to behave like a meme stock. Whether it adds volatility is hard to say.

What’s interesting is the timing. IPOs tend to come in waves. We saw a massive wave in 2021, when markets were flush with cash. But 2026 hasn’t been a great year for IPOs so far.

Companies want to go public in a hot IPO market. That’s when they capture the most value and don’t leave anything on the table. This is a tricky moment because conditions may not be very favorable.

There’s a perception that IPOs are easy money. Has that ever really been true for retail investors?

There is no such thing as easy money. The gains are made by investors who get shares at the IPO price and sell them immediately. Regular investors don’t have access to that. If they do, it’s usually not an IPO you want to be in.

When retail investors are offered “early access,” it’s often because institutional investors don’t want those deals. You can see IPOs shoot up and then trade below their offering price a few months later. It’s driven by sentiment and liquidity.

If there were easy money, much more sophisticated investors would take advantage of it long before regular investors ever could.

If the IPO disappoints, who feels it most?

Whoever buys on the first day will feel it the worst. But if a deal this large goes poorly, it sends shockwaves through venture capital and private equity. It could effectively shut down the IPO market for the rest of 2026 and into 2027.

Bottom line: Is this more exciting as an investment opportunity or more important as a market event?

It’s hard to say whether it’s a good or bad investment. Personally, I don’t buy single‑name stocks—I buy indices.

But as a market event, it’s unquestionably a big deal. It will generate enormous attention, and the stock price will be watched closely—likely more than any other new listing in years.

What makes it especially important is that it comes at a moment when many large private companies have been waiting a long time to go public, and many investors have been waiting even longer to get their capital back. If this IPO goes well, it could open the door for other long‑delayed debuts and help restart a stalled IPO pipeline. If it goes poorly, it could do the opposite—discouraging other companies from going public and putting the brakes on the market for months or longer.

Twenty years from now, we’ll talk about the SpaceX IPO. We just don’t know yet whether it will be remembered as something that opened the door for more companies to go public—or something that shut it.