Shares of SpaceX pop in the biggest IPO ever. We dig into what it will take to bring the company to scale, some of the key technological risks it faces, and what it will take for Elon Musk to maintain his newly-minted trillionaire status.<br><br>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

SpaceX Soars in Trading Debut 6/12/26

The Exchange

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** The Exchange

## Participants

- **Kelly Evans** (CNBC)
- **Seema Modi** (CNBC)
- **Leslie Picker** (CNBC)
- **Morgan Brennan** (CNBC)
- **Gwen Shotwell** (SpaceX)
- **Jim Cramer** (CNBC)
- **Dave Cody** (Vertiv)
- **Tim Horan** (Oppenheimer)
- **Alex Kantrowitz** (CNBC/Independent)
- **Dan Primack** (Axios)
- **Simeon Hyman** (ProShares)
- **Peter Haynes** (TD Securities)

## Transcript

You're listening to The Exchange. Here's today's show. A momentous day at the Nasdaq and at Starbase in Texas this morning, with the SpaceX team ringing the opening bell of the biggest IPO of all time. Welcome to The Exchange. I'm Kelly Evans.

SpaceX shares, well, they're trading around $174 this hour, just under that, after pricing at $135 and opening at $150 just over an hour ago. The company now has a valuation of over $2 trillion. That's more than Tesla, Meta, Eli Lilly, Walmart, or J.P. Morgan. We've got every angle of this market milestone covered today. Seema Modi, Leslie Picker, and Morgan Brennan are live at the Nasdaq, and an all-star panel of tech and market experts we'll speak to shortly.

Seema, let's begin with you right in the middle of the action there. Well, Kelly, SpaceX's first trade on the Nasdaq, it happened a lot sooner than the market was anticipating. The market makers here saw enough balance between buyers and sellers that they, along with the stabilization agents, felt it was ready to open at around 11.45 a.m. Eastern. Get this, about $17 billion of SpaceX shares changed hands in the first five minutes of trade, and the Nasdaq telling us now about 250 million shares have traded.

That's about half of the size of the IPO with three hours left in trade. Guys, the vibe check here, as you saw at the open, a lot of energy, a lot of enthusiasm. Hundreds of SpaceX employees, along with Nasdaq's executives, convening around this IPO desk around me. And I met one SpaceX employee just in the last hour. He joined about seven years ago. His compensation was $150,000 with a lot of equity. Today, a big moment for him and his family.

I read, what is there, a couple, a thousand or so millionaires as a result of where the company's being traded today, Seema? Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, it's one thing to read it, Kelly, but to meet some of these individuals who work in finance, HR, IT engineers who never saw this day coming and were told in November of last year that now they are going to take SpaceX public and all that equity that they had sort of stored in the back would now become a realization of something that they could use.

Now, I was told by that same individual who works in finance, who has a lot of equity, that within two months he'll be able to start selling and realize some of those gains. I mean, I was struck by the interview that Morgan did with the woman who basically runs the company, and she said, yeah, she wasn't sure if they would ever go public. So here we are. They have, and it's in public...

SpaceX Soars in Trading Debut 6/12/26

Transcript

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SpaceX Soars in Trading Debut 6/12/26

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.