SpaceX shares exploded higher on their first day of trading on Friday, closing near $161 (£127) and instantly creating more than 4,400 new paper millionaires inside the company. For welders, technicians and cafeteria workers who spent years on modest salaries, the SpaceX IPO delivered life-changing numbers in their brokerage accounts. But there is a catch: most of them cannot sell a single share for months.
The listing pushed SpaceX's valuation above $2 trillion (£1.58 trillion) and triggered widespread interest in whether Elon Musk had become a trillionaire, a threshold Forbes confirmed he crossed on listing day. Geiger Capital, a market commentator on X, wrote: 'Elon Musk just created ~5,000 new millionaires, current and former $SPCX employees. Of those ~5,000 people, roughly 400 of them will see stakes worth $100+ million.' Bull Theory, which tracks market and macro trends on X, highlighted the unusual breadth of the wealth distribution, noting that many beneficiaries were 'not executives or founders' but 'welders, technicians, machinists, and launch crew.'
