SpaceX began trading on public markets Friday, with investors supporting CEO Elon Musk’s ambitious plans for an enterprise spanning reusable rockets to orbital artificial intelligence, achieving a market value that places it among the globe’s largest companies.
Below is a chronological overview of SpaceX’s path to this massive public offering:
March 2002 – Elon Musk establishes SpaceX with proceeds from PayPal’s sale.
March 2006 – The company’s inaugural rocket launch, Falcon 1, ends in failure.
September 2008 – Falcon 1 achieves successful launch, becoming the first privately built liquid-fuel rocket to achieve Earth orbit.
December 2008 – The company wins its initial significant NASA agreement to transport cargo and materials to the International Space Station.
May 2012 – A Falcon 9 rocket delivers a Dragon capsule to space, achieving the first private spacecraft docking at the ISS.
June 2015 – A Falcon 9 rocket explodes during flight.
December 2015 – Falcon 9 achieves its first successful upright landing, representing the initial controlled retrieval of a major rocket following payload delivery to orbit.
February 2018 – The inaugural Falcon Heavy mission transports Musk’s Tesla Roadster with its dummy pilot, Starman, beyond Earth.
April 2019 – A Crew Dragon test craft explodes during surface testing.
May 2019 – The company begins deploying Starlink satellites, creating a network designed to provide high-speed internet signals to subscribers worldwide.
October 2020 – SpaceX achieves its 100th successful Falcon rocket mission since Falcon 1’s first orbital flight in 2008.
November 2020 – The SpaceX Crew-1 mission becomes the first operational flight under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
April 2021 – NASA selects SpaceX for the initial commercial human lunar lander contract within its Artemis program.
September 2021 – The company launches the first entirely civilian crew to orbit Earth from space.
November 2021 – NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission launches on a SpaceX rocket into interplanetary orbit, representing the globe’s initial trial of a planetary defense system aimed at preventing potential asteroid impacts with Earth.
April 2023 – The first Starship rocket explodes following loss of control.
November 2023 – A Starship launch fails shortly after achieving space.
November 2023 – A federal judge prevents the U.S. Department of Justice from continuing an administrative proceeding alleging SpaceX unlawfully declined to employ refugees and asylum seekers.
September 2024 – The SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission conducts its first privately operated spacewalk.
January 2025 – SpaceX’s Starship rocket disintegrates in space shortly after Texas launch, causing Gulf of Mexico flights to change routes to avoid falling debris.
June 2025 – Starship explodes during surface testing.
February 2026 – SpaceX purchases Musk’s AI company xAI in a historic $250 billion transaction, merging the world’s wealthiest individual’s artificial intelligence and space ventures by combining the rocket-and-satellite enterprise with the Grok chatbot creator.
February 2026 – SpaceX changed its priorities from Mars to constructing a “self‑growing city” on the moon, Musk announces.
March 2026 – A NASA representative states the Starship has experienced at least two years of development setbacks since NASA selected the rocket as an astronaut lunar lander in 2021, and will likely need additional time to overcome remaining obstacles before moon landing.
April 2026 – SpaceX privately submits paperwork for its massive U.S. initial public offering, establishing the foundation for potentially the largest stock market debut in history.
May 2026 – SpaceX publicly submits documentation for its highly anticipated U.S. IPO.
June 2026 – SpaceX establishes its IPO price at $135 per share, aiming to collect a record $75 billion.
June 2026 – SpaceX finalizes a multi-year cloud computing agreement with Alphabet’s Google.
June 2026 – SpaceX collects record $75 billion in largest-ever U.S. IPO.
June 2026 – SpaceX commences Nasdaq trading with approximately $1.96 trillion valuation.
