SpaceX IPO draws costumed crowds and big-money bets outside Nasdaq

SpaceX’s market debut brought a crowd of retail traders, early backers and onlookers to Nasdaq’s Manhattan site Friday, Fortune reported. The gathering showed how the company’s listing has become both a financial event and a public spectacle.

Fortune described the crowd as mostly young, male and tense as investors waited for trading in what it called the largest IPO on record. SpaceX was pricing $75 billion in stock, with shares trading at a little above $170, according to Fortune.

Among those interviewed was George Manchin, a 22-year-old proprietary trader from Hong Kong, who told Fortune he had requested a small allocation of SpaceX shares. He compared the size of his order to the cost of a car, adding that it would now be worth more.

Hemanth Golla, an early investor through High Circle Capital, told Fortune he held about $300 million worth of SpaceX stock. He said the listing was significant both financially and historically, and described himself as a longtime admirer of Elon Musk.

The street scene also included people in astronaut costumes moving between media interviews, Fortune reported. Teenagers who described themselves as retired crypto traders arrived with hired camera operators and spoke about the offering.

Fortune reported that many people around the event accepted the idea that SpaceX was richly valued while still viewing the listing as attractive. Jasper Howard, 19, who called himself the “Clavicular of Crypto,” told Fortune that investors believed space exploration and AI would become much larger markets over the next decade.

Howard said he did not plan to buy because previous crypto IPOs had hurt him, according to Fortune. He said friends had invested six-figure sums on the first day, and that one friend had put in $1 million.

The IPO is arriving as markets are also expected to absorb an Anthropic listing and, eventually, an OpenAI offering, Fortune reported. That timing has raised questions among some people near the crowd about whether new investors were providing an exit for earlier holders.

Golla told Fortune he was focused less on rockets than on SpaceX’s computing capacity deals with Anthropic and Google. He estimated those deals at $20 billion to $30 billion over the previous few months and predicted SpaceX would build three or four more data centers within a year, increasing revenue by five to 10 times.

Manchin made a similar case to Fortune, saying he wanted exposure to scarce computing power. Some other people near the scene questioned the timing of the IPO and referred to exit liquidity, Fortune reported.

Golla said his shares remain subject to lockup limits that begin easing 45 to 60 days after the IPO, with about 20% freed around the first earnings report and full restrictions lifted by day 180, according to Fortune. He said he intended to hold for a three- to four-year period.

By late morning, Fortune reported, the crowd had started to thin. Zeke Spector, who bought an astronaut costume in Midtown and paid FedEx $170 to print and bind SpaceX’s full S-1 filing, was already considering what to wear for Anthropic’s potential listing.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.