SpaceX IPO Is Said to Be More Than Four Times Oversubscribed

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.
This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead, with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Businessweek Daily podcast with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:32)
SpaceX's IPO has attracted demand for more than four times the available shares, according to people familiar with the matter. This ahead of that firm talking, stopping to take orders.
The banks are expected to stop taking orders from institutional investors after the market closes in New York at 4 p.m. on Wednesday.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:47)
Wednesday.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:48)
Yeah.

**Carol Massar** (0:49)
Because it's so, there's so much demand. Yeah. Is that normal?

**Tim Stenovec** (0:53)
Let's talk to Ed Ludlow about it. He's the co-host of Bloomberg Tech on Bloomberg TV. He joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. There's nothing normal about this IPO.

**Ed Ludlow** (1:01)
Yes and no. I mean, how they conducted it is unusual, but everything that Elon Musk companies do can be unusual, atypical and not conform to Wall Street norms. But the main manifestation of that is before they went on a road show, which is where management and their bankers pitched the IPO and the ideas behind it to the investors. They don't need to do that. They priced it before. You don't do that. You usually have a range of prices, and then you go like, so what do you think, guys? Where should we price this bad boy? But they came out early with $135,000.
The math is 5.6 million shares at $135,000 apiece, raising about $75 billion, $1.8 trillion valuation. So it's kind of like, what have they been doing for six days?

**Tim Stenovec** (1:47)
I don't know. Whatever they want.

**Carol Massar** (1:49)
What have they been doing?

**Ed Ludlow** (1:50)
I think that a big part of it is that the price, my latest understanding is, I don't think it's moving from $135,000 a share. It's really an issue of allocation. So what we've reported is there are all these institutional investors, they really want in. So they're placing orders. They're like, I want $10 billion worth of shares. We reported that from the Middle East, some of the sovereign wealth funds.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:14)
Yeah, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Kuwait Investment Authority, Qatar Investment Authority.

**Ed Ludlow** (2:18)
But just because that's the case doesn't mean they'll get it. What I keep hearing and I feel pretty good about this now. I've had very interesting conversations in the last 24 hours is that the unusual bit about this is the price, the methodology has been set by Elon Musk and Brett Johnson, the CFO. And traditionally, they're probably listening right now. If I'm wrong, phone me.
But those on the other side of the table don't agree with you. The bankers usually have a bigger role to play here. Of course, the bankers have a role. But it's being done on Elon Musk's terms, which is fascinating.

**Carol Massar** (2:53)
Of course, it is. It's massive. It's the thing that we've talked about for so long. I want to take a big step back. If President Trump wasn't in the White House, if Elon didn't have the positioning that he has had, it feels like, over the last year or two, even though there was some, it felt like, tension between the two at one point, I don't know, would the IPO be happening?
Is there a Trump component to this, President Trump component?

**Ed Ludlow** (3:20)
I don't know that there is.
Why is SpaceX doing an IPO? SpaceX needs money. Why does SpaceX need money? They're in a growth phase where all of the things they've outlined just require capital. Actually, again, I'm not trying to make this a victory lap for Bloomberg News and for us in particular, but when we broke the story that the whole rationale for having public was to raise a very significant volume of money to buy GPUs. A lot of people know, but in the end, that's exactly what it's for.
Elon Musk has made his views on public markets known, right? And the burdens of being a CEO of a public company.

**Carol Massar** (4:05)
Twitter's private.

**Ed Ludlow** (4:09)
Well, yeah, we can try to explain that, but-

**Tim Stenovec** (4:13)
You can buy into Twitter if you want on Friday.

**Carol Massar** (4:16)
That's true.

**Ed Ludlow** (4:18)
Musk took Twitter private. He then changed its name to X. It was then bought by XAI or folded into it, and then XAI was folded into SpaceX.