SpaceX went public on June 12 at $135 per share, raising $75 billion and smashing every IPO record in existence. By the end of its first trading day, shares had climbed to around $161, a roughly 19% pop that pushed the company’s market cap past $2 trillion.

The great portfolio reshuffle

Elon Musk is the gravitational center of both companies. Retail investors who previously expressed their Musk thesis through Tesla, the only publicly traded vehicle available, suddenly had a second option.

Tesla experienced visible selling pressure in the weeks following the SpaceX debut. Retail investors began reallocating portions of their portfolios toward SpaceX. Tesla’s stock did manage a modest recovery shortly after the IPO closed.

Tesla itself holds around 19 million shares of SpaceX. That means Tesla’s balance sheet now has direct financial exposure to SpaceX’s stock performance.

The trillionaire effect

The SpaceX IPO pushed Elon Musk past a milestone that seemed like science fiction a decade ago. He became the world’s first trillionaire, with his combined stakes in Tesla and SpaceX forming the backbone of that valuation.

Analysts have started floating the idea of a potential Tesla-SpaceX merger. Experts suggest any merger would face enormous regulatory hurdles and likely couldn’t happen before mid-2027 at the earliest.

What this means for investors

Tesla’s growth narrative, which increasingly depends on unproven revenue streams like robotaxis and its Optimus humanoid robot program, now has to compete for attention against a company that is already generating real revenue from Starlink and government launch contracts.