SpaceX IPO breaks records amid AI safety protests over Grok

SpaceX is about to become the largest company ever to go public. On Friday, the aerospace and artificial intelligence firm will debut on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX, offering 555.6 million shares at $135 each—a transaction that will raise $75 billion and value the company at roughly $1.77 trillion, placing it among the ten most valuable publicly traded corporations in the world. The figure dwarfs the previous record, set by Saudi Aramco in 2019, which raised $25.6 billion. Elon Musk, who founded and runs SpaceX, will retain 82.4% of the company's voting power, guaranteeing his control regardless of what other investors own. The arrangement could make him the first person on Earth with a personal fortune exceeding one trillion dollars.

SpaceX's core business has always been space exploration—launching rockets, operating the Starship and Falcon vehicles, and providing connectivity through the Starlink satellite network. But the company has pivoted aggressively toward artificial intelligence. In February, SpaceX absorbed xAI, the firm behind Grok, a generative AI chatbot. That same xAI had previously absorbed X, the social media platform Musk purchased in 2023. In its filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, SpaceX claims to have identified "the largest total addressable market in the history of humanity." The company pegs that market at $28.5 billion, with artificial intelligence accounting for $26.5 billion of it—concentrated in corporate applications and infrastructure. Musk has outlined an audacious vision: placing data centers in space, launching AI-equipped satellites with solar panels, and building Terafab, a colossal chip factory jointly operated by Tesla, xAI, SpaceX, and Intel. He has even speculated about manufacturing solar panels and radiators on the Moon itself.

The IPO arrives at a moment of genuine momentum for the company. SpaceX is the largest commercial contractor for NASA, and the U.S. government has outsourced significant portions of its space activities to Musk's firm, creating what analysts describe as an inextricable link between federal spending priorities and SpaceX's bottom line. Yet the company lost $4.937 billion in 2025 while generating $18.674 billion in revenue—a stark contrast to technology titans like Meta, which earned $60 billion that same year. Retail investors will receive up to 30% of the offering, according to Jefferies analysts, and their participation could amplify volatility. Historical data suggests first-day trading typically climbs around 19% on average, though performance weakens afterward. SpaceX will not immediately join the S&P 500, which requires a year of profitability among other criteria, but analysts expect it to enter the Russell index on June 26 and the Nasdaq 100 on July 6.

Yet the IPO is unfolding against a backdrop of serious allegations about the safety of Grok itself. On Thursday, as SpaceX prepared for its market debut, a towering inflatable statue of Musk appeared in Times Square. The figure, several meters tall with exaggerated anatomical detail, bore satirical tattoos—a heart containing the word "ketamine" on one arm, and across the abdomen, in capital letters: "SPACEX'S GROK MAKES AI CHILD PORN." Organizers distributed postcards and displayed signs citing a New York Times report: of 4.4 million images distributed by Grok over a recent nine-day period, an estimated 65% were sexualized or explicit. The campaign, marked with the hashtag #StopSpaceXChildNudes, urged investors to withhold financing from SpaceX, framing investment as complicity in child exploitation and non-consensual pornography.

The controversy is not new to Musk's ecosystem. When he acquired X, he revised the platform's content guidelines to permit "nudes or sexual behavior of adults produced and distributed with consent," explicitly extending this policy to AI-generated content including anime and hentai. Despite X's stated prohibition on child sexual exploitation and harm to minors, civil rights groups have documented that Grok's current safeguards and moderation infrastructure have failed to prevent the creation and spread of non-consensual explicit images, including those depicting minors. Last summer, X Premium subscribers began using Grok to generate non-consensual images of people in underwear—a trend that prompted global users to demand stricter controls and content removal. Most tourists photographed with the Times Square statue told reporters they knew little about the specific allegations, recognizing Musk primarily as Tesla's chief executive and a technology visionary. The juxtaposition was stark: on the same day SpaceX prepared to raise the largest sum ever in an IPO, protesters were broadcasting to the world that the company's flagship AI product had become a tool for generating child sexual abuse material.