{"id":7057,"date":"2026-06-13T03:48:57","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T03:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=7057"},"modified":"2026-06-13T03:48:57","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T03:48:57","slug":"how-elon-musk-sold-spacexs-1-77-trillion-ipo-dream-and-what-other-ceos-can-copy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=7057","title":{"rendered":"How Elon Musk sold SpaceX&#8217;s $1.77 trillion IPO dream\u2014and what other CEOs can copy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages-2216843063_897d48-e1781256219259.jpg?w=2048\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Good morning.<\/strong> It\u2019s SpaceX IPO day! Hooray? Odds are high that investors will clamor for some of the $75 billion worth of shares, a small sliver of equity that puts the market cap of Elon Musk\u2019s aerospace and satellite company at an eye-watering $1.77 trillion. Never mind that Morningstar says it\u2019s being optimistic in valuing the stock at $63, or 53% below that IPO price. BlackRock alone has reportedly put in a $5 billion order to get a piece of this money-losing operation that has ambitions to, among other things, put a million people on Mars.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>What can leaders learn from this sci-fi thriller that they can adapt into their own playbook? Well, maybe a few things.<\/p>\n<p><strong>You don\u2019t have to be shareholder-friendly to get shareholders excited.<\/strong> Governance experts were outraged when Google went public in 2004 under a dual-class structure, which gives more power or votes to one class of shareholders. As founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page wrote at the time: \u201cGoogle is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.\u201d In other words, if you don\u2019t like it, don\u2019t buy it. (If you\u2019d invested $1,000 then, you\u2019d have around $75,000 today.) Fast forward to SpaceX, and dual-class structures are now common in tech IPOs, reinforcing the myth that founders know best how to steer their public companies and giving shareholders almost no choice over how the company is governed. Case in point: Musk can\u2019t be fired as CEO of SpaceX. Ever.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The power of storytelling<\/strong>. Forget about what\u2019s actually in the prospectus, such as the fact that more than three-quarters of capital raised today will be used for debt repayment, or that analysts say SpaceX would have to generate $1.1 trillion in revenue and $250 billion in profits to justify its lofty market cap. That\u2019s the Debbie Downer take. I remember how excited I was when Elon Musk talked to me 15 years ago about his vision to make humanity multi-planetary. Anyone can understand and rally around that vision. Maybe that\u2019s why Musk allocated 30% of the shares to retail investors. As the New York State Lottery used to say, all it takes is a dollar and a dream. Make that $135, probably in tranches of 100 shares.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The power of personality.<\/strong> It\u2019s hard to replicate the magic and the myth that is Elon Musk, though he\u2019s likely to have a lot of offspring you could eventually hire. Did Elon Musk bring efficiency to the U.S. government as the man from DOGE? No. Has he been a great leader at all the other companies he\u2019s run? Debatable, though the Tesla board certainly didn\u2019t mind giving him a \u201cmoonshot\u201d pay package. But Musk does understand the value of being out there, articulating a vision and taking risks that earn him friends and foes. To some extent, that\u2019s the founder\u2019s prerogative. Contrast that with the anodyne press releases and carefully calibrated comments that turn leadership into a triumph of the boring. When it comes to the fundamentals of SpaceX, skepticism may be running high, and it may not matter. We have liftoff.<\/p>\n<p><em>Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com<\/em><\/p>\n<h3>Top leadership news<\/h3>\n<p><b>The limits of disruptive leadership<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Bari Weiss has <\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\">thrown<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> CBS News into turmoil since taking over as editor-in-chief, most recently firing <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight:400\">60 Minutes<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> anchor Scott Pelley and upending the storied broadcast, even as it wins the ratings war. &#8220;A generation of people actually believe that disruption is virtue, and that&#8217;s an enormous mistake,&#8221; says Harvard Kennedy School senior lecturer Ronald Heifetz.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>The real hurdle to enterprise AI<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Most companies are <\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\">getting AI wrong<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\">, spending 93 cents of every dollar on technology while neglecting the human side, according to executives who spoke at Fortune Brainstorm Tech. Just 20% of companies are capturing nearly three-quarters of AI&#8217;s total economic value, said Deloitte vice chair China Widener.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Citadel\u2019s uber-competitive internship<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">More than 115,000 people <\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\">applied<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> for a Citadel internship this year yet only 350 got in, an acceptance rate of 0.36%. The 350 interns who made the cut earn up to $5,800 a week, plus a $15,000 housing stipend.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>The markets<\/h3>\n<p><b>S&amp;P 500<\/b><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> futures are up 0.32% this morning. The last session closed up 1.75%. <\/span><b>The<\/b> <b>STOXX Europe 600<\/b><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> was up 1.75% in early trading. <\/span><b>The U.K.\u2019s FTSE 100<\/b><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> was up 1.37% in early trading.<\/span><b> Japan\u2019s Nikkei 225 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight:400\">was up 2.81%.<\/span><b> South Korea\u2019s KOSPI <\/b><span style=\"font-weight:400\">is<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight:400\">up 4.63% today. <\/span><b>China\u2019s CSI 300 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight:400\">was up 1.16%.<\/span><b> Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng <\/b><span style=\"font-weight:400\">was up 1.93%.<\/span><b> India\u2019s NIFTY 50 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight:400\">was up 1.83%. <\/span><b>Bitcoin<\/b><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> was at $63K.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Around the watercooler<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Exclusive: Consumer device giant LG Electronics to launch blockchain to place and sell ads<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> by Jack Kubinec and Ben Weiss<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">\u2018China follows Musk very closely\u2019: While SpaceX blocked Chinese investors from IPO, China\u2019s space firms prep their own as a counterweight<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> by Mia Osmonbekov<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Abridge wants to be the operating system for medicine\u2014and NVIDIA and Eli Lilly are helping build it<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> by Lily Mae Lazarus<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Silicon Valley insiders warn U.S. defense supply chain is unprepared for modern warfare<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> by Sebastian Herrera<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">As SpaceX goes public, a $100 billion shadow market faces a reckoning<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> by Allie Garfinkle<\/span><\/p>\n<p>CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>#Elon #Musk #sold #SpaceXs #trillion #IPO #dreamand #CEOs #copy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good morning. It\u2019s SpaceX IPO day! Hooray? Odds are high that investors will clamor for some of the $75 billion worth of shares, a small sliver of equity that puts&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1411,458,9426,9425,749,2040,750,1113,5557,771],"class_list":["post-7057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-ceo-daily","tag-ceos","tag-copy","tag-dreamand","tag-elon","tag-ipo","tag-musk","tag-sold","tag-spacexs","tag-trillion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}