SpaceX IPO expected to mint over 4,000 employee millionaires

SpaceX's initial public offering is expected to turn more than 4,400 current and former employees into millionaires, according to The New York Times. Among its 22,000-person workforce — plus the hundreds who have departed over the years — a large share are engineers who took below-market pay with the expectation that equity would eventually make up the difference.

Launch engineer Trevor Hise turned down more conventional career paths to stay at SpaceX after a 2011 internship, accumulating more than 100,000 shares over the dozen years he spent at the company. At the targeted listing price of $135 per share, that position translates to a minimum value of $13.5 million. "The magnitude of this has been ridiculous," Hise, 37, said.

SpaceX is set to debut on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol SPCX. The company filed terms for its IPO disclosing plans to sell 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock at $135 apiece, which would raise close to $75 billion at a valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion — a figure that would rank it among the 10 most valuable U.S.-listed companies. The offering would eclipse the record set by Saudi Aramco's 2019 debut, which raised $29.4 billion.

Orders totaling around $150 billion poured in from institutional investors before the book-close deadline — roughly twice the amount SpaceX hopes to collect.

Looking ahead to their post-IPO finances, a cohort of over 100 SpaceX employees and alumni has negotiated a collective wealth management arrangement with Choreo, a Chicago-based registered investment advisor. The group represents potential wealth of between $1 billion and $5 billion, according to CNBC, citing unnamed sources. Participants who opt in would pay a fee below the 0.5% threshold — undercutting what wealth advisors typically charge, which generally falls somewhere between 0.5% and 1% of assets annually.

Despite the coming windfall, most employees will face restrictions on selling their stock immediately. Restrictions on selling will apply to over three-fifths of pre-offering shares. CEO Elon Musk's shares are locked up for 366 days after the final prospectus is filed.

SpaceX also reserved up to 5% of outstanding common stock for certain employees and individuals selected by its executive officers through a directed share program, with those participants exempt from lockup requirements.