Jun 12, 2026
The richest man on the planet has launched the world's biggest IPO ever. After the pricing of the SpaceX IPO was finalized yesterday, shares of the rocket-and-AI giant were traded on the NASDAQ for the first time today. The company's total valuation stands at the expected $1.75 trillion, with the roughly 550 million newly issued shares representing a value of $75 billion at the offering price ($135 per share). Shares opened approximately 11% higher on the first day of trading, touching $150. These ingredients make for the biggest IPO of all time. And for the greatest wealth in the hands of a single person: Elon Musk is, on paper at least, the first trillionaire in world history.
Is Musk also a steward? And is SpaceX perhaps a company in steward ownership? As absurd as the question sounds, we were recently asked it at an event …
… and by a person who can hardly be suspected of knowing nothing about economic matters. And the question may not be quite so far-fetched at first glance after all.
Because the new ownership structure created by the IPO ensures that Elon Musk always retains control over the company. Although he holds only a good 40% of the shares, he commands about 83% of the voting rights – essentially full control.
This is made possible by a dual-class share structure: SpaceX shares are divided into Class A and Class B shares. The classic "one share, one vote" principle applies to the A shares. The B shares, however, carry tenfold voting rights at the same capital stake. They are reserved for Musk and a few insiders and are not for sale for the time being. The shares issued today are exclusively Class A shares. So-called lock-up periods apply to the B shares; Musk himself, for example, would only be allowed to sell B shares after 366 days, i.e. from June 13, 2027. At that point, however, a special rule kicks in: upon sale, the B share converts into an A share and loses its tenfold voting right. B shares thus come, so to speak, with an expiration date.
That Musk would sell his vote-heavy shares is in any case highly unlikely, indeed all but ruled out. His whole point is precisely to consolidate his power and to lead the company unhindered toward its mission: the establishment of a human colony on Mars or the construction of data centers in space – ultimately, the economic development of outer space. It helps him that, even after the IPO, he continues to serve as CEO, CTO and Chairman of the board all in one – and cannot be removed by a shareholders' meeting.
That Musk retains control initially aligns with the principles of steward ownership: power lies within the company itself; capital and voting rights are not fully decoupled, but outsiders do receive capital stakes and thus profit rights without real decision-making power.
We do indeed know this from the steward ownership context, e.g. from large foundation-owned companies in Denmark. Novo Nordisk (see our case study) or Carlsberg, too, have issued minority stakes that are traded on the stock market, while the majority of voting rights – and thus governing authority – always remains with the respective foundations.
As far as the issued shares are concerned, the SpaceX structure may therefore bear similarities to steward ownership. But when it comes to the company's actual independence and its purpose-orientation through the separation of money and power, the picture looks quite different. Elon Musk, as voting-rights owner, CEO, CTO and Chairman, unites all power in himself – and is also endowed with ample profit rights, of which he holds around 42% in total.
This entails considerable governance problems: there is essentially no way to challenge management decisions, to replace board members, or to respond to governance failures. Musk has a free hand. This looks different at fiduciary foundation-owned companies that are traded on the stock exchange.
In the SpaceX prospectus, filed in advance with the U.S. securities regulator SEC, Musk is accordingly described as a so-called key-man risk. This is the opposite of the steward idea: that a single person unites so much power and also potential personal financial benefit in themselves that nothing works without them, and that the company's very mission (which we do not wish to evaluate here) – and thus its economic success – would be jeopardized.
Should Musk die, for instance (this risk is explicitly named), his B shares would, as in the case of a sale, be converted into A shares upon inheritance. Control would thereby erode, the shares possibly divided among various heirs, so that the balance of power within the company would change fundamentally virtually overnight. Due to the missing A shares, the voting rights of the B shares would be substantially upgraded – so that, in the end, large institutional investors such as funds would probably be at the helm. Absentee owners – rather than stewards who are closely connected to the company and its purpose and are not at the same time endowed with profit stakes.
The role of being a steward in steward-owned companies, by contrast, has a different aim: not to cement power and money with particular persons, but rather a) through the decoupling of private profit interests from entrepreneurial control and b) through the possible fiduciary handover of power to persons connected to the mission in each case, to keep the company stable over the long term and to always place its healthy development and purpose-orientation at the center.
Musk, or so he repeatedly avows, is not concerned in this project with yet a further increase of his private wealth, but with his mission to enable human life extraterrestrially as well, and much more besides. He casts himself, in his self-image entirely a steward, at the service of the cause. And yet all power is tied to him alone.
This brings further decisive problems with it: in matters of governance, market power and capital concentration.
SpaceX is by no means merely the rocket company of a crazed new trillionaire. Recently, Musk's AI company xAI – which includes the platform X as well as the AI model Grok – was integrated into SpaceX, not least because AI on its own cannot yet turn a profit, while at the same time being seen as the most future-defining technology of all. Musk hopes for synergies. The only SpaceX subsidiary that is already profitable, however, is Starlink, the world's largest satellite communications network.
On top of this comes the plan to also bring Tesla under the one giant shared roof. But Tesla, as a potential acquisition target, is at the same time a SpaceX shareholder through its old xAI stake. This – along with the fact that Musk sits at both ends of the negotiating table here – gives governance experts headaches.
Since large parts of Musk's plans – keyword Mars colonization as a long-term goal or the industrial use of the Moon – border on the surreal or lie very far in the future, the IPO has at times also been framed as a gigantic bet on the future: on the profitability of AI, on madcap-seeming outer-space projects – and ultimately on the person of Musk himself, on whom everything hangs.
And where there's betting, the bubble is not far off.
None of the AI tech giants operates profitably as yet, yet they are valued at record sums. Now the next tech giants are already in the IPO starting blocks: OpenAI and Anthropic. And according to critics, the sector is already overvalued. The top 10 percent of all companies by market capitalization – most of them AI-related – account for around 75 percent of total market capitalization. That is the highest concentration ever measured, even higher than at the height of the dot-com era. (Capital.com)
The financial advisory firm The Motley Fool identifies four factors that point to bubble conditions: "retail investor euphoria, speculative capital concentration, decoupling of valuations from fundamentals, and a narrative so compelling that scepticism feels intellectually disreputable." All four, writes the European TheNextWeb, "are present." (The Next Web) The following comparison gives pause:
"OpenAI's $852 billion valuation prices a company that has never earned a profit at roughly double the market capitalisation of Coca-Cola, a company that has earned profits continuously since the 1890s." (The Next Web)
Michael Hartnett, Chief Investment Strategist at Bank of America, has warned that the upcoming listings of SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic could push the technology sector's weight in the S&P 500 beyond the 48% historical threshold: a level of concentration that would eclipse even the peaks seen during the Roaring Twenties and the dot-com bubble of the 1990s (Tradingkey). Of course, there are also voices to the contrary, that the 2026 bull market will withstand it (Yahoo Finance).
The driver of all these developments: the shareholder-value maxim. The great game of the stock markets over money and power, in which entrepreneurial missions for the good of humanity and the planet are no longer the focus, but rather speculative profit interests.
The speculative face of financial-market capitalism shows itself in the SpaceX case as well.
SpaceX thus pushed for quick inclusion in the U.S. tech index Nasdaq-100, allegedly making this a condition for listing on the Nasdaq. In February, the exchange changed its inclusion rules, making a "fast entry" possible – SpaceX is now to be included after just 15 days, without the usual waiting periods, which exist to determine a realistic price, and without liquidity checks.
The former "veteran fund manager" (Business Insider) George Noble, in the context of SpaceX, spoke in a blog post on Substack of "the most SHAMELESS structural manipulation of a major index I've ever seen."
And he explains why: inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 forces passive funds (ETFs, mutual funds, pension funds) to invest in SpaceX as well (this is standard). SpaceX thereby gains a huge buyer base that is, moreover, price-insensitive, since its investments are diversified. The SpaceX share price is thus stabilized over an extended period, without any real price discovery having taken place.
Until insiders and early investors can sell their SpaceX stakes after the lock-up period and are likely to realize immense profits (bitmex). The price is paid in the end by the small investors – the very people who were so immensely important to Musk, who likes to present himself as a man of the people, and to SpaceX: around 30% of the issued shares are reserved for retail investors, roughly three times as many as in other major IPOs (The Next Web). George Noble writes:
"The rules are being rewritten to benefit IPO issuers and early-stage insiders, and your capital is the tool being USED to enrich them."
The Danish pension fund "AkademikerPension" has placed SpaceX on its blacklist owing to its "catastrophic" governance structure (Indexbox).
And U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote shortly before the IPO, only yesterday, on June 11, in an open letter addressed among others to the heads of the Nasdaq and S&P indices: "The changes to your index rules to accommodate these large companies, however, have the potential to destabilize markets and create significant risks for American investors, especially retirees and other individuals that rely on index funds for their savings." And:
"In short, these changes may enable a scheme of financial engineering that rigs America's capital markets in favor of Mr. Musk and other SpaceX insiders."
Short-term profit interests, allegedly pushed through by manipulative means; as well as concentration of power, money and markets. This IPO is also yet another example of the ongoing financialization of the world economy: "That's the term for making financial markets and transactions ends unto themselves, disconnected from – and often at the expense of – the societal benefits that support human flourishing and are capitalism's proper purpose," wrote Oren Cass, chief economist at American Compass, in February this year, warning of a "financial nihilism: an entire business model built on gaming the system." The financial bet is exactly that: a game.
And yet what is at stake is nothing less than the economic development of outer space and, with AI, the most groundbreaking technology since at least the Industrial Revolution. Just recently, the Pope pointed out that, in such transformative times, human beings must not be left behind.
We ask ourselves: Is financial-market capitalism really the best instrument for settling the important questions of power and money – and thus the ownership structures behind such significant innovations? Would the state perhaps be called for?
Steward ownership offers a different answer, one that lies between unleashed capitalism and state control: it emphasizes entrepreneurial innovative power – but at the same time ensures that values such as independence, mission, purpose, all of it for the good of all stakeholders, always remain at the center. For technologies and structures that concern all of humanity, this bears enormous potential.
Elon Musk is many things. His place in history is assured. But is he a steward? We can rule that out. At least for today.
