SpaceX became a member of the Nasdaq 100 on July 7, capping one of the strangest and swiftest journeys any company has taken from private rocket-maker to index heavyweight.
For an outfit that spent two decades avoiding public markets altogether, the turnaround has been dizzying: An initial public offering (IPO) on June 12. Barely a month later, a seat among the hundred largest non-financial names on the Nasdaq exchange.
The speed owes everything to a rule change. Until 2026, newly-listed companies faced a waiting period of at least three months before they could be considered for index inclusion.
In May, Nasdaq rewrote that playbook, allowing eligible mega-IPOs to join after just 15 trading days. The shift was widely read as tailor-made for SpaceX, whose listing was always going to be too large for index providers to ignore.
TD Securities’ head of index and market structure research, Peter Haynes, noted that exchanges had to revisit their rulebooks given the sheer scale of the offering.
That scale is hard to overstate. SpaceX’s initial public offering was the largest in history, and the company entered the market with a valuation north of USD 2 trillion, making it the sixth-largest publicly traded stock in the United States.
The listing also made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, at least briefly – though a subsequent slide in the shares has since trimmed his fortune to an estimated $973 billion, according to Forbes.
Why this matters for ordinary investors
More than 200 investment products, holding a combined USD 800 billion in assets, track the Nasdaq 100. Any fund built to mirror the index is now obliged to buy SpaceX shares, meaning millions of savers with exposure to funds, such as Invesco’s QQQ and QQQM – and by extension, many workplace pension and retirement schemes – will own a slice of the company whether they intended to, or not.
Estimates of exactly how much forced buying this triggers vary widely. JPMorgan has put the passive demand tied to Nasdaq 100 inclusion at around USD 4.3 billion, while BNP Paribas estimates the wider buying across all Nasdaq-100 trackers could approach USD 8 billion. Even so, most analysts caution against expecting fireworks. SpaceX’s weightage in the index is likely to land at around 1%, some way behind established giants such as Nvidia and Amazon, which carries roughly a 4% weightage despite a comparable market capitalisation.
The gap comes down to free float (the proportion of shares actually available for public trading, as opposed to those held by insiders or still restricted). Only a small fraction of SpaceX’s stock was released in the IPO, which caps how much weight it can currently carry in a benchmark built on tradeable shares rather than headline valuation. Should more shares enter circulation over time, that weightage, and its influence on the index’s performance, would be expected to grow.
A volatile debut
SpaceX shares have already lived several lifetimes since listing. The stock surged by roughly half in its first three days of trading, only to surrender almost all of those gains within days. Analysts broadly expect the turbulence to continue rather than settle.
JJ Kinahan, senior vice-president at derivatives exchange Cboe, told CNBC that investors should brace for share-price swings of around USD 20 in either direction over short periods, a reminder that big moves cut both ways.
Some of that volatility stems from a wall of expiring lockups. Restrictions preventing insiders from selling are due to lift in tranches between 70 and 135 days after the IPO, creating a potential source of new selling pressure just as index-related buying tapers off.
Provisions covering Musk’s own shares, along with those of other large early investors, remain locked for a full year.
Susquehanna analyst Charles Minervino has described the rolling lockup expiries as a near-term overhang likely to weigh on sentiment.
Not everyone is convinced the index inclusion itself will move the needle much. Paul Meeks of Freedom Capital Markets argued that because the mechanics of index buying are entirely formulaic and well understood by the market in advance, the actual effect may prove less dramatic than headlines suggest.
Analysts at Jefferies and 22V Research have made similar points, suggesting the low float means passive purchases will fall short of what many investors initially assumed.
The bull and bear case
History offers some comfort to shareholders. Over the past decade, the 92 stocks added to the Nasdaq 100 delivered average returns of around 10% in the six months following inclusion, and 18% over 12 months, as tracking funds bought in and momentum traders followed. Whether SpaceX repeats that pattern is another question entirely.
Sceptics point to the valuation itself. SpaceX’s business spans satellite internet through Starlink, rocket launches, and – since a February merger with Musk’s xAI – a fast-growing artificial intelligence arm. Revenue reached $18.7 billion last year, up 33% on 2025, yet the company posted a net loss of USD 4.9 billion.
Some analysts have questioned whether a valuation built substantially on projected AI revenues, including ambitions around orbital data centres, is sustainable at current multiples. Morningstar has gone as far as valuing the company at roughly half its IPO debut price.
For now, the practical upshot for most investors is straightforward: Anyone holding a fund that tracks the Nasdaq 100 now owns a small piece of SpaceX, whether they sought that exposure out, or not.
What happens next – to the share price, the float, and the wider index – will be watched as closely by pension savers as by professional traders, if for very different reasons.