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SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO avoided turbulence Friday, closing the day at $161.11 a share,19% above its initial offering price of $135.

It closed at a market cap over $2 trillion and catapulted itself from one of the world’s most valuable VC-backed companies into the sixth-largest public company in the US while minting its founder, Elon Musk, the world’s first trillionaire. With a successful debut, the stage is now set for a procession of mega AI IPOs this year after markets gave enthusiastic support to the biggest public offering in history.

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“SpaceX cleared one of the important questions hanging over the entire AI pipeline, which was never appetite, but depth,” said Harrison Rolfes, senior research analyst at PitchBook covering private companies.

In February, Musk merged xAI with SpaceX, citing the need to build out AI infrastructure in space—and cementing SpaceX’s profile as a major AI player. SpaceX’s spending on xAI has ballooned, with 2026 on track to far exceed last year’s total. In 2025, xAI spent $12.7 billion on CapEx, more than the combined $8 billion SpaceX spent on its Starlink satellite internet service and rocket launch service. In Q1 2026, xAI spent $7.7 billion.

But investors appear unfazed.

SpaceX’s stock price reached a high of $176 a share Friday—30% over its IPO price. “Demand was the only question, and SpaceX just answered it,” Rolfes said. “It’s full steam ahead.”

Both OpenAI and Anthropic have announced that they’ve confidentially filed draft IPO documents with the SEC, though it remains unclear when they plan to pull the official trigger to go public.

For VC investors in SpaceX, this moment also serves as a validation for the space industry.

“It’s from about 10 years ago, when the space industry was questioned on whether it was even investable, to now the biggest IPO in human history,” said Steve Jorgenson, GP at Starbridge Venture Capital, a space-focused firm that invested into SpaceX in 2022 through a fund-of-funds stake. “We’ve been preaching this for over a decade.”

Jorgenson anticipates the SpaceX IPO will be a boon for the space-tech industry. He pointed to greater interest from LPs in other investment opportunities and also cited rising valuations in the industry. “Everyone’s tide has been going up on this one,” he said.

While the historic IPO is a chance for GPs to finally make sizable distributions to their LPs, not all from the latter group are eager to get out of SpaceX. According to Jorgenson, 97% of Starbridge’s LPs requested their distributions in stock rather than cash.

“This is the most unprecedented amount of investors looking for shares rather than cash that I’ve ever seen,” he said. “[Starbridge’s LPs are] just feeling so lucky they got these shares earlier at a lower price and they just kind of want to squirrel them away.”

This article originally appeared on PitchBook News