The first day of SpaceX trading has closed, and Manhattan’s financial institutions moved quickly from market hours to celebration. On Friday evening, JPMorgan hosted a high-profile reception atop its $4 billion Park Avenue headquarters, where CEO Jamie Dimon presided over indulgent, space-themed fare - moon pies, space ice cream and custom cloud candy - offered to SpaceX executives and roughly 250 employees. The reception was aimed at marking what participants called a record-shattering IPO for the rocket maker.
Elsewhere in the city, a downtown venture capital gathering staged a more intimate but equally lavish event: a $30,000 rooftop dinner for about 30 people serving A5 Wagyu beef sliders alongside Don Julio tequila, Macallan 18-year Scotch and Dom Pérignon champagne. Organizers had planned cocktail ice cubes stamped with SpaceX’s stylized "X" logo, according to a person briefed on the party arrangements.
Those celebrations reflected the material outcomes of the offering: the IPO created a new cohort of millionaires among current and former SpaceX staff, delivered hundreds of millions in fees to underwriting banks, added billions of dollars in gains for early institutional investors, and elevated founder Elon Musk to the milestone of the world’s first trillionaire, as described by attendees and observers.
Estimates from Hill.com – a platform that facilitates trading in shares of private companies - indicated that at least 4,000 current and former SpaceX employees held equity positions valued at more than $1 million at the time the stock began trading. The same estimates showed that roughly 400 employees had stakes exceeding $100 million.
All of this played out against a backdrop of broader economic headwinds. The celebrations came amid signs of slowing consumer spending and renewed worries about inflation, drawing a contrast between Wall Street’s appetite for the new public listing and Main Street’s more cautious economic outlook.
The market response to the offering was visible across trading platforms: several bank stocks and the SpaceX ticker registered gains on the day. In public commentary, Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at Wealth Club, noted the alignment between Musk’s ambitious outlook and investor sentiment, saying: "He (Musk) has long been reaching for the stars with his extra-terrestrial ambitions, and it appears plenty of investors share his enthusiasm for the future."
The Nasdaq stock exchange, which secured the listing, used Times Square’s giant screen to broadcast a 120-foot image of Musk during the opening bell ceremony. Social media activity from Musk included a photograph on X of Morgan Stanley’s banking team - CEO Ted Pick, co-president Dan Simkowitz and technology banker Michael Grimes - wearing matching green sneakers, a visual nod to the bank’s anticipated use of the "greenshoe" option to allocate extra shares if investor demand proved extraordinary.
Banks that participated in the underwriting stood to collect significant compensation from the deal. Sources familiar with the transactions suggested underwriting fees could total roughly $500 million. Those banks marked the milestone with their own events across the week.
At Goldman Sachs’s headquarters, Co-Head of Global Banking Dan Dees hosted SpaceX CFO Brett Johnsen and other executives for an after-market celebration following the IPO’s pricing on Thursday night. Goldman also distributed SpaceX-themed party favors to visitors on Friday, including asteroid-shaped macaroons. Morgan Stanley’s team was pictured publicly as part of the post-listing moments, and David Solomon, Goldman Sachs’s CEO, used social media to congratulate Musk and his team while noting the firm’s role as the "lead left bookrunner" on the transaction.
JPMorgan’s internal festivities extended across its trading floor and rooftop. The bank’s equities desk rang its own bell when the stock began trading and presented a custom-made rocket cake for the team. JPMorgan also planned to illuminate the top of its 1,388-foot Park Avenue tower with SpaceX rocket images to symbolize the collaboration. Artifacts from the moon landing were on display at the bank’s headquarters during the celebrations, and internal digital signage was set to feature imagery of SpaceX launches.
JPMorgan’s Friday night event was billed as the centerpiece of Wall Street’s week of acknowledgements, a large-scale party Dimon reportedly proposed directly to Musk months earlier. The bank’s series of events had been underway for several days, beginning with an investor call in which Dimon interviewed Musk for an audience of close to 4,000 JPMorgan clients; during that call Dimon called the entrepreneur "the Edison of our time."
Across venues, SpaceX branding and motifs punctuated the gatherings - from confectionery shaped like asteroids to ice cubes stamped with the company’s X logo - underscoring how the listing has become both a financial event and a cultural moment within the finance community.