BlackRock places $5b order as SpaceX IPO draws record institutional demand

American aerospace company SpaceX has received orders worth billions of dollars from major asset managers, including BlackRock, ahead of what is shaping up to be the largest initial public offering in history.

The Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter, reported Thursday that BlackRock purchased at least $5 billion worth of shares in SpaceX's IPO subscription, which closed Wednesday.

Orders from other large asset managers were similarly staggering, the WSJ said. Sovereign wealth funds and family offices managing the wealth of ultra-high-net-worth individuals also poured in orders, with at least one family office submitting a subscription exceeding $1 billion. The scale of institutional demand becomes clear when measured against Cerebras — the AI chip company that held the title of this year's largest IPO before SpaceX — which raised a total of $5.55 billion through its listing.

Bloomberg separately reported Thursday that retail investor orders for SpaceX shares had surpassed $100 billion.

While some on Wall Street have criticized SpaceX's offering price as overvalued and raised concerns about the unprecedented level of control Elon Musk exercises as CEO, both retail and institutional investors have been racing to secure allocations in the IPO.

SpaceX aims to raise $75 billion — the largest amount ever raised in an IPO — by selling approximately 556 million Class A common shares at $135 per share.

Wall Street analysts have also begun initiating coverage of SpaceX in an unusually active fashion ahead of the listing.

Oppenheimer initiated coverage Thursday with an "outperform" rating and a price target of $190, implying roughly 41 percent upside from the IPO price of $135. The firm projected SpaceX's market capitalization would reach approximately $2.5 trillion over the next 12 to 18 months.

SpaceX is targeting a valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion in this IPO.

"We view SpaceX as the only vertically integrated AI company with capital, data, large language models, hardware, manufacturing capabilities and engineering talent all under one roof," said Timothy Horan, an analyst at Oppenheimer.

Horan said Starlink, the company's satellite internet service, has established itself as the core cash-generating engine, and predicted that SpaceX's AI operations — including xAI — would become the largest contributor to the company's value over the long term.

He also described a potential merger between SpaceX and Tesla as "a plausible scenario," while projecting that the two companies would maintain a "quasi-vertically integrated ecosystem" to preserve access to capital.

Horan said an initial supply-demand imbalance in SpaceX shares could emerge after the listing, driven by broad retail investor demand and accelerating index inclusion.

New Street Research also initiated coverage Thursday, setting a 12-month price target of $165. The firm cited SpaceX's ability to span rockets, space infrastructure, cloud and AI as a key positive.

SpaceX was set to finalize its offering price Thursday, with shares scheduled to begin trading on the Nasdaq on Friday.