Small investors scrambled to participate in SpaceX’s IPO, even though some thought the valuation was “ridiculous.”

Marvin Jung disagrees. space x Because he thinks it’s a bargain.

The 51-year-old regional operations director for veterinary medicine believes Elon Musk’s rocket company will go public at a “very, very aggressive” valuation. However, he still asked for 1,000 shares. robin hoodenthusiasm for betting on one of the world’s most anticipated initial public offerings will overwhelm concerns about price.

SpaceX set a fixed price of $135 per share for Friday’s IPO, giving it a valuation of $1.77 trillion. That would instantly make SpaceX the seventh-largest company in the U.S. by market capitalization. tesla flat.

Jung called the assessment “outrageous. It’s ridiculous. It’s frankly irrational.”

That hasn’t stopped him from trying to get an allocation, especially given that SpaceX is putting an unusually large amount of its stock into retail. The retail allocation is in the low 20% range. While this is lower than the 30% previously expected, it’s still a steeper discount than usual since most IPOs offer only 5% to 10% to retailers, according to Fidelity.

Traders can request access to IPO shares through a variety of brokerage platforms, including Fidelity, which has set a minimum brokerage account balance of $2,000 for traders.

That is well below the $100,000 to $500,000 threshold that Fidelity typically sets for IPOs, people familiar with the matter said.

A self-directed investor who trades in his spare time, Mr. Jung has been active during the meme stock boom and closely monitors the market through Reddit investment forums. His plan is not to become a long-term shareholder of SpaceX. Instead, they’re hoping for a strong opening day rally and using that to move on.

“With the work of SpaceX and Elon, this is like a beautiful symphony of all the right trigger meme words,” he said. “I think this has a pretty good chance of performing well from day one. I’d expect it to be at least 30%.”

Mr Chong said he intended to sell immediately after trading began. He wants to free up funds for the next wave of blockbuster products: Anthropic and OpenAI.

However, investors should be careful, as retail brokerages have anti-flip policies that penalize traders who exit early. For example, Fidelity stipulates that if a trader sells his or her allocation within the first 15 calendar days of debut, it will affect his or her ability to participate in future public offerings.

“It’s time. Thank you, Elon. I spent a lot of money on my wife’s Tesla. I want some of it back,” he said with a laugh.

Since Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, it has grown into a conglomerate that includes not only the reusable rocket business but also satellite internet services Starlink and xAI. With the IPO, Musk’s net worth could exceed $1 trillion.

“Elon is getting this premium multiple because he has a vision of what’s going to happen in the future,” said Michael Monaghan, portfolio manager at Founders ETF. The Founders ETF tracks 100 publicly traded U.S. companies led by founders through actively managed stocks. Founders 100 ETF (FFF). “He builds it faster than anyone else,” he continued, then said, “You can’t model it in a traditional evaluation framework.”

His remarks come as SpaceX has signed major computing deals with Anthropic and Google in recent weeks. Anthropic has agreed to pay the company $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, while Google has promised to pay SpaceX $920 million per month for 32 months.

The addition of the Google deal revealed during SpaceX’s roadshow last week more than doubles the company’s 2026 revenue forecast, Monahan said.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he continued. The portfolio manager estimates that SpaceX’s revenue could reach $200 billion by 2030, which he considers a “conservative” forecast.

With all the optimism surrounding the IPO and the high likelihood that Musk will become the world’s first billionaire, private investor Mikey Moran is worried that he, like others, will miss out. Moran is used to riding waves of hype. In July 2025, he purchased 10,000 shares. open door technologies. Over the next two days, the stock rose about 79%.

“This is the Super Bowl of IPOs,” he said of SpaceX.

Moran, 49, the founder of a hair extension and beauty product supply company, ultimately received 11 of the 20 shares he requested through Robinhood, but said he was “not sure if it was a good deal.” For Moran, this is a short-term investment rather than a long-term holding, but he said he was willing to take “some risk” despite concerns about the company’s valuation.

“Why wouldn’t you want to be part of the biggest company?” he added.

Moran revealed that exiting Tesla too early years ago was one of the biggest trading mistakes he ever made. Back in 2018, this trader bought a stock, held it for just a few weeks, then decided to quit while he was ahead and take profits as the stock price was rising. Little did he know that Tesla stock would continue to soar for years to come. Since the beginning of 2018, the stock has soared more than 1,700%, giving it a valuation of $1.5 trillion.

Now, the Atlanta-based entrepreneur says Musk himself is the main reason he wants to get into the industry, describing him as someone who “makes it happen.”

“Whatever Elon Musk does, it’s hard to bet on it,” Moran told CNBC. “It’s very hard to argue that[Musk]is not the greatest entrepreneur of all time.”

Andrew Chen learned the hard way not to bet against Elon Musk.

The 21-year-old Cornell University student, who studies finance and computer science and trades stocks on the side, previously invested in an aircraft connectivity company that many investors believed would be cut off from competition. Instead, it was jammed by SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet network.

“I’ve been naming a lot of them for a long time, but in the end I was completely wrong because Elon was able to execute,” Chen said. “I was wrong before betting on Elon. I don’t think he’s wrong when it comes to execution in space. He’s clearly been very successful.”

Now, as SpaceX prepares for its long-awaited public launch, Chen is on the other side of the deal. He has requested five shares through Robinhood and plans to hold them despite concerns from some investors that the company is overvalued.

“From a corporate financial and fundamental perspective, it’s impossible to multiply a market cap of $1.7 trillion,” he said. “It really depends on future execution.”

But for Chen, that uncertainty is the point. Having seen Musk overcome skepticism from investors and competitors time and time again, he is making another bet on the entrepreneur’s ability to deliver.

“I think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy stocks now,” he said.

SpaceX was one of the most discussed names on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum in the days leading up to its IPO, with more than 1,600 mentions since Monday, according to Breakout Point.

Despite all the buzz, Ross Cameron, 41, isn’t entirely convinced there’s still demand. Cameron, who lives in the Berkshires, Massachusetts, founded the trading education platform Warrior Trading more than a decade ago, and his YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers. He asked Charles Schwab for 2,500 shares, emphasizing that his decision to move forward with investing in SpaceX’s IPO would depend on how much Charles Schwab offered him.

“If they say, ‘Here it is, you can have it all,’ I’m going to say, ‘No thanks,’ because it means there’s plenty of supply,” he said. “If they said, ‘You’re only going to get 1,000 or 2,000 shares,’ I’d probably take it, because that shows there’s a lot of demand. It shows that the IPO is likely to open at a higher price, and there’s going to be a lot more demand.”

If he does invest, it probably won’t be long before he exits anyway. He was already skeptical about the IPO price, saying, “We’re buying at the highest price it’s ever traded. That’s kind of the definition of stupid money.” With retail allocation being the “biggest wildcard”, he believes there is a better chance of securing a “good” risk-to-reward ratio once the lock-up period ends, as he assesses the share price movement over a six-month period.

“My feeling with SpaceX is to trade it and not just give it a chance to sell yet and hand over cash to all the insiders and then see where support can be found,” Cameron said. “Then maybe there’s something we can do.”

Helaine Markham sees opportunity far beyond that point. Markham, 30, of Monterey Bay, California, runs Markham Trading, a market education platform, with her husband, Blaine Markham. While she sees near-term growth opportunities at Starlink, there’s another part of the company that excites her for the future.

“The long-term growth opportunity is in the space side of the business,” Markham said. She pointed out, “There is the possibility of entering space-related industries that don’t even exist yet, such as mining minerals from space, and there is also the possibility of (artificial intelligence) data centers in space.”

Markham requested only two shares through Robinhood, but hopes to increase his holdings over time.

“We really want to own this for the long term, over the next 10 years, to maximize the long-term growth opportunities that are at hand,” he said. “It could be an investment in a legacy that will be passed down to my children over time.”

With interest in space growing among investors, she may be onto something. Maurits Pott, CEO of Tema ETF, believes it is inevitable that the S&P 500 will include several space-related stocks by 2030.

Potts operates the world’s largest space-themed ETF, known as . Tema Space Innovators ETF (NASA)It debuted at the end of March. The fund has approximately $2.6 billion in assets under management and is the only space ETF to directly own SpaceX at approximately 7% of its net asset value. Quarter-to-date, the ETF is up about 40%.

The CEO emphasized that the fund is not a vehicle to trade SpaceX. He also doesn’t see SpaceX’s IPO as an effective opportunity to reverse the stock price.

“If people are investing in the space economy, it would seem a little foolish to buy or sell on SpaceX’s IPO,” Potts said.

He also said that “the space economy is only going to grow.” “SpaceX’s IPO is not a destination.”

SpaceX did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment on valuation concerns.

—CNBC’s Charlotte Morabito and Alex Harring contributed reporting.