SpaceX has completed the largest initial public offering in history, raising $75 billion at a valuation of $2.2 trillion. According to reports from Fortune, this historic listing is part of a wave that includes OpenAI and Anthropic, creating a new generation of extraordinarily wealthy individuals. The SpaceX shares jumped more than 19% on their first day of trading, opening at $150 and rising to around $168 before closing just below $161. At the closing price, the company carried a market valuation of $2.2 trillion, making it the sixth largest publicly listed US company and surpassing even Tesla. A wave of extraordinary wealth is about to hit the markets, with thousands of new millionaires and billionaires all wrestling with what comes next.
Melinda French Gates, who has a current net worth estimated at $19 billion by Bloomberg, placing her at No. 137 on their billionaires ranking, has clear advice for new IPO millionaires. As reported by Fortune, she told them to "commit now to giving at least half of it away." French Gates, who co-founded the Giving Pledge in 2010 alongside Warren Buffett, emphasized that "if you even have the ability to invest in these IPOs, believe me, you have the ability to give half away." She recently announced a $215 million philanthropic commitment to women's health, including women's midlife health and menopause research, focusing her giving through her own philanthropic firm Pivotal. With an estimated net worth of $19 billion, she ranks 137th on Bloomberg's billionaires list.
The Giving Pledge has grown to include more than 250 philanthropists, with signatories including Buffett, Canva co-founders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, MacKenzie Scott, Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky and Spanx founder Sara Blakely. According to Fortune, French Gates has spoken warmly of fellow pledge signatories who have pushed boundaries of large-scale giving, including Scott's records with giving to historically Black colleges and universities, and Alice Walton's new medical school building initiative. In 2010, French Gates co-founded the Giving Pledge, the promise the ultra-wealthy can make to give away their money in their lifetimes or their wills, and pledged to distribute the majority of her resources within her lifetime.
The $75 billion SpaceX IPO has generated significant revenue for major investment banks, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley leading the deal as the two primary underwriters. As reported by Bloomberg, the deal signals the latest point of support for what Wells Fargo's Mayo is calling an AI-driven "capital markets supercycle." For the SpaceX IPO's two leading banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, that's especially significant, as they have also taken lead spots in IPOs for AI model makers Anthropic and OpenAI, which are anticipated for sometime later this year. Goldman Sachs COO John Waldron told Bloomberg TV that the deal "presages the beginning of a pretty sizable wave of IPOs, which we are excited about," adding that it provides the latest major sign that investors continue to show willingness to finance companies with huge AI ambitions.
French Gates' advice carries a broader argument about obligation and context, as reported by Fortune. She reminds new billionaires that "anyone who is a billionaire in the US benefitted from growing up" in the country or coming there as an immigrant, pointing to good roads, access to education and healthcare as foundational conditions that make business success possible. The implication is direct: wealth at this scale is not created in a vacuum, and those who accumulate it in the US do so in part because of public infrastructure and institutional stability. French Gates emphasises a wider principle: billionaires in America have benefitted enormously from the infrastructure and opportunity the country provides, noting that "good roads, access to education and, for the most part, health care make it possible for people to build successful businesses in this country."
