Astronaut costumes. No-shows. Soon-to-be very rich people.
I spent Friday morning outside the Nasdaq’s headquarters in Times Square, when SpaceX debuted on the exchange under the ticker SPCX. On Thursday night, the company was priced at $135 per share, as anticipated. It began trading at $150 per share and surged as much as 30% in early trades, before closing at $160.95, a gain of 19%.
SpaceX didn’t have any official programming outside, but Midtown Manhattan was swarmed, both with Musk fanatics and confused tourists. And some people didn’t wait until Friday to share their feelings about SpaceX and its founder — on Thursday, a giant, inflatable, shirtless Musk, tattooed with allegations against the rocket company, appeared outside Morgan Stanley’s headquarters in Times Square.
Here’s what the scene looked like at the Nasdaq on the big day.
People were out early waiting for Musk.
By 8:45 am, with the humidity around 80%, a crowd was assembled outside the Nasdaq, crushed toward the building’s entrance in hopes of seeing Musk, with phone cameras battling professional photographers for the best view. Some wondered aloud whether he’d show, and others asked if the ginormous Musk balloon was still up nearby.
If only they’d known that Musk was actually in Texas.
Still, there was plenty to see, as the Nasdaq tower and surrounding buildings played SpaceX content on a loop, including a clip of a llama.
“Where were you?”
Hanan Buridi was among the hopefuls looking for Musk, and told me he’s been following SpaceX’s potential IPO for a while.
“It’s historic — the biggest market debut,” he said, pausing occasionally to readjust his phone camera. “People will remember this 20 years from now: where were you on SpaceX IPO?”
He said he “of course” planned to buy shares, which he said he could pass on to his eventual kids. Buridi said he anticipated a bigger crowd than the 200 or so people who looked to be there, but that he was going to leave as soon as the bell rang: “I’m going to go on my computer and start buying IPO shares, if I can.”
A construction worker I spoke to wasn’t as sure about investing. He said he’s conservative with his money and sticks to “bricks and mortar.”
Some ended up there by accident.
Faris Agianda and Djimi Gilles didn’t plan to watch the historic event, or even know it was happening today.
Both are visiting New York for the software company they work at, and were on a grocery run when they noticed the crowd. Agianda said he might try to buy stock in a few days, assuming the price will dip a bit, and Jilles said SpaceX is “a great company” despite losing money on xAI.
As for the vibe near the Nasdaq, Gilles wasn’t all that impressed.
“It’s not that interesting, to be honest,” he told me.
The crowd was full of Musk fans and confused tourists.
In typical New York fashion, I was surrounded by a chorus of languages, as tourists visiting for the World Cup mingled with die-hard Musk fans.
A reporter from Soon, a media company, wore a full astronaut costume and carried a binder with SpaceX’s lengthy S1 filing. He told me it cost him $174 to print at FedEx, and would’ve cost $300 if he hadn’t printed the color pages at home.
The opening bell brought some cheers.
Light cheers and claps erupted when the bell rang, as many in the crowd craned to see the TV monitors playing the scene from inside the building. The crowd thinned out afterward, and photographers started stepping down from their folding stools.
There were some skeptics.
Though the crowd was generally pretty bullish on SpaceX, Bryan Winter, an architect who stopped by on his way to work, said that this is “just another bubble.” We were, he said, watching “cult behavior.”
Winter, who said he planned to buy some shares nonetheless, told me it wasn’t his first time at an historic New York finance moment. He said he’d brought his then eight-year-old son to the Lehman Brothers building on September 14, 2008, the day before the investment banking giant collapsed.
Two 24-year-olds who said they were traders told me they don’t plan to buy any stock, since it’s volatile. They walked the 20 blocks from their office to check out the scene.
SpaceX employees seemed to dot the crowd.
Some in the crowd appeared to be SpaceX employees, though they declined to identify themselves that way. A number of young men wore Starlink shirts; a few donned “Occupy Mars” tees. A number of people who looked like twenty-somethings, congratulating each other and cheering when Starlink imagery came on the monitors, told me they couldn’t talk because of their jobs.
One guy, who showed me photos of himself at SpaceX facilities and an old email address, said he left the company about a year ago. He’d loved the work, but the environment was intense, and he needed to start a new chapter. Like many current and former employees, he said he has equity in the company and is excited about this liquidity event, to put it mildly. For now, he plans to keep most of his shares, since he believes in SpaceX’s mission.
Some hopefuls stuck around to try and see execs
Trading hadn’t started yet by 10:45 am, but some of the devoted still stuck around to try and snap shots of execs when they left the Nasdaq building. A police officer told me he didn’t understand why everyone was waiting around in the heat, since nobody was coming outside.
As I was turning to leave, I told the photographer I was with that Musk had actually been in Texas that morning. A guy turned around, shocked. Why had he spent the past 20 minutes hovering near the building entrance?
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