SpaceX

For the welders, machinists, and launch engineers who traded years of below-market pay for SpaceX stock, Friday was the day the gamble paid off. The company's record-breaking IPO is expected to turn more than 4,400 current and former employees into millionaires, well beyond its founder. Tom Mueller built the rockets that made the company possible, hired as its very first employee in 2002. He left in 2020 but kept his shares. Musk always told staff that their salary mattered less than their equity, Mueller recalled, and "that day has come". Juan Hernandez left Mexico and learned welding for the pay, joining the company in 2015 at $28 an hour, then collected $10,000 in stock and continued to buy more through payroll.

He sold some in 2020 for a house in Texas, and his remaining shares are worth about $880,000. 5 million. 80 a share, held about 50,000 shares, and paid off his house in Denver. J. André Lavoie, who received his allocations years ago, holds more than $28 million while renovating a hotel in Italy. Also read: Jeff Bezos Says AI May Not Kill Jobs As Prometheus Raises $12B SpaceX shares opened near $150 on the Nasdaq on Friday, about 11% above the $135 price set by the company the previous evening. 77 trillion and made Elon Musk the first known trillionaire on paper.

An analysis by the investment platform Hiive projected that more than 4,400 current and former employees would exceed $1 million, including about 400 beyond $100 million each. Investor demand exceeded $250 billion, more than three times the volume of shares offered. For comparison, Google's IPO in 2004 created about 1,000 millionaires, and Facebook's IPO in 2012 had a similar effect. From the beginning, the company paid below-market wages and bridged the gap with stock at all levels, not just at the top.