This is how rich SpaceX workers are after the IPO Damilola Esebame Sun, July 12, 2026 at 7:37 AM PDT 5 min read SPCX 2222.SR ^IXIC Juan Hernandez, who now works as a welder at Jeff Bezos-owned rival Blue Origin, is one of more than 4,400 current and former SpaceX employees who became millionaires on paper when the company went public. When SpaceX hired Juan Hernandez as a welder in 2015, the company offered him $10,000 in stock alongside his $28-an-hour wage. He accepted the equity without giving it much thought, since none of his previous hourly positions had included company shares, Hernandez told CBS News . SpaceX priced its initial public offering at $135 per share ahead of the Nasdaq debut, valuing Hernandez's 6,500 shares at roughly $880,000 at the offer price, Fortune reported . The offering raised $75 billion at an implied valuation of approximately $1.77 trillion, according to Nasdaq , and became the largest initial public offering in history, nearly tripling the previous global record set by Saudi Aramco's $25.6 billion listing in 2019. However, the celebration has come with details that most headlines overlooked, and the reality of the windfall is more complex. Shares have dropped roughly 35% from their post-debut peak, and lockup agreements prevent most employees from selling their stock for months. SpaceX created thousands of employee millionaires from the factory floor to the C-suite The scale of wealth creation across SpaceX's workforce makes this listing unusual among technology IPOs, which typically reward only executives and software engineers, Fortune reported. An analysis by Hill.com, a San Francisco-based investment platform, found that about 400 employees are expected to hold stakes exceeding $100 million, the New York Times reported . Ruchir Shah, CEO of SkillCat, an online skilled trades training startup, told Fortune that SpaceX is exposing a broader truth about the future economy, where some of the hardest-to-automate and hardest-to-fill roles sit in the physical world. If you think about it, these are some of the most critical people for SpaceX to grow. It's just as hard to find good welders and good machinists as it is a software developer, if not harder because if there's a massive shortage, so it makes sense that they were given equity The new millionaires include welders, machinists, technicians, and manufacturing workers who built rockets and launchpad structures for years before the listing, Fortune reported. According to the SpaceX prospectus , the company distributed equity through stock option grants at hiring and promotion milestones, annual performance awards, and an employee stock purchase plan. Story Continues Twice-yearly liquidity events also let employees sell portions of their holdings even while the company remained private, a former employee told the Next Web . Those periodic selling windows gave long-tenured staff an early signal of the wealth their accumulated equity could generate on open markets. SpaceX shares have dropped roughly 35% from their post-listing peak The stock's price trajectory since the first trading day illustrates why a brokerage account balance and a bank...
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