What SpaceX’s public listing could mean for you and your pension

You might’ve seen the news that Elon Musk’s space exploration, communications, and AI company, SpaceX, publicly listed on the stock market on Friday 12 June.

Releasing a very specific 555,555,555 shares at $135 each, the company raised $75 billion from investors. That makes it the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in stock market history. 

When public trading started, share prices opened at $150, briefly reaching $176.50. In the end, they closed around $161, giving the company a remarkable value of $2.2 trillion. This performance made Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

It’s worth noting that the share price has since softened. By Tuesday 23 June, shares were back down to $151.90. That took more than $350 billion off Elon Musk’s net worth.

This is the first of some big tech company IPOs set to come in 2026. That includes OpenAI - the company behind ChatGPT - and Anthropic, the makers of Claude AI. 

So what does this mean for your PensionBee pension? 

In a nutshell, SpaceX won’t be included in any of PensionBee’s plans right now. However, that could change in future. 

Find out why, what’s happening across the market, and what might happen moving forwards.

SpaceX won’t be included in PensionBee’s plans for now

SpaceX won’t currently feature in any of the PensionBee plans. So, your pension savings won’t be invested in Musk’s company for the time being.

This isn’t particularly unusual for IPOs like this. Most stock market indices - essentially lists of specific groups of stocks, linked by things such as country or industry - don’t include newly-listed companies.

There’s normally a waiting interval - called ‘seasoning’ - before they’re added. This is typically between three to 12 months.

But some index providers have shorter wait times if companies meet specific criteria. That’s allowed them to include SpaceX in their indices sooner. 

Some of these indices even created new fast-tracking rules that mean they’ve been able to bring SpaceX into their lists within a matter of days.

Such indices are the:

• Nasdaq 100;
• Russell 1000 (and 3000); and
• Broad, total-market indices, such as the CRSP US Total Market Index.

However, the S&P 500 - an index of the 500 largest companies in the US, and arguably the leading index in the world - won’t include SpaceX.

To be included, companies need to have been listed for one year. They must also be profitable, posting positive earnings for their most recent quarter and the previous year. 

S&P Dow Jones, the provider behind the S&P 500, did discuss whether to change its rules to allow SpaceX in. But it ultimately concluded that they wouldn’t.

So, it’ll likely be at least a year until we see SpaceX included in any of the S&P indices. And it could be longer if it takes time for the business to turn a profit.

Will SpaceX be added to PensionBee’s plans later?

Whether SpaceX will be added to PensionBee’s plans in future depends on a couple of things. 

The index providers

PensionBee works with a few different money managers. That includes State Street and BlackRock.

Those money managers are speaking to the index providers to understand whether SpaceX will meet each providers’ criteria for inclusion.

That includes factors such as the seasoning period we talked about before. It also might be the ESG (environmental, social, and governance) credentials that companies may need to meet.

If these providers decide SpaceX is eligible for inclusion, it would likely be included in the next index rebalance. That usually means in the next few months. For the Global Leaders Plan, that’ll be August 2026. For the Tracker Plan and Shariah Plan, it’ll be September 2026. 

It’s still an emerging picture on the Climate Plan and the 4Plus Plan. We’ll share further updates when we have them. 

Your PensionBee plan

SpaceX’s inclusion will also differ between PensionBee plans. It’ll depend on elements such as the plan’s objective, what it invests in, and whether it meets the specific investment criteria of those plans.

For example, the Preserve Plan doesn’t invest in equities, so there’ll be no change.

But for the other plans, they may include SpaceX if it’s included in the indices and meets the criteria.

This is a developing and quite unusual situation, so for now, we don’t know exactly what’ll happen.

SpaceX would make up a small amount of your plan

It’s also worth noting that, even if SpaceX is included in your plan, it’ll make up a small amount of your total investments. 

That’s because of what’s called the ‘free float’ - the proportion of shares offered to public investors at the point of listing.

Founder-led companies like SpaceX often list with a lower initial free float. That allows the founders to keep control of most of the company, while limiting near-term market impact.

So, while SpaceX might be valued around $2 trillion, they've chosen to make about 4% of the shares publicly available. The rest are locked up and not tradeable.

This is a very small free float compared to other big tech companies in the major indices.

For the index providers, when deciding what percentage to allocate to each company, they’ll use a measure called ‘free float adjusted market capitalisation’.

For example, Nvidia's free float is 98%. That makes their free float adjusted market capitalisation around $5 trillion (as of June 2026). Whereas, SpaceX's free float adjusted market capitalisation is around $113 billion - far smaller.

Taking the MSCI World Index as an example, SpaceX would make up about 0.06% of the index weight. That’s compared to Nvidia at 5.64%. 

All in all, SpaceX may well have a trillion-dollar valuation when you consider all its shares. 

But, because so few shares are publicly available, the impact in our plans will be far less significant than it might first appear.

Save for your future with PensionBee

The PensionBee pension plans are built with simplicity in mind.

You can choose to stick with our default plans - that’s the Global Leaders Plan for under 50s, or the 4Plus Plan for over 50s. Or choose a specialist plan, such as the Climate Plan or Shariah Plan.

Find out more about our plans.

Risk warning

As always with investments, your capital is at risk. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance. The value of your investment can go down as well as up, and you may get back less than you invest. This information should not be regarded as financial advice.