Meet the regular people making money off SpaceX’s IPO — from a few bucks to a few million

MarketsMeet the regular people making money off the SpaceX IPO — from a few bucks to a few millionFor a 60-year-old former SpaceX engineer and two Gen Z retail traders, the historic initial public offering delivered meteoric returns and lunch money.Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00Add NBC News to GoogleSpaceX makes history in largest ever initial public offering02:29Get more newsLiveonShareAdd NBC News to GoogleJune 12, 2026, 9:10 PM EDTBy Kayla Steinberg and Grace ThomasFrom her bedroom in Miami, Daniella Rodriguez watched SpaceX hit the stock market Friday and blast off. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Rodriguez, 23, had a stake in the game: She was allocated one share of SpaceX ahead of its blockbuster initial public offering and she was waiting for the right moment to sell. Seventeen minutes after trading began, Rodriguez made the call. “I love to be a part of something that’s historical in the stock market,” she told NBC News. “If you can cop $1 while you’re at it, why not?”The SpaceX IPO made Elon Musk a trillionaire. It made Rodriguez $24 — and for her, that was a win.“Investing and trading is a game of probabilities,” she said. “If I can take a 15% - 18% profit, then I think that’s phenomenal.”The IPO raised $75 billion for the company, and investors quickly pushed SpaceX’s valuation past $2 trillion, a sign of how much demand has grown around the company’s AI and space ambitions.When SpaceX stock began trading on the Nasdaq exchange shortly before noon Friday, its opening price of $150 propelled Musk, the company’s chairman, CEO and controlling shareholder, into a new tier of wealth. But it also rewarded SpaceX’s current and former employees handsomely, and over the course of the day many watched their fortunes soar in the biggest initial public offering ever. One of them was Robert, a former engineer at SpaceX who lives in Arizona and owns tens of thousands of company sh...