Anyone with a pulse and a Robinhood account will be able to bet on Elon Musk’s aspirations to put factories on the moon. SpaceX is blasting off into public markets today, aiming to raise $75 billion at a valuation of $1.77 trillion, making it the biggest IPO ever.

The satellite, rocket, and AI company’s public debut will send waves across Wall Street and beyond, determining investors’ willingness to bankroll these cutting-edge industries and previewing how the planned blockbuster IPOs of OpenAI and Anthropic might fare.

Flying off the shelves

Investors lined up to buy the stock at its pre-set price of $135 like it was a TikTok-famous dessert. Buyers requested four times the available shares before trading even began, Bloomberg reported:

• An unusually large 20% of the shares were reserved for retail traders, who placed $100 billion worth of buy orders.
• The rest are getting gobbled up by institutional fund managers like BlackRock and sovereign wealth funds.

Meanwhile, the IPO is a cash-out bonanza for early investors, which includes venture capitalists, university endowments, and equity-holding early SpaceX employees—an estimated 4,400 of whom will become on-paper millionaires, according to investment platform Hill.com. It’ll also likely make Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

Is $135 worth it?

Investors buying SpaceX stock are accepting a price that’s nearly 100 times its revenue per share, much higher than is typical for AI, satellite, or rocket companies:

• Bulls are banking on Starlink dominating the satellite internet market, SpaceX launching data centers into space, and xAI’s models rivaling those of Anthropic and OpenAI.
• Skeptical analysts say the eye-popping valuation is justified only if the company reaches highly speculative milestones in a commercially viable way, noting that its steep expenses left it with a $4.3 billion loss in Q1 of this year.

Even if you don’t buy SpaceX…investors throwing their dollars at it could stymie the flow of cash toward shares of Tesla, as well as AI stocks like Meta and Alphabet.—SK

Trump canceled strikes on Iran, citing progress on deal. Thursday began with the president posting to Truth Social that the US would be striking Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT,” but in the afternoon, he made another post saying the two countries were close to a deal, the time and place of the signing would be announced shortly, and the strikes were canceled. A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry told the Tasnim news agency that no agreement had been finalized. Last night, a US official said that the military shot down two Iranian one-way drones that were targeting commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.—HVL

Trump names former SEC chairman as permanent spy chief. About a week after picking controversial housing official Bill Pulte to replace Tulsi Gabbard as acting director of national intelligence (DNI), President Trump said he was nominating Jay Clayton, the current US attorney for the Southern District of New York and the former head of the SEC, to serve in the role permanently. The president had been under pressure to nominate someone else after his appointment of Pulte—who has no intelligence credentials—was met with bipartisan criticism. Earlier on Thursday, the House voted to reject the reauthorization of a critical surveillance tool, FISA, with many Democrats saying they wouldn’t vote for it as long as Pulte was serving as DNI. The program is set to expire today if it’s not extended.—AE

ECB raises interest rates for first time in nearly three years. Europe’s central bank, one of the most important in the world, hiked rates from 2% to 2.25% yesterday, becoming the first major central bank to do so since inflation accelerated as a result of the war in Iran. The US Federal Reserve, however, is expected to keep rates steady when it meets next week. While President Trump has frequently called on the Fed to cut rates, observers say that the central bank may be more likely to raise them to combat rising energy prices.—AE

In the ancient texts, Prometheus was a Titan who gifted fire and civilization to humankind. In our current reality, it’s the name of a Jeff Bezos startup that’s intended to be like a large language model for manufacturing and engineering. The company announced $12 billion in new funding yesterday, bringing its value to $41 billion.

Prometheus, co-led by Bezos and former Google exec Vik Bajaj, launched seven months ago with ~$6 billion in initial funding that Bezos largely provided. Other investors include JPMorgan, BlackRock, and Goldman Sachs.

The startup is meant to be like an AI Bob the Builder:

• The plan is to create an “artificial general engineer” that expedites the design and manufacturing of physical products, from skyscrapers to phones, Bezos told news outlets.
• Prometheus is being trained on physics laws and data from undisclosed manufacturing companies, Semafor reported. Bezos is also reportedly looking to raise $100 billion to buy industrial companies that could feed data to Prometheus and use its AI modeling.

Zoom out: Manufacturing accounts for ~8% of nonfarm employment in the US. Bezos and Bajaj have insisted that Prometheus won’t take jobs away, unlike in the Alien franchise, in which an android from a ship called the Prometheus kills off a race known as The Engineers.—ML

Was tapping on the plus sign next to a picture of quesadillas taking too long? Well, here’s some great news from DoorDash: The delivery app launched a new AI chatbot called Ask DoorDash that can fill your cart via photos of grocery lists, recipes, or other images you choose to upload.

Customers can also use voice or written prompts to place orders without scrolling. The bot can make recommendations based on your past orders and reviews on social media. Ask DoorDash will also Ask You if you’re running low on anything so it doesn’t leave you understocked with frozen burritos, ramen, and mac & cheese (i.e., grocery staples).

Bringing people to the table: DoorDash co-founder Andy Fang said that during its limited rollout to select iOS users, nearly half of takeout orders via the tool were made by people who had never ordered from that restaurant before.

Prompting change: DoorDash is following in the footsteps of Uber Eats and Instacart, which have added AI assistants to make the shopping experience more conversational and personalized.

More to come: The chatbot will be rolled out to more users in the coming weeks, and it will eventually have the capacity to make reservations on behalf of diners.—DL

On Fridays, the Brew’s Dave Lozo looks at a sports business story that says a lot more than just the final score of a game.

This year’s FIFA World Cup is likely to become the biggest betting event in history. There could be more than $50 billion in wagers placed globally on tournament matches, according to the financial services firm Macquarie.

The 2022 World Cup in Qatar saw $35 billion in action, so where’s the potential extra $15 billion coming from?

• The tournament expanded from 32 to 48 teams—creating 40 more beautiful games.
• The betting pool in the US has also expanded—65% of the population can legally bet on sports today, compared with 40% four years ago, per the American Gaming Association.

Polymarket saw $1.8 billion in action on the question of which country will win the World Cup, making it the platform’s second-largest market ever, behind the 2024 US presidential election.

Be careful: Don’t get swept up in the excitement of all these 1–0 barnburners. The advocacy group Stop Predatory Gambling warned that “99 out of 100” bettors lose long term, and thousands could take on life-changing debt.—DL