{"id":4453,"date":"2026-07-12T12:02:56","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T12:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/durhammovinghub.com\/?p=4453"},"modified":"2026-07-12T12:02:56","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T12:02:56","slug":"this-is-how-rich-spacex-workers-are-after-the-ipo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/durhammovinghub.com\/?p=4453","title":{"rendered":"This is how rich SpaceX workers are after the IPO"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> employees who became millionaires on paper when the company went public. <\/p>\n

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When SpaceX hired Juan Hernandez as a welder in 2015, the company offered him $10,000 in stock alongside his $28-an-hour wage. <\/p>\n

He accepted the equity without giving it much thought, since none of his previous hourly positions had included company shares, Hernandez told CBS News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

SpaceX priced its initial public offering<\/a> 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<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The offering raised $75 billion at an implied valuation of approximately $1.77 trillion, according to Nasdaq<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

However, the celebration has come with details that most headlines overlooked, and the reality of the windfall is more complex. <\/p>\n

Shares have dropped roughly 35% from their post-debut peak, and lockup agreements prevent most employees from selling their stock for months. <\/p>\n

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<\/a> reported. <\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

The new millionaires include welders, machinists, technicians, and manufacturing workers who built rockets and launchpad structures for years before the listing, Fortune reported. <\/p>\n

According to the SpaceX prospectus<\/a>, the company distributed equity through stock option grants at hiring and promotion milestones, annual performance awards, and an employee stock purchase plan.<\/p>\n

Twice-yearly liquidity<\/a> events also let employees sell portions of their holdings even while the company remained private, a former employee told the Next Web<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Those periodic selling windows gave long-tenured staff an early signal of the wealth their accumulated equity could generate on open markets.<\/p>\n

The stock’s price trajectory since the first trading day illustrates why a brokerage account balance and a bank account balance are very different things. <\/p>\n

SpaceX shares opened at $150 on June 12, surged to an intraday high of $225.64 on June 16, and then trended lower through late June and early July, hitting an all-time low of $145.07 on July 10, according to TradingView data<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More SpaceX:<\/strong><\/p>\n

For Hernandez, whose 6,500 shares were worth about $1.05 million at the $160.95 first-day close according to CBS News, that decline would cut his holdings to roughly $942,500 at the $145.07 low.<\/p>\n

Lockup restrictions add another layer of friction for employees hoping to convert paper gains into spendable cash. <\/p>\n

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SpaceX’s<\/a> prospectus allows most insiders to sell up to 20% of their holdings after the first quarterly earnings report, expected August 6, Fortune reported. <\/p>\n

An additional 7% unlocks at each of the 70-, 90-, 105-, 120-, and 135-day marks, with a further 28% released after the third-quarter earnings report and the remaining restrictions lifting at day 180, the SpaceX prospectus showed<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Spencer Platt\/Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n

On Hernandez’s 6,500 shares alone, the drop from $225.64 to $145.07 wiped out roughly $524,000 in paper wealth in under a month. <\/p>\n

Jason Schloetzer, an associate professor of accounting at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, cautioned against reading SpaceX as a blueprint for blue-collar wealth creation.<\/p>\n

“This is largely venture-backed compensation attached to a company that happens to build rockets,” Schloetzer told Fortune<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He noted that many employees accumulated shares through the company’s stock purchase plan, buying discounted equity with their paycheck deductions rather than receiving free grants. <\/p>\n

That structure shifts financial risk from the employer to the employee, replacing the guaranteed pensions and profit-sharing arrangements that once protected industrial workers, Schloetzer explained in the Fortune interview.<\/p>\n

SpaceX stock represents up to 90% of many employees’ total net worth, Jamie Battmer, chief investment officer at Creative Planning, told CNBC,<\/a> creating substantial downside exposure in a single volatile holding.<\/p>\n

Morningstar equity analyst Nicolas Owens added<\/a> a further layer of concern, placing SpaceX’s fair value at $63 per share, roughly 53% below the offering price.<\/p>\n

“Our valuation is the result of mathematics more than skepticism,” Owens wrote in the firm’s analysis of SpaceX’s financial outlook and IPO<\/a> pricing.<\/p>\n

The sudden flood of liquid wealth has pushed more than 100 SpaceX employees to band together and negotiate discounted advisory services as a group. <\/p>\n

That collective, representing between $1 billion and $5 billion in combined assets<\/a>, signed with registered investment advisor Choreo at fees starting at 0.5%, CNBC reported<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The fee falls below the industry standard range, giving the group a meaningful cost advantage over individual advisory relationships.<\/p>\n

Jason Van de Loo, Choreo’s chief executive officer, told CNBC<\/a> that most investors spend decades building wealth, but SpaceX employees received theirs virtually overnight. <\/p>\n

He compared the windfall’s speed to receiving a large inheritance, noting the difficulty of processing so many financial decisions at once.<\/p>\n

Private banks, trust companies, and independent advisors<\/a> have dispatched teams to California, Texas, and Florida to court the newly wealthy employees, CNBC noted.<\/p>\n

Related: SpaceX investors may be ignoring troubling trend<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.<\/i><\/p>\n

Read more Fishing 16-year-old gets lost in forest, walks 11 miles for help, NC searchers say<\/a><\/p>\n

This story was originally published July 12, 2026 at 7:37 AM.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4452,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-read-todays-edition"],"yoast_head":"\nThis is how rich SpaceX workers are after the IPO - Durham Moving Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/durhammovinghub.com\/?p=4453\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This is how rich SpaceX workers are after the IPO - 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