Inside the SpaceX IPO: The small cohort of Kiwi investors who will jump the queue on Elon Musk's stock market play
Sunday, 7 June 2026
SpaceX is eyeing a historic US$1.7 trillion IPO on June 12, 2026, alongside upcoming trillion-dollar listings for Anthropic and OpenAI.
Only certified New Zealand wholesale investors meeting strict wealth thresholds can access the pre-listing 'ground floor' price.
Everyday investors must wait for market listing or automatic index fund inclusion, sparking debate over price inflation and volatility.
Analysis: There’s a small cohort of New Zealand investors who will be able to participate in the launch of what is shaping up to be the biggest company listing on a US stock exchange in history.
Usually, when it comes to a major listing, everyday investors are left on the outside in the early stages of an IPO.
This will again be the case with the listing of SpaceX, which some analysts predict will have a value of US$1.7 trillion (NZ$2.9 trillion) once it hits the market on 12 June 2026.
That valuation will be determined by what’s called the “ground floor” price – which is the exact price per share that wholesale and institutional investors pay to buy into a company before it begins trading on the public stock exchange.
So, yes, you read that correctly: there is a cohort of individuals who will be able to buy SpaceX stock before the listing actually happens.
Sharesies is among a number of New Zealand organisations that have called on these so-called wholesale investors to register to participate at this wholesale stage.
But the doors aren’t open to everyone.
“Due to regulatory requirements, we’re only able to offer participation in the SpaceX IPO to our wholesale investors in New Zealand,” says Sharesies co-CEO Leighton Roberts.
“There are specific criteria in New Zealand that you must meet to be certified a wholesale investor. This is because there are different levels of protection offered to retail investors vs. wholesale investors.”
So who gets early entrance?
Jeremy Sullivan, an investment adviser at Hamilton Hindin Greene, tells me that a wholesale investor is “generally treated as experienced or sufficiently resourced enough to assess the risks without the same protections a retail investor would receive”.
Sullivan notes that with a large IPO like SpaceX, even wholesale investors aren’t guaranteed access.
In practice, institutions, very large clients or platforms that receive an allocation of shares are the only ones that get access.
Looking at the Sharesies breakdown, the vast majority of us will not come close to the high-roller status required to be a designated wholesale investor.
Wholesale investors fall into four categories under the Sharesies criteria: government agencies, investment businesses, large investors, or people who invest sufficiently large sums.
The most likely way through that door is via your recent investment history, but the numbers required are eye-watering.
To qualify, you must have either owned $1 million in eligible investments (excluding crypto, property, and KiwiSaver) or invested at least $1 million within the last two years.
Alternatively, you can qualify with at least two years of professional investment decision-making experience gained within the last decade.
Those parameters are incredibly tight, and they’re designed to ensure that only sophisticated investors participate at the early stages.
“For most New Zealand investors, exposure will likely not be through the IPO itself, but after listing, either by buying shares on-market or indirectly through global funds, ETFs, KiwiSaver funds, and index products if SpaceX is later added to major indices,” says Sullivan.
Buyer beware
Early entrance isn’t always a good thing.
Kernel Wealth founder Dean Anderson notes that high-profile IPOs can come with high expectations.
“Public investors don’t just buy the company as it exists today,” says Anderson.
“They buy a story about future growth. If expectations shift quickly, share prices can be volatile.”
He points to the recent example of Figma as an example of how quickly the narrative can change.
“When Figma launched hot, it nearly quadrupled from USD $33 to $142 on its first day but the stock has since dived on fears that AI tools would make design software obsolete. It's been a rough ride with the stock falling to USD $24.”
Anderson says that investors curious about these companies should also take note of the cash burn. Exactly how much money are these companies spending and will they ever be able to stand alone without further investment?
These are incredibly complex questions to answer, and even the most sophisticated investors can get them wrong.
How bad could this be?
Most Kiwi investors will have to wait until these companies are eventually added to the most prominent index funds.
Kiwis invested in the Nasdaq 100 will see the likes of SpaceX added after around 15 days of trading, while those invested in the S&P 500 will have to wait 12 months (the S&P500 earlier said the window would be reduced to six months, but announced on Friday New Zealand time that the status quo would be maintained).
Index fund investors around the world have expressed consternation about the weighting SpaceX, Anthropic and Open AI (the latter being two other trillion-dollar listings tipped for IPO) will have on these indices almost immediately.
Influential tech writer Ed Zitron is so concerned that he’s gone as far as saying SpaceX should not be allowed to list at all, given the impact it will eventually have on retail investors.
The moment SpaceX enters those indices, every single passive index fund, ETF, and retirement account tracking them is structurally required to buy the stock. This, Zitron believes, will inflate the price and create the opportunity for insiders and wholesale investors to sell at a gain, leaving retail investors as the so-called “bag holders”.
Anderson’s take on this is slightly less pessimistic and more focused on the long-term. He notes that even if a large company declines over time, it doesn’t mean that the index fund has stopped functioning as it’s meant to.
“The biggest companies in 1966 looked very different from the biggest companies today,” says Anderson.
“Back then, the top cohort included names like AT&T, General Motors, IBM and Eastman Kodak. Today’s leaders include Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta.”
The point is that companies might rise and fall, but the index will continue to track the broader market.
And while a small number of companies do dominate the market right now, there have also been historical periods of high concentration. Investing in index funds, says Anderson, means that you don’t need to have a crystal ball to be able to predict if an IPO will succeed. Over the long-term, you essentially track the performance of the whole market.
Those stalwart rules of investing certainly have strong precedent, but what we’ve never seen is the arrival of three trillion-dollar companies in a short space of time. In this sense, we’re entering entirely new territory – and even the most sophisticated investors among us will feel a little uncertain predicting what comes next.
So will you buy SpaceX once it lists? Do you think it’s worth the risk? Let us know in the comments section below.