S&P 500 Refuses to Change Rules for SpaceX

SpaceX has been deprived of accelerated access to one of the largest capital sources in the US stock market. S&P Dow Jones Indices, the operator of the S&P 500 index, refused to relax the rules for including new companies in the index for SpaceX's anticipated IPO process. This decision was made after a month of discussions regarding MegaCap companies, i.e., corporations with extremely high market capitalization. As reported by Ixbt.com report .

SpaceX plans to go public with an estimated valuation of $1.75 trillion. The company aimed to secure billions of dollars in inflows from passive investment funds through rapid inclusion in the S&P 500 index. Such funds do not select stocks independently but automatically purchase shares of companies included in the index. To facilitate this, it was proposed to reduce the mandatory waiting period after the IPO from 12 months to 6 months and to relax requirements for free-float shares and profitability metrics.

S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that the financial stability criteria and the post-IPO waiting period would remain unchanged. This decision affects not only SpaceX but also future AI giants expected to go public, such as OpenAI and Anthropic. According to Bloomberg Intelligence estimates, rapid entry into the S&P 500 index could have automatically attracted $14 billion in investment for SpaceX and over $8 billion for OpenAI.

Unlike S&P, other providers are taking a more lenient approach. For example, the Nasdaq exchange changed its rules to allow SpaceX to join the Nasdaq-100 index 15 business days after the IPO, rather than 3 months. FTSE Russell also approved similar acceleration for large offerings. However, Morningstar analysts value SpaceX at $780 billion, which is half the expected IPO price.